Buck Owens was the country original from Sherman, Texas, who became known as one of the leading protagonists of the Bakersfield sound. From 1963-64 onwards, he was unstoppable with his sequence of hit singles and albums, and a reputation enhanced as the country star that The Beatles themselves covered, when Ringo Starr sang his 1963 country chart-topper “Act Naturally” on the Help! album.
But that consistent success didn’t arrive until Alvis Edgar Owens, as he was born in Sherman, Texas in 1929, was well into his 30s. Plenty of dues were paid before that, many of them after he relocated to California in 1951. He had three major country hits in 1959 and 1960, with “Under Your Spell Again,” “Above and Beyond,” and “Excuse Me (I Think I’ve Got A Heartache).”
Then, as his next substantial hit “Foolin’ Around” bounded into the country charts, Owens finally had an album to show off. Capitol released his self-titled debut LP in January 1961, though it included material that had been recorded as long ago as 1958. Nevertheless, the 12-track collection initiated the artist’s working relationship with producer Ken Nelson, who oversaw the set at Capitol’s famous studios with Virginia Stewart.
Listen to uDiscover Music’s Country Music In 20 Songs playlist.
Those first three hit singles were all included, though “Foolin’ Around” wasn’t, as singles were often given their own breathing space in the market in those days. Owens wrote six of the songs on his own and co-wrote all but one of the others, with that “Above and Beyond” hit (first recorded, unsuccessfully, by Wynn Stewart) being penned by another key man in Buck’s career, the prolific writer Harlan Howard. Within just seven months, the LP Buck Owens Sings Harlan Howard was on release, and in terms of album releases, Buck was making up for lost time.
Buy or stream Buck Owens.
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uDiscover Music is operated by Universal Music Group (UMG). Some recording artists included in uDiscover Music articles are affiliated with UMG.
Todd Field’s new, multi-Academy Award nominated feature film Tár is generating considerable commentary – and not a little controversy.
For some, its storyline allows for a timely exploration of intergenerational conflict concerning the value of Western art and artistic ethics. Others see it as a critique of cancel culture.
Still others think it epitomises the problematic representation of women and LGBTQI+ people in a traditionally male-dominated industry.
But I think it also shines a light on some of the social and political dynamics of the world in which it is set: the elite end of the classical music industry.
Power before the fall
Portraying the professional and psychological downfall of orchestral conductor Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett), the film depicts her as prone to abusive and grooming behaviours. Those behaviours, the film suggests, may have led to the suicide of a young former student (and possible love interest).
In interviews, Field has stated he created her character not to explore gender or sexuality, but rather power. The film could have equally been set, he suggests, in “a multinational corporation or an architectural firm. Pick your poison.”
But Field’s choice of setting supports his dramatic aim beyond merely providing it with an interesting backdrop.
The globetrotting level of the classical music industry at which Tár works has faced its own #metoo stories.
It is also characterised by especially high numbers of people drawn from private wealth and educational privilege – a situation some argue is only becoming worse.
Unlike most people in classical music, Tár didn’t grow up privileged. Focus Features via AP
Late in the film, we discover Tár is from much humbler stock. This informs her character more than we might first realise.
From the outset, the film gives us several clues about her true class identity. Her charitable foundation is named “Accordion”, after the decidedly non-elite instrument she happens to play. Despite living in a supremely stylish Berlin apartment, she feels more comfortable retreating to the bedsit she has refused to relinquish. She has impostor syndrome about whether all she creates is merely pastiche, if all her creative work is derivative.
Ultimately, we discover she was not born Lydia Tár, rather Linda Tarr. When she briefly encounters her brother, he tellingly remarks “you don’t seem to know where the hell you came from, or where you’re going”.
Tár is therefore not a “true” member of the elite level of artists she has fought so hard to join.
Although we initially see her being supported by colleagues who enable aspects of her toxic behaviour or choose to stay silent when they witness it, when things go public, she is unceremoniously dumped.
Ultimately she is not protected by the industry that promoted her, nor does she really know how to protect herself when it turns on her.
