i think i better follow you around

Loop will be releasing their first album in 32 years with “Sonancy” coming out March 11th.

Tracklist:
1. Interference
2. Eolian
3. Supra
4. Penumbra I
5. Isochrone
6. Halo
7. Fermion
8. Penumbra II
9. Axion
10. Aurora

The first single released is for the song “Halo” which video was directed by Ben Unwin.

Robert Hampson said of the new album: “Style wise, it’s incredibly different, going back to thinking about guitars and guitar sounds. Obviously you have to take into consideration things like percussive elements such as drums, which I haven’t been using in my other projects; but this is the mind set that makes up Loop. I started writing songs that were much more immediate, tighter, dare I say more aggressive – although not aggressive in the old Loop way, but with a spikiness. It needed to sound more modern. With Sonancy I also wanted to take a post-punk sound, spin it on its head and mix it with a psych influence. A total gumbo. Which has always been Loop, this mash up of spicy rhythms.”

“I formed Loop, I’m the sole original member, I’ll just carry on, but the current Loop line-up has been pretty stable for the last six or seven years. We have Wayne [Maskel, drums] and Hugo [Morgan, bass] from The Heads, who a lot of people know, a fantastic rhythm section, and Dan [Boyd] on second guitar, who offered us his services. I was very anti-guitar for a long time. You hear progressively through the Main period the guitar fading away. I just felt that it didn’t have any place in what I was sonically trying to do and I didn’t miss it at all. Now, having a guitar in my hands doesn’t bother me anymore as long as I can do something useful with it; and working with the current line-up we have, it’s very enjoyable indeed. Long may it reign.”

No tour dates have been announced yet. It’s been 8 years since we’ve seen them live and we’re hoping we can see them soon again.

Placebo share “Try Better Next Time” from the band’s forthcoming album, Never Let Me Go out March 25th, via Rise Records.

Tracklisting:

1. Forever Chemicals
2. Beautiful James
3. Hugz
4. Happy Birthday In The Sky
5. The Prodigal
6. Surrounded By Spies
7. Try Better Next Time
8. Sad White Reggae
9. Twin Demons
10. Chemtrails
11. This Is What You Wanted
12. Went Missing
13. Fix Yourself

“Try Better Next Time” further opens up what we know about Never Let Me Go’s frank and honest depiction of our modern times. Where opening single “Beautiful James” revealed a stern commentary on the proliferation of ignorant opinions, and follow-up track “Surrounded By Spies” spun themes of tech-saturation, “Try Better Next Time” – the album’s poignant centrepiece – can be easy to mistake as an apocalyptic vision of the future. Instead, we find the band focusing less on endings and more on new beginnings. It’s an anthem for the end of a world that we know – not the end of it completely – and a celebration of the possibility of what might come next, whether humanity has a seat at the table or not.

When Brian Molko considers how we might “grow fins, go back in the water” it is proposed with the greater good in mind. It is the setting aside of ego in the face of eco-disaster, in recognition of all that mankind has done to the planet. The world keeps turning whether under the influence of humanity or not. Commenting, he says: “It is not the end of the world, only the end of humanity, a distinction that in our overblown hubris we are unable to detect. Mother Nature has grown extremely weary of us. Try Better Next Time.”

Tour dates have been announced and they’re only for European and UK dates for October thru December 2022.

Boris is releasing their new album “W” this January 21st via Sacred Bones Records.

TRACKLIST:
01 “I Want To Go To The Side Where You Can Touch…”
02 “Icelina”
03 “Drowning By Numbers”
04 “Invitation”
05 “The Fallen”
06 “Beyond Good And Evil”
07 “Old Projector”
08 “You Will Know (Ohayo Version)”
09 “Jozan”

The first single they released was a video for the song “Drowning By Numbers” which was directed by YUTARO and featured dancer Yukiko Doi. Boris said in a statement: “This video was filmed at a private showcase with limited invitation in April of 2021. It is a collaborative performance with a contemporary dance team. The song was transformed from its original performance and visualized; a big hat dances symbolically at the beginning of the new album.”

For their new single “Beyond Good and Evil” the video was once again directed by YUTARO. The band said in a press release: “There is a vast magnitude in a huge mushroom cloud and in decaying ruins. We feel both the sadness and beauty of these things at the same time; that is who we are. This video was made from the perspective of a mushroom cloud. The album W focuses on Wata’s vocals – and she is from HIROSHIMA.”

No tour dates have been announced for 2022 yet.

Tears For Fears have shared the third single, “Break The Man”, off their upcoming album “The Tipping Point” out February 25th via Concord.

Curt Smith said of the new single: “‘Break The Man’ is about a strong woman, and breaking the patriarchy. I feel that a lot of the problems we’ve been having as a country and even worldwide to a certain degree has come from male dominance. It’s a song about a woman who is strong enough to break the man. For me, that would be an answer to a lot of the problems in the world: a better male-female balance.”

Tears For Fears North American tour begins May 20th and they will be playing North Island Credit Union Amphitheater on San Diego on June 5th.

Cat Power just released her new album, “Covers”, on January 14th via Domino Records.

Tracklist:

Bad Religion – Frank Ocean
Unhate – Cat Power – Chan Marshall
Pa Pa Power – Dead Man’s Bones
White Mustang – Lana Del Rey
A Pair of Brown Eyes – The Pogues
Against the Wind – Bob Seger
Endless Sea – Iggy Pop
These Days – Jackson Browne
It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels – Kitty Wells
I Had a Dream Joe – Nick Cave
Here Comes a Regular – The Replacements
I’ll Be Seeing You – Billie Holiday

Chan Marshall shared a few videos in anticipation of the album’s release. One of them was for “Pa Pa Power”, the video was directed by Greg Hunt, and she said of the song: “I started playing this solo in 2012 (originally more dissonant and trance-y), when the Occupy Wall Street protests were going on. Occupy was bunkering down and saying, ‘This shit’s fucking fucked up.’ And helping citizens be a voice in their local government. They got a lot of good things done, but the American media killed the movement. I felt like this song was relative to that. The American media has always penalized any sort of social progressiveness and is always the first to express conservative rhetoric against something that is beneficial to the nation. I’d open with this song on the 2013 China tour. ‘Burn the streets, burn the cars.’”

