St Vincent –Candy Darling
Booter – 10/10
Divine Comedy – Don’t Look Down
Maria McKee- Let Me Forget
Alyona Alyona – Дикі танці – Wild Dances
Father John Misty – Things It Would Have Been Helpful to Know Before the Revolution.
Dear Rouge – Small Talk
Local Natives ft Sylvan Esso – Dark Days
Alyona Savranenko was born in Ukraine. She holds two bachelor’s degrees, one of which comes from the Gregory Skovoroda Pedagogical State University of Pereiaslav. Before doing rap, she worked as a teacher at “Teremok” kindergarten of Baryshivka, Kyiv Oblast. Alyona then headed the kindergarten of the neighboring village of Dernivka.In total, Alyona worked for four years in kindergartens and left the job once she gained popularity.
Even though Russian rap music is very popular in Ukraine, Alyona Alyona chose to rap in her native language. (While both languages are spoken in the ex-Soviet state, Ukrainian has become more widely spoken since the 2013 Euromaidan protests.)
To her, it’s a celebration of her national culture: “I want to rap about everyday life, in my own language.”
From – EURO POP
By THE NEW YORK TIMES MAY 22, 2019
European music is more than just the glitz of Eurovision. Turn on your sound to hear 15 of the region’s most important acts, musically and socially, right now.
“We didn’t have any huge fresh names like her in rap music in Ukraine before,” said Ivan Dorn, a popular Ukrainian singer. Alyona Alyona’s early videos, some of which have several million views on YouTube, have a down-to-earth quality, showing her rapping in snow-covered, graffiti-filled landscapes, often dressed in tracksuits and sneakers.
(NYT)
St Vincent –Candy Darling
St Vincent –Candy Darling
St Vincent is the stage name of Ann Clark. She has been releasing albums to both popular and critical acclaim since 2007. The track “Candy Darling” is from her sixth album, 2021’s “Daddy’s Home”. The song is an homage to Andy Warhol transgender “Superstar” Candy Darling who was immortalized in Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” and the Velvet Underground’s “Candy Says” Candy died tragically died at the age of 29 from lymphoma. To quote St Vincent, “ ’Candy Darling’ was the last song I wrote for “Daddy’s Home.” I can’t explain it, but I felt like Candy was guiding me through writing it all, so it only made sense for me to send her home on that last uptown train with a bouquet of bodega roses.”
The Velvet Underground “Candy Says”
1969
Booter 10/10
8 Emerging Canadian Artists You Need to Hear in August 2022(Exclaim!)
Meet Exclaim!’s latest New Faves, including an East Coast heartbreaker and some scrappy power pop by way of Manitoba
On “Crushin’,” Booter’s Alannah Walker (one-half of indie-pop duo Cannon Bros.) sings hyperactive musings about continually falling for the straight girl, never catching that unattainable person’s eye. It’s a theme touched on throughout the quartet’s debut record, 10/10: “There are songs on this album that are clearly gay,” she says of the album, on which she writes queer lyrics openly for the first time. Joined by Tunic frontman David Schellenberg on bass, Hut Hut drummer Ian Ellis and guitarist Brendon Yarish, the Winnipeg-based project’s debut arrives September 9 through Midwest Debris
About (Manitoba Music)
On Booter’s debut album, Alannah Walker sings queer lyrics openly for the first time. Inspired by women writing love songs about women, the Winnipeg musician formerly known for her acclaimed duo Cannon Bros shares sarcastic slacker laments with a universality stretching far beyond the prairies. Joined by members of Tunic, Hut Hut, and Animal Teeth, 10/10 sets her stories of breakups, make-ups, and crushes on straight girls to the nostalgic strains of ’90s indie-rock. Drawing on the time-tested influences of Sloan, The Breeders, and Guided By Voices, each track is packed with hooks while maintaining the quartet’s homespun charms. Producer Cam Loepkky (The Weakerthans, Constantines) and mastering engineer Philip Shaw Bova (Kiwi Jr., Land of Talk) give 10/10 a vibrant boost with its dreamy synths and incandescent guitar solos bursting through Booter’s understated arrangements.
RELEASED Friday, September 9, 2022
Divine Comedy – Don’t Look Down
Divine Comedy – Don’t Look Down
The Divine Comedy are a band from Northern Ireland. Formed in 1989 and fronted by Neil Hannon. Hannon has been the only constant member of the group for all these years. The band has released 12 studio albums. Between 1996 and 1999, nine singles released by the band made the top 40 in the UK. “Don’t Look Down” comes from the album Promenade which was released in 1994. By honest error, the Old Fellas New Music rule of no music older than 2015 has been broken! Hopefully a severe penalty will be applied. However, here is Hannon performing the song in 2017.