This is not the norm. The film names two real-life conductors (James Levine and Charles Dutoit) who also fell from favour owing to similar accusations of predatory sexual behaviour, but their downfalls occurred at the end of their careers, not, as here, at its apex.
Field’s film suggests Tár’s particularly swift and brutal downfall may be in part because she cannot fully access networks of patronage and privilege in the classical music industry.
In this world, personal and institutional power is still intimately tied up with class. Both can be made to serve the interests of wrongdoers and silence their victims.
Read more:
Classical music training and abuse cultures – we need to act now
From Mahler to Monster
There is one other dominating presence complicating the film’s narrative: the music. It is not for nothing Field chose a composition by Gustav Mahler, in particular his Symphony No. 5, for Tár to conduct.
At first glance, here is another artist who might be vulnerable to cancel culture. Mahler had his own history of manipulative behaviour, such as insisting his wife sublimate her own musical career to support his.
Much like Tár herself, the symphony can be characterised as self-aggrandising. As with all his symphonies, it is conceived on a colossal scale and is replete with self-quotations from earlier works.
And yet exposing the personal faults of the conductor and the composer is neither sufficient nor necessary to appreciate the resulting art. As German philosopher Theodor Adorno noted in an essay from 1932, we tend to avoid considering the measure of a conductor’s life off the podium when we watch them on it.
The film reminds us this tendency can come at a significant human cost, and we apply it unequally: depending on not just the identity but also the class background of the conductor themselves.
The film ends with Tár conducting a concert in an unnamed Southeast Asian country. No Mahler is to be found here. Rather, she conducts a program of music from the 2018 action role-playing computer game Monster Hunter: World.
This is not, I think, meant to be some kind of cruel joke (apart from the possible allusion to Tár herself in the title of the game) or a tasteless (and culturally patronising) dig at the expense of non-Western, commercially oriented, orchestral music. But computer game music carries little of the establishment prestige Western classical music does.
The film ultimately leaves it as an open question, but there is a hint that, away from the political machinations of the elite classical music industry, Tár might be able to reconnect with a more authentic – and less destructive – artistic and ethical persona.
Read more:
Tár – an exploration of the flawed musicians behind decadent music
A giant saltwater aquarium was on display, and kids were invited to watch the anemones, sea urchins and clown fish that look like Nemo.
Five-year-old Stephanie Copeland wore an ASU cheerleader outfit and a maroon and gold bow in her hair as she pressed her nose against the tank, searching for a starfish.
Sophie’s mother, Stephanie Copeland, said she appreciated that the fun Open Door activities are a way to get kids introduced to the idea of going to college.
“I’ve always said kids should have messaging for college from when they’re little,” she said. “There’s so many exciting things here to find out and learn about to get excited to go to college.”
In another room, kids used crime-solving techniques like chromatography, fingerprints, blood typing and DNA analysis to solve the crime of who kidnapped Sparky. Was it Louie the Lumberjack from the Northern Arizona University, Thunder the Antelope from Grand Canyon University or Wilbur the Wildcat from the University of Arizona? (Spoiler alert: It was Thunder.)
Nikki Trevizo, a health sciences major, said her favorite part to show kids was the magnetic dust used for fingerprints, which can be spilled on the desktop and immediately wiped clean with the wave of a wand. But the kids themselves really love the fingerprint chart. Several crowded around, comparing their fingertips to the poster.
“The patterns are what really get them, how everyone has different patterns on their fingers,” Trevizo said.
The “Anatomy World” room showed specimens like skulls and organs, plus ASU’s “virtual dissector,” which is sort of like a high-tech game of “Operation,” and everyone got to watch students dissect sheep hearts and lungs.
The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication had several kid-focused activities, including “I Can Be a Sports Journalist,” where families saw the sports newsroom and learned about summer camps.
Jeffrey Hinkle, a fourth-year student majoring in sports journalism, told young prospective journalists how he works in the sports bureau two days a week.