The video for “I’ll Be Seeing You” was also directed by Greg Hunt and Chan said of this selection: “When people who you love have been taken from you, there’s always a song that holds their memory in your mind. It’s a conversation with those on the other side, and it’s really important for me to reach out to people that way.”

She announced a tour to support the album and the closest she will be playing would be L.A. at the Orpheum on February 11th.

Escape-Ism, (Ian Svenonius & Alexandra Cabral), have released a video (art) for their new song “Lyp Sync”. This song and video are Rated Z.

The video for the song was directed by Ian Svenonius himself. The song was recorded at Club Blasé and it was mixed by Guy Blakeslee at Orange Audio.

ESCAPE-ISM is the found-sound dream-drama starring Ian Svenonius. First as the vocalist for Washington DC anarcho-punk dandies Nation Of Ulysses, and then with the revolutionary rock and soul of The Make-Up, before going on to Weird War, Chain & The Gang and other projects (including his books The Psychic Soviet and Supernatural Strategies For Making A Rock ‘N’ Roll Group) with Escape-Ism solo means solo with Alexandra Cabral. This is Svenonius and Cabral with just an electric guitar, a microphone, an analogue-sounding drum machine and a tape deck, creating the rawest and most stripped-back manifestation of his singular muse to date.

Andy Bell has released the first single, “Something Like Love”, off his new solo album “Flicker” out February 11th via Sonic Cathedral.

TRACKLIST
1. The Sky Without You
2. It Gets Easier
3. World Of Echo
4. Something Like Love
5. Jenny Holzer B. Goode
6. Way Of The World
7. Riverside
8. We All Fall Down
9. No Getting Out Alive
10. The Looking Glass
11. Love Is The Frequency
12. Gyre And Gimble
13. Lifeline
14. She Calls The Tune
15. Sidewinder
16. When The Lights Go Down
17. This Is Our Year
18. Holiday In The Sun

The video was done by Chris Tomsett at InnerStrings, filmed in SoHo during post-lockdown.

Andy Bell said in a press release: “When I think about ‘Flicker,’ I see it as closure. Most literally, on a half-finished project from over six years ago, but also on a much bigger timescale. Some of these songs date back to the ’90s and the cognitive dissonance of writing brand new lyrics over songs that are 20-plus years old makes it feel like it is, almost literally, me exchanging ideas with my younger self. The ‘flicker’ I’m talking about in the lyrics of ‘Something Like Love’ is that flame that makes a person who they are. I wanted to find that in myself, so I went back to the teenage me, a technique I learned in therapy and have been doing ever since, and got some advice on how to live and be happy in the 2020s. The View From Halfway Down was about turning 50 during a time of introspection; Flicker is about gathering the tools to equip myself mentally for life in 2022 and beyond, post-pandemic, post-Brexit, post-truth.”

The song has a Ride, Nowhere era essence to it, not necessarily a B-Side quality to it but it does carry it’s DNA in it, and that in itself is not a bad thing. As much as we don’t indulge in the nostalgia pool this is a good example of a song somehow moving forward and being better for it. No tour dates for the USofA (nor Tijuana) have been announced yet.

Author & Punisher unveiled a second track from the highly-anticipated new album, Krüller, out February 11th via Relapse Records, with today’s release of the drone-drenched love song, “Maiden Star”.

Tristan Shone offered insight into the track, where Phil Sgrosso contributed guitar, and its place on the album: “’Maiden Star’ continues the trudge of escape and survival from ‘Drone Carrying Dread,’ but with a focus on the vital interpersonal conflicts and triumphs that exist in times of war and peace. This track, my personal favorite from the balance of the heavy and the melodic, is deeply personal and painful at the same time. The first note both lifts me up and beats the shit out of me.”

Author & Punisher has announced two rounds of 2022 European tour dates with a pair (so far) of North American performances slated for March: March 6 Los Angeles, CA Resident
March 10 Oakland, CA Elbo Room Jack London

Spoon have shared their new single, “Wild”, off their upcoming album ‘Lucifer On The Sofa’s out February 11th via Matador Records.

Tracklist:

1. Held
2. The Hardest Cut
3. The Devil & Mister Jones
4. Wild
5. My Babe
6. Feels Alright
7. On The Radio
8. Astral Jacket
9. Satellite
10. Lucifer On The Sofa

The video for “Wild” was co-directed by Ben Chappel and Brook Linder. Linder said in a press release: “We were mid putting this video together and my friend Ben asked ‘Is Spoon the best band?’ Yes. Yep. Probably. There’s always something unexpected in the familiar with Spoon. They are mythic to me somehow, and ‘WILD’ needed to feel like a myth, or at least illustrate the myth-making process in some odd way. We used the old ways—crude in-camera techniques—to hit this uncanny western film note. Britt is the quintessential western hero. Had a blast 10/10 would do again.”

Britt Daniel in a press release said this about the new album: “It’s the sound of classic rock as written by a guy who never did get Eric Clapton”. If there was ever a tagline to purchase an album that is it. No need to look any further.

Spoon have also just announced their North American tour and they will playing the Belly Up in Sans Beach on May 31st with Geese supporting that date.