Americana UK Says The New Fruit Bats LP Is Brave And Intimate
Americana UK says the new Fruit Bats album Baby Man “reshapes Eric D. Johnson’s place in the indie folk constellation, offering a brave and intimate sonic journey. It’s one that pulses with vulnerability and sets itself apart like Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky.” The album’s stripped-down production, the site writes, “draw out a profound emotional resonance in each […]
New Music From GECKØS (M. Ward, Giant Sand’s Howe Gelb, & McKowski)
GECKØS is the collective spirit of acclaimed songwriter M. Ward, Giant Sand visionary Howe Gelb, and Irish multi-instrumentalist Mark McCausland (aka McKowski). Born out of an impromptu recording session that was sparked by an encounter at the wedding of a mutual friend, the project blends the rich flavors of the Southwest with indie folk, Spanish influences, and a touch of Irish mysticism. […]
Venera Earns “Album Of The Day” From Bandcamp
Venera‘s new LP Exinfinite received Album of the Day honors at Bandcamp Daily on September 16. The site explains that “Venera is a duo of Chris Hunt and James Shaffer. Where Hunt’s background as a filmmaker and composer sensibly yields itself to degraded experimentation, Shaffer’s nu metal roots as the founding guitarist of Korn, make him a much more surprising candidate for an avant-garde pivot. Here, his […]
Baby Man Displays The Purity of Fruit Bats’ Artistry, Writes Glide
Fruit Bats, the ever-evolving project of Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter Eric D. Johnson, is no stranger to gentle, swaying balladry,” observes Glide in its review of new Fruit Bats LP Baby Man. The site continues, “After decades of crafting a pop-tinted, folksy discography brimming with sonic shifts and emotional volatility, the artist emerges with his most raw and personal album yet […]
Lucas Ward Tells Retrofuturista About The Making of Silver Snails’ New Opus
Lucas Ward of The Silver Snails recently spoke with Retrofuturista about the band and the influences, marketing strategies, and processes behind new LP Speed of Light. In the interview, Ward explains how location has shaped their experiences as a band. “Our home in Romagna is nestled in idyllic vineyards, with sunflower fields and rolling hills, 20 miles inland from the […]
Rolling Stone Talks To Fruit Bats About Baby Man
Rolling Stone has a feature on Eric D. Johnson and his new album under the Fruit Bats moniker, Baby Man, which the venerable magazine calls “devastatingly minimal… with Baby Man, he’s further celebrating the simple beauty of folk. The album is a stripped-down 10-song effort that was knocked out over a week in February. Unlike full-band Fruit Bats albums, Johnson leaned hard […]
Revolver Shares Venera’s “Prismatically Slapping” Track “Tear”
Revolver has coverage of the new album from Venera, the project of Chris Hunt and Korn’s Munky that features guest vocalists including FKA twigs and Chelsea Wolfe. The site premiered the visualizer of album opener “Tear,” which demonstrates the duo’s penchant for “slow-clapped sensory overload.” The site calls the song “prismatically slapping… beginning with ambient seven-string drones and symphonic ambiance before squelching itself towards electronic […]
Lucas Ward of Silver Snails Keeps It 100
100 Percent Rock Magazine has an interview with Lucas Ward of The Silver Snails, who tells the site who he’d love to collaborate with musically: “The Flaming Lips. They are the ones that I admire the most as recording and live artists and who have inspired The Silver Snails the most. They are also highly collaborative.” There’s […]
Group Project’s Jacob Brown Tells The Rockman About Osheaga
Montréal’s Group Project recently played the Osheaga Festival, where they got bumped up to the main stage after being booked for a short set on a smaller stage. The band’s Jacob Brown spoke to The Rockman Power Hour about the experience, which he said was “a dream come true,” and also let fans know that the group has a “buttload” of new music to […]
New Music From Venera featuring a member of KoRN, FKA twigs, Chelsea Wolfe, and Dis Fig
Having defined a multi-dimensional sonic universe on their acclaimed eponymous debut album, Venera — composer/filmmaker Chris Hunt and James “Munky” Shaffer (KoRN) — abandon the familiar and drift towards a kingdom of recursion on Exinfinite, staring down a tangled mass of mirrored wormholes that hum with eldritch ambiguity. Venera’s sophomore full length is darker, heavier and more percussive than its predecessor, but […]