“I pitch my story, I get my assignment and by 10 in the morning I’m out getting quotes, filming b-roll, meeting with people and doing actual journalistic work,” said Hinkle, who wants a career in on-air broadcasting or podcasting.
“They’ve been asking, ‘How do you like your job?’ and I tell them it’s pretty cool. I get to watch sports for a living, and I get to write about it.”
Arizona PBS, based in the Cronkite School building, had crafts, games, readings and live music in its “Kids Zone.”
PBS character Daniel Tiger made an appearance at Open Door on the Downtown Phoenix Jan. 28. Photo by Mary Beth Faller/ASU News
There was also a huge celebrity. When asked why the family came to Open Door, Andrea Golfen said: “Because of Daniel Tiger.”
Golfen waited in a line with her 4-year-old and 2-year-old so they could get their photos taken with a large, fuzzy Daniel Tiger, star of “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood” on PBS.
“We thought that we better meet Daniel Tiger while he’s here before we go to check out all the other stuff,” she said.
The Instruction Kitchen in the Health South building became a “Mad Food Science Laboratory,” where families created nitro hot chocolate and homemade marshmallows.
Megan Orcutt, a dietetics major, manned the boba table, which had four flavors: strawberry, root beer, orange or lemon. Guests filled a pipette with flavored sodium alginate and put little blobs of it into a bowl of calcium chloride, and then water, and that process made the sweet little gelatinous boba balls.
“I had been wanting to volunteer, so it’s really nice that our class requires it, and now I know what to do when the next opportunity comes up,” she said.
Other activities in the health buildings included a CPR demonstration, a demonstration of the patient simulators used by nursing students and tables where families could create a “calming kit” and a first-aid kit.
Downtown Phoenix’s Civic Space Park featured photo booths, activities in Spanish and information on STEM activities with the Arizona SciTech Festival. The public also could tour the campus, including the new Fusion on First building, which houses ASU’s pop music and fashion programs.
Find more information about the upcoming Open Door events at opendoor.asu.edu. Guests are requested to have a ticket. Tickets are free and available online or at the door; tickets ordered by the Wednesday before each event will be entered in a drawing for a swag bag.
Top photo: Open Door attendees Chapman (front) and Addison flash their Sun Devil pride on Jan. 28 on the Downtown Phoenix campus. Photo by Alwaleed Al Rasbi/Arizona State University
In an incredible video, a Skyrim fan shows off their rendition of the city of Falkreath, recreated in Far Cry 5’s map editor.
A video posted online showcases an incredible rendition of Skyrim‘s Falkreath, recreated in Far Cry 5. Falkreath is one of the major cities seen in Skyrim, and it features in-game as the home of the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary.
This creation becomes the latest in a long line of fan homages to Bethesda’s iconic title. While some fans choose to honor Skyrim by creating items from the game in real life, others do so by completing crazy in-game challenges. One player even leveled every skill to 100 without ever leaving Whiterun. The game has left an undeniable cultural imprint on the gaming community, and brought the franchise into the mainstream upon its release in 2011.
GAMERANT VIDEO OF THE DAY
RELATED: Skyrim Fan Creates Blank Map of Game World
The short walkthrough through the town is gorgeous, showcasing every detail from Far Cry 5‘s map editor to display Falkreath in all its glory. The player tours past every building in the town, and stops to show off the mountains looming over the beautiful town. To add to the atmosphere further, the player includes classic Skyrim ambient music that gives the recreation a sense of authenticity. Falkreath is one of the most flora-heavy places in Skyrim, and it benefits this creation massively. Far Cry 5‘s engine does greenery extremely well, and it brings Falkreath to life in a way that isn’t possible in Skyrim‘s dated engine. The versatility of the Far Cry 5 map editor is extremely impressive, with a player even recreating Lord of the Rings’ Helm’s Deep in the engine.