Local Natives ft Sylvan Esso – Dark Days
Local Natives is an American indie rock band based Los Angeles. Their debut album, Gorilla Manor, was first released February 16, 2010. The album received mostly positive reviews and debuted on the Billboard 200 and at No. 3 in the New Artist Chart.
Los Angeles band Local Natives have combined with Sylvan Esso on a new version of an older song, “Dark Days. Sylvan Esso is an American electronic pop duo from Durham, North Carolina, formed in 2013. They took their name from characters in the video game Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery. https://floodmagazine.com/78111/listen-local-natives-share-dark-days-collaboration-with-sylvan-esso/
The collaboration first appeared on the Kimmel Show during the pandemic…
Rostam – 4Runner
I love this song!
When Rostam Batmanglij was a kid growing up in Washington, D.C. — “must have been 13 or 14,” he figures — he used to ride around in his older brother’s car listening to a collection of Bruce Springsteen’s greatest hits. So it was probably inevitable that the musician and producer (and former Vampire Weekend member) would end up decades later with a song like “4Runner” from his mesmerizing new album.
A sexy-dreamy bop about two lovers’ road trip up the West Coast, “4Runner” carries some big Boss energy — the propulsive tempo, the images of “stolen plates” and a “blanket on the backseat,” the very “I’m on Fire” falsetto at the end of the tune. Asked if he hears it too, Rostam smiles and reveals that it wasn’t just that formative experience at play: Throughout the process of making his “Changephobia” LP, he was listening intermittently to the audiobook of Springsteen’s memoir, “Born to Run.”
Rostam’s craftiness and his analytical thinking — not to mention his interest in music history — are all over the meticulously rendered “Changephobia,” which mingles fuzzy rock, aquatic R&B and 1940s- and ’50s-style jazz. The album, his second solo disc, arrives after a few years in which he primarily wrote and produced for other acts such as Clairo, Maggie Rogers and Haim, with whom he earned a Grammy nomination for album of the year with 2020’s “Women in Music Pt. III.”
Dear Rouge releases new album, Spirit
By Jenna Melanson on April 8, 2022
Vancouver alt-rock duo Dear Rouge have shared their long-awaited third full-length album, Spirit, via Pheromone Records.
As the band wrote of the record,
“Spirit is the most vulnerable and raw side of Danielle’s inner thoughts, and the line being thrown from these questions and deep reckonings within oneself, urging you to grab hold and hang on for dear life.”
The band recorded Spirit secluded away from busy cityscapes. Drew and Danielle took up residence in a lakeside cabin shortly after the release of PHASES, their sophomore record. The duo found themselves spending their days alone together, and Spirit began to take form over the winter months.
“I had this epiphany,” Danielle shared, “that we needed to come back to ourselves and the joy and comfort we found in each other when we began writing music together.”
Maria McKee- Let Me Forget
Maria McKee is an American singer-songwriter. She is best known for her work with 80’s cow punks Lone Justice and her song “If Love Is a Red Dress (Hang Me in Rags)” from the film Pulp Fiction. Last year she recorded the album
La Vita Nuova which was met with generally favorable reviews from critics.
https://daily.bandcamp.com/features/maria-mckee-la-vita-nuova-feature
Father John Misty
Father John Misty – Things It Would Have Been Helpful to Know Before the Revolution.
Joshua Michael Tillman is better known by his stage name Father John Misty. The chosen song comes from the 2015 album “ Pure Comedy”. Originally, Tillman included an 1800-word-long essay about its symbolism and meaning in the release announcement email to his fan club. “ Pure Comedy is the story of a species born with a half-formed brain. The species’ only hope for survival, finding itself on a cruel, unpredictable rock surrounded by other species who seem far more adept at this whole thing (and to whom they are delicious), is the reliance on other, slightly older, half-formed brains. This reliance takes on a few different names as their story unfolds, like “love,” “culture,” “family,” etc. Over time, and as their brains prove to be remarkably good at inventing meaning where there is none, the species becomes the purveyor of increasingly bizarre and sophisticated ironies. These ironies are designed to help cope with the species’ loathsome vulnerability and to try and reconcile how disproportionate their imagination is to the monotony of their existence” Okay…. It is rather catchy though…. Pop Matters assesses….
Some lyrics... It got too hot and so we overthrew the system 'Cause there's no place for human existence like right here On this bright blue marble orbited by trash Man, there's no beating that It was no big thing to give up the way of life we had, oh My social life is now quite a bit less hectic The nightlife and the protests are pretty scarce Now I mostly spend the long days walking through the city Empty as a tomb Sometimes I miss the top of the food chain But what a perfect afternoon
Whole-Hearted 