Ink19 Likes Fruit Bats’ Baby Man, Which Goes For Radio Adds Next Week
“Rife with wonderfully expressive lyrics and Eric D. Johnson’s unique voice,” Ink19 writes, “Fruit Bats’ Baby Man offers stripped-down-to-the-glorious-essentials songwriting.” The site compares Johnson to the legendary Leon Russell in its review of the new LP, a bare collection featuring just Johnson’s voice, guitar, piano, and a few subtle synth textures. Read more here. Baby Man is […]
Tracking Angle Interviews Tape Archivist Catherine Vericolli About Restoring Funkadelic
ORG Music has just begun reissuing releases from Funkadelic‘s classic run on Westbound Records, a series that follows previous reissues of Westbound projects by the likes of The Ohio Players, Denise LaSalle, Eramus Hall, Dennis Coffey, Assemblage, and The Counts. The records sound immaculate, in large part due to the work of tape archivist Catherine Vericolli. In a recent interview with Tracking […]
Invisible Oranges Cheers Melvins’ Willful Unpredictability
In a review of a recent live show, Invisible Oranges compares Melvins to bandits. “Armed not with guns, but with riffs, odd time signatures, and four decades of willful unpredictability, they turned the venue into their killing field and the crowd into willing victims. Like the bad guys, the Melvins know exactly what they do best and don’t apologize […]
New Music From Fruit Bats
Baby Man, the new album by Fruit Bats, is like nothing else in Grammy-nominated songwriter Eric D. Johnson’s catalog. Little in the arc of his career—including Fruit Bats’ evolution from home recording project to rollicking roadshow, his solo output, and his work with Bonny Light Horseman—points the way to this album, in which his only accompaniment, aside from […]
Pasadena Weekly Speaks With Afterimage’s Dan Voznick In The Aftermath of LA’s Fires
Earlier this year, Afterimage frontman Dan Voznick lost his home in the massive fires that raged through the Los Angeles neighborhood of Altadena. In a recent article, The Pasadena Weekly details how Voznick and his family were helped by a nonprofit called the Instrumental Giving Registry, which provided the longtime musician with some vital gear after nearly all of his equipment was destroyed. […]
Springhouse’s Jack Rabid Joins Two Lads For A Podcast
Jack Rabid, of classic NYC band Springhouse as well as The Big Takeover Magazine, was recently a guest on the Only Three Lads podcast as they “examine the first half of the ’80s to ask the question – which artists had the best run during that span?” Apparently they enjoyed themselves so much that they’ll be issuing a second part of […]
New Music From The Silver Snails
The Silver Snails is an independent pop rock music project based in the medieval wine country of Romagna, Italy, with strong ties to the West Coast of the United States. Anchored by the husband-and-wife duo of Lucas Ward and Elisa Fantini, their mission is to open human hearts through song. Describing themselves as a “glam rock space pop family […]
Treblezine Details Funkadelic’s Reissue Campaign
Treblezine has details on the new Funkadelic reissue campaign from Westbound Records and ORG Music, with details from the project’s tape restoration specialist Catherine Vericolli. “It’s very rare for an archivist and a re-mastering engineer to be in the same room with the source material on a project,” Vericolli said in a statement quoted by Treble. “To investigate, troubleshoot and make decisions as […]
Mary Halvorson Chats with KBCS
In a recent feature for Flotation Device on 91.3 KBCS-FM in Bellevue, Seattle, and Tacoma, Michael Schell interviews guitarist and bandleader Mary Halvorson about her early influences (Anthony Braxton and Joe Morris in particular), her guitar setup (including her choice of a hollow-bodied Guild electric guitar), how she titles her compositions, and her new albums including About Ghosts, which is at radio now via Nonesuch Records and […]
Songbar Gives Song Of The Day Honors To Patrick Watson and Martha Wainwright
Songbar notes that Patrick Watson‘s “House on Fire,” a duet with Martha Wainwright, was written at a time when the singer feared he wouldn’t be able to sing again. Fortunately, “his sensitive tenor voice has returned,” making for a song that was featured by the site as its song of the day last week. Hear the song and read […]