Recreations of Skyrim‘s locations in Far Cry 5 are becoming a specialty of YouTuber Mojo Swoptops, after they previously recreated Riverwood in the Ubisoft title. In the description, the fan claims that the creation took six hours to build, which is dedication to recreating one of the smallest cities in Skyrim. It’s unknown how much more of Skyrim the fan is planning to rebuild in Far Cry 5. To rebuild the full game would be a behemoth task, almost impossible for one person. However, fans will enjoy each slice of Skyrim‘s world as and when it arrives.
Creations like this still popping up in 2023 show how the desire for more Elder Scrolls continues to endure in the gaming community. The modding community has taken Skyrim far, helping to keep the game active to this day. Some of the graphics mods available for Skyrim can even make the game look as though it was released recently. But long-term, there’s no substitute for The Elder Scrolls 6. While news on that front has been scarce for some time, it’s hoped that Bethesda’s release of Starfield later this year will accelerate development.
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim is available now for Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
MORE: Iconic Skyrim NPCs Who Should Return In The Elder Scrolls 6
Dubai-based Lebanese singer-songwriter Bea Kadri‘s latest offering is the song “Liberated”. This one serves as the fifth single from her upcoming debut album, No Love For The Long Distance.
Written post-breakup, “Liberated” expresses a sense of empowerment. She no-longer feels triggered about the past relationship.
“This R&B chill track originates from a freestyle I recorded when it was clear to me that time reveals all truths & most importantly that everything happens for a reason. Now I’m Liberated,” Bea explains.
She adds that this is the last song she wrote for the album. “Liberated” exhibits her songwriting ability.
Give the song a listen and follow Bea Kadri on Instagram.
The 9,000 7-Eleven convenience stores in the United States are known for their frozen drinks and frankfurters of unknown vintage turning on a grill behind the counter.
Now, many of the stores are gaining a reputation as relentless purveyors of classical music, pushing Mozart and Verdi on all who loiter near the red, orange and green sign. It is being used not to open their hearts to the sublime, but to make them go away at once. In New York, not far from the Lincoln Center where the Metropolitan Opera is currently staging Aida, snatches of another opera are being broadcast by a midtown 7-Eleven to a far less willing audience in an attempt to dissuade people from loitering or begging outside the store.
Well damn, who knew they had this up their sleeve?
With all that down time in recent years, the backing band of Tyler Childers wasn’t just sitting there with their thumbs up their butts. Apparently they were busy writing and recording songs for their side project called “El Dorodo”—mind the ‘o’ instead of an ‘a’ for the traditional spelling of the term.
Just as yours truly was trying to get the full story behind a couple of singles released by El Dorodo recently, they hauled off and released an entire album on Friday, January 27th called Unincorporated.
Though you have to dig to find it, a Facebook page, Instagram page, and website confirm the identities of who is behind El Dorodo, and it is Foodstamps drummer Rod Elkins (shortened to “Rod”), bassist Craig “Hawk” Burletic (bob your head), and lead guitar/pedal steel guitarist James “Witchita” Barker. They’re joined by “Dangerous” Doug Woodward, who shares frontman/singing duties with Rod Elkins.
El Dorodo is country, and traditional country at that. But there is also a bit of a tongue-in-cheek approach to this project as can be seen in the video below, so don’t take them (or yourselves) too seriously. Yes, they have videos, and they even played a couple of shows on January 27th at The Basement in Nashville, and January 28th at The Burl in Lexington, Kentucky.
Up to this point, there has been absolutely no press or any other mention of this project aside from the band’s social media pages. It’s been 100% low-key, either on purpose, so that people stumble on it organically, or because like so many things these days, the press is just asleep at the wheel. Apparently they’ve been playing together for years, and have played multiple shows around Kentucky.
Running down the songwriters for the project, Rod Elkins and Doug Woodward handle the lion’s share of the writing, but Craig Burletic also lends one song, and the manager for Tyler Childers, Ian Thornton, co-writes a song as well. The only person missing from the classic Foodstamps lineup is “The Professor” Jesse Wells, but he played with them at the show at The Burl in Kentucky.
