Cloudeater: Always on the Way digital single (3/4/13)
Rooted more in feel and atmosphere than riffs or technicality, Atlanta’s Cloudeater achieves a moody, beat-driven blend that leans on vocal hooks, bass grooves, and head-nodding drums.
In advance of a brand-new EP that’s mixed and produced by Prefuse 73, the band is releasing the standalone single “Always on the Way,” and we have the ominous, visually glitchy video for you. Head here to download the audio for free.
The Raveonettes: Observator (Vice, 9/11/12)
“She Owns the Streets”
The Raveonettes: “She Owns the Streets”
The Raveonettes’ sixth studio album, Observator, shares a common thread with its previous five: it’s ethereal, haunting, and dark, which perhaps is not surprising considering how songwriter Sune Rose Wagner went about developing the nine songs. “I [spent] four days in a Benzo trance, drinking, eating, talking, and soaking up the real lives of the people I encountered,” he wrote about his process.
The result, recorded over seven days at Los Angeles’ famed Sunset Sound, is a hodgepodge of disconnected emotion, soul, and — yes — observation. In charmingly Danish-inflected English, Wagner enthusiastically speaks about the making of Observator, adding a “gloomy” piano, and The Raveonettes’ status as an influential band.
Together since 2011, Cherokee Red is an indie-rock five-piece that feels like surfing on a rainy day. With members sharing duties, it’s an egalitarian affair with vocals which bring to mind female-fronted bands of the 1960s and ’70s.
Gretsch, the music company that started in 1883 as a small shop in Brooklyn, New York, has grown into a powerhouse of instrument production over the past 130 years. Now, to celebrate its anniversary, the company has announced two new limited-edition instruments, along with a slate of new additions to its catalog.
Friend Roulette: I’m Sorry You Hit Your Head (Goodnight, 4/23/13)
“Earthrise”
Borne from two months of recovery from being hit by a bus, Friend Roulette is the Brooklyn-based brainchild of guitarist/singer Matthew Meade (he of said accident) and violinist/vocalist Julia Tepper (she of moral support). Together, the two have assembled a stable of talent to create progressive, percussive, chamber-infused pop that’s charged with vocal interplay.
Hanni El Khatib: Head in the Dirt (Innovative Leisure, 4/30/13)
Hanni El Khatib wants to live…dangerously. That’s the only explanation for the video for “Family,” the first single from his upcoming, Dan Auerbach-produced album, Head in the Dirt. Featuring sex, violence, booze, reckless motorcycling, BDSM, whitey-tightys, and grindhouse-style visuals, it’s Easy Rider by way of Kill Bill, directed by Nick Walker.