The band’s website says in part, “El Dorodo is all of these things and all of these things are Country music. El Dorodo appreciates, respects and loves all types of “good” music. You may hear aspects of these different genres represented in our music. We are fans first. Our hearts lie in Country/Western/Old Time music and culture. We represent true, honest Country music to be consumed by the masses and we do so with full hearts. Our aim is to get back to the basics of love…El Dorodo is country music.”
A proper review for this project will be forthcoming. But since there was no info out there in the world about El Dorodo, it seemed like someone needed to address it sooner than later. So here you go ladies and gentlemen: El Dorodo.
TRACK LIST:
1. Tell Me Why (Doug Woodward) 2. The Rose of San Antone (J. Baisden, Rod Elkins) 3. Whiskey, Women, and Wine (Doug Woodward) 4. I Get Around (Doug Woodward, Rod Elkins) 5. Don’t Break My Heart (Doug Woodward, Ian Thornton) 6. Bed of Roses (Craig Burletic) 7. Like The Others (Rod Elkins) 8. Dreamin’ Man’s Blues (Doug Woodward) 9. Life of Sin (Doug Woodward) 10. Cowboys/Cowgirls (Rod Elkins)
Felix van Groeningen’s 2018 sentimental biographical drama Beautiful Boy stars comedy actor Steve Carrell and indie film golden boy Timothée Chalamet as a father-son duo attempting to mend a fractured relationship stemming from the son’s substance abuse. Inspired by the works of John Lennon, writer Luke David adapted the books, Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction by David Sheff and Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines by Nic Sheff, into a critical success, despite an initial box office failure.
Beautiful Boy is an emotional, harrowing and heartbreaking exploration of addiction and family values as the two concepts battle it out in an exhausting ordeal. The direction exercises masterful attention, with the stylistic choices of score and camerawork exploring the psychology of substance abuse. Chalamet’s performance as a struggling Nic Sheff garnered nominations for the actor at the Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild Awards, BAFTA Awards and Critics’ Choice Awards.
The source of inspiration for the movie’s title derives from rock and roll legend Lennon’s song ‘Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)’. Original author Sheff famously interviewed the Beatles rhythm guitarist and his partner multimedia artist Yoko Ono in the build-up to their senior album, Double Fantasy. This piece of work is a folk rock composition showcasing the couple’s relationship with one another and their child Sean Lennon, released in 1980. Lennon was murdered three weeks after its release, on Monday, December 8th, 1980, by Mark David Chapman.
The album’s track ‘Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)’ was written and recorded as a tribute to their son Sean, who was born five years before the album’s release. During an interview (via Beatles Bible), Lennon expressed his intentions and approaches to the song to express his newfound love of being a father. “The joy is still there when I see Sean. He didn’t come out of my belly but, by God, I made his bones, because I’ve attended to every meal, and to how he sleeps, and the fact that he swims like a fish,” he shared. “That’s because I took him to the ‘Y’. I took him to the ocean. I’m so proud of those things. He is my biggest pride, you see.”
He added: “Well, what can I say? It’s about Sean. It’s self-explanatory. The music and the lyric came at the same time.”
Sheff’s book and van Groeningen’s film title are a tragic spin on this concept of a father and son bond, juxtaposing the initial innocence and wholesome love of Lennon’s song whilst still highlighting a ghost of that family love. The film demonstrates an older landscape of this dynamic, one that has been infiltrated with the struggles and pressures of youth on the son’s part, with the father attempting to view his son as the individual he is growing into to understand him. The issues of youth addiction emphasise the exterior weight of the situation, that when you love someone with an abusive habit consuming their life, it also consumes everyone around them. The struggle of a child is shared with their parent.
Beautiful Boy contrasts Double Fantasy in posing something more dark, intense and emotionally grabbling but also something just as powerful and moving. Chalamet’s compelling performance anchors the film’s heart, focusing the narrative’s thematic values for audience engagement against the challenging editing and score composition.
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Google has made an AI that can transform text prompts into music that lasts several minutes, The Verge reports(Opens in a new window).
The AI model, similar to Open AI’s image generator DALL-E, is called MusicLM and was revealed by Google in a research paper(Opens in a new window) penned by thirteen researchers. The paper includes a plethora of samples made using MusicLM, which include impressive five-minute clips of melodic techno, swing, and jazz and range in genre from meditation sounds and electronic music to death metal and rap.
The AI was able to generate music from a combination of melody and text prompts too. For example, in one case it generated an opera vocal to the melody of “Bella Ciao” being hummed. In another example(Opens in a new window), MusicLM was able to generate a song from a “gym” prompt that had incoherent lyrics and a vocal and melody with a distinctively Arab-pop sound.
The tool could also generate a fusion of reggaeton and electronic music “with a spacey, otherworldly sound,” that induces the experience of being “lost in space,” as one detailed text prompt reads.
The researchers said their experiments with the AI show that “MusicLM outperforms previous systems both in audio quality and adherence to the text description. Moreover, we demonstrate that MusicLM can be conditioned on both text and a melody in that it can transform whistled and hummed melodies according to the style described in a text caption.”
Recommended by Our Editors
For those hoping to try the music-generating AI tool for themselves, you’ll be disappointed to hear that Google has “no plans to release models at this point.” The researchers cite risks of “potential misappropriation of creative content” as well as potential cultural appropriation or misrepresentation.
However, the research paper says a public dataset is being released with around 5,500 music-text pairs, which Google says can help the training and evaluation of other music-based AIs.
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Geez, it’s the end of January already? That was fast. And furious — at least in terms of new music. Thankfully, things seem to be slowing down a tad next week. There’s just one massive release on the way: Shania Twain’s Queen Of Me. That’s the last you’ll hear of that around here. I’ve got other fish to fry — like these upcoming releases:
Brian Jonestown Massacre Your Future Is Your Past
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Anton Newcombe — frontman, songwriter, composer, studio owner, multi-instrumentalist, producer, engineer, father, force of nature — returns with the Brian Jonestown Massacre’s 20th full-length studio album Your Future Is Your Past. After a hugely prolific 2010s that saw the release of eight long-players and one mini-album, Newcombe had been going through a period of writer’s block when one day he picked up his 12-string guitar and The Real (the opening track on previous album Fire Doesn’t Grow On Trees) came out of him. Like the kraken, it was as if he’d summoned it. “All of a sudden, I just heard something,” he says. “And then it just didn’t stop. We tracked a whole song every single day for 70 days in a row.” By the end of it they had two albums ready to go. Joining Newcombe in the studio for The Future Is Your Past were Hakon Adalsteinsson (guitar) and Uri Rennert (drums). “Nobody can stop me, I’m not asking somebody, I’m not making the rounds at Warners, saying ‘please put out my record!’. It’s just for me,” he says. He hopes he can be an inspiration to others. “I would love to see more groups, people playing music in the UK and everywhere else because I really enjoy it. That’s the only reason I need. It’s the only reason to do stuff.” That hits to the core of what makes Newcombe and Brian Jonestown Massacre tick in 2022. He’ll keep jumping in that fire. That’s how he rolls. Savour it.
John Frusciante .I: / :II.
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “There are two versions of this album,” says John Frusciante. “The CD version is pronounced Two and called : I I . This is the longer version. The vinyl version is pronounced One, and called . I : This version is shorter, but contains one vinyl-only track. The reason the vinyl is shorter is that some of the tracks have sounds that can not be pressed on vinyl. After a year and a half writing and recording rock music, I needed to clear my head. I listened to and made music where things generally happen gradually rather than suddenly. I would set up patches on a Monomachine or Analog Four and listen to them, hearing one sound morph into others, making changes to a patch only after having listened for quite a while, gradually adding elements, and finally manipulating the sounds on the fly. All tracks were recorded live to CD burner, with no overdubs, and executed on one or two machines. While I was almost exclusively listening to artists such as Chris Watson, Peter Rehberg, Bernard Parmegiani, CM Von Hausswolff, Jana Winderen, Oren Ambarchi, Hazard, Bruce Gilbert, Klara Lewis, Ryoji Ikeda and so on, I was also inspired by my mental image of John Lennon’s tape and Mellotron experiments he made at home during his time in The Beatles, as well as events like the first minute of David Bowie’s Station To Station, …And The Gods Made Love by Jimi Hendrix, the synths in the song Mass Production by Iggy Pop, and the general idea of Eno’s initial concept of ambient music.”
The Go! Team Get Up Sequences Part Two
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Over their six albums, The Go! Team have taken sonic day trips to other lands, musically dipping into other cultures. But now on this, their seventh. They’ve bought a round-the-world ticket. Benin, Japan, France, India, Texas and Detroit were all stops along the way. Wildly different voices from wildly different cultures side by side but all still sounding unmistakably Go! Team. Setting the course for a kaleidoscopic, cable access, channel hop. Picking up from 2021’s Get Up Sequences Part One, Part Two continues the feeling of Technicolour overload. A feeling that there is so much good shit out there that you are grabbing it all at the same time. The record is saying: Look at this. Look at this. When you listen to it I just want the saturation of the world to be turned up. Simultaneously messy and tight, chaotic and coherent both albums have an obsession with the power of a bassline and a backbeat. “For me each successive Go! Team record just gets fucking groovier and for me grooviness is life”, founder Ian Parton says. It’s a journey spanning Cyclone Tracey wig-outs, chroma key sitar psychedelia, Casiotone anthems, spoken word melodrama and kalimba callouts. Brill building melodies lead into musical handbrake turns, four track into panoramic.”
The Men New York City
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “When everyone left N.Y.C., the sewer opened and we crawled out.” Prolific Brooklyn institution The Men return with their ninth studio album New York City. Arriving following 2020’s Mercy, the new LP marks a return to the more scuzzy and abrasive rock ploughed over their decade and a half spent coursing through the grimy sewers of N.Y.C. Here, nocturnal proto-punk meets a timeless, all-guns-blazing rock ’n’ roll gusto. That the album leans into a more primitive, back-to-basics sound owes largely to the way in which was forged, an earlier version of the record scrapped in favour of four people playing in a room together. “The New York City album was revised, reorganized and shaped until it became clear that things fall into place like the hammer driving the nail or the scythe’s swipe through the tall grass,” they say. The result is a series of cuts played live and recorded to 2″ tape in Travis Harrison’s (Guided By Voices, Built To Spill) Brooklyn studio.
M(h)aol Attachment Styles
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Irish intersectional feminist five-piece M(h)aol have announced their debut album Attachment Styles. Following the release of their debut EP Gender Studies, the band hit the ground running in 2022. Gaining a reputation as one of the most sought after live bands of the summer, M(h)aol performed at Primavera, Green Man, Latitude and End Of The Road, toured Europe with Gilla Band and Shellac and more. Based between Dublin, London, and Bristol, M(h)aol (pronounced male) are formed of Róisín Nic Ghearailt (she/her), Constance Keane (she/her), Jamie Hyland (she/her), Zoë Greenway (she/her) and Sean Nolan (he/him). Attachment Styles is a record about social connection, queerness and healing. When Róisín was writing the lyrics, she used the theory of attachment styles as an overarching theme which is a theory that looks at the impact our inter-familial relationships and society have on how we relate to one another.”
Smashing Pumpkins Atum: Act 2
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The Smashing Pumpkins’ 12th studio album is a three-act rock opera album titled Atum (Autumn). It will feature 33 tracks and is the sequel to 1995’s Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and 2000’s Machina/Machine of God. Atum was written and produced by Billy Corgan over the past four years. The album tells an epic interplanetary story set in the not-too-distant future, though the songs themselves respectively stand on their own in the Pumpkins pantheon. This is the final instalment in a concept album trilogy that began with 1995’s Melllon Collie and then continued with 2000’s Machina. The album features three original members of the band — Corgan, James Iha and Jimmy Chamberlin — as well as longtime guitarist Jeff Schroeder. Corgan had been developing the idea for the rock opera for years, and the pandemic gave him the time off the road to meticulously complete it in the grandiose way he had intended.”
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