1/29/2021

NEW NOISE show 31: all new music (featuring The Walking Trees)



Coming this FRIDAY January 29th / 3pm PST

NEW NOISE w/ Alexander Laurence (The Portable Infinite) 
ONE HOUR ALL NEW MUSIC SHOW

NEW YEAR NEW MUSIC KEEP YOUR DISTANCE

This coming Friday at 3pm Pacific Time, Alexander Laurence’s cutting edge 1-hour radio show, 
New Noise will broadcast on RadioKAJW on Live365.

January 29th 2021, Friday at 3pm PST. All new music and some old favorites for a great electronic disco party.





NEW NOISE show 31 playlist
Friday January 29th 2021 3pm
RADIO KAJW

part one
1. THE WALKING TREES "Southside Alive"
2. ELVIS COSTELLO + ISABELLA ADJANI "Revolution #49"
3. GENTLE DOM "I Miss Dancing in New York"
4. SYLVAIN SYLVAIN "Teenage News"
5. TENCI "No Wings"
6. PSYCHEDELIC PORN CRUMPETS "Pukebox"
7. JOY DOWNER "What Ever Happened?" (cover)

part two
8. MARIANNE FAITHFUL "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan"
9. LUCRECIA DALT "Ser Boca"
10. WHITE FENCE "Like That"
11. JANE BIRKIN "Les Jeux Interdits"
12. KANDLE "Spell"
13. SINEAD HARNETT "At Your Best" (cover)
14. LANA DEL REY "Chemtrails Over The Country Club"

PORTABLE INFINITE LINKS:



RADIO KAJW Twitter: https://twitter.com/ radiokajw

Lilys announces vinyl reissue of A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns, shares previously unreleased track

Lilys announces vinyl reissue of A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns via Frontier Records, shares previously unreleased track

Vinyl pre-order launches today at 11am EST, digital release out Feb. 12

STREAM: "G. Cobalt Franklin" -
YouTube





Today LILYS continues its ongoing reissue campaign with the announcement of an expanded vinyl and digital reissue of their 1994 mini album, A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns which will be available for pre-order today at 11am EST via the Frontier Records Bandcamp. It will be avail. digitally on Feb. 12. This record has been out of print for 25 years and has been going for up to $275 regularly on Discogs, it's also an essential piece of the LILYS story since it includes the band's biggest hit, "Ginger."

This expanded version of the 2nd mini album from LILYS, A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns, includes remastered songs from demos recorded in the Spring of 1994; “Elsa," “Timber,"
“Hymn," “Coby” and the previously unreleased track, “G Cobalt Franklin."

"(The) first five tracks make for one of the finest song arcs about relationships and friendships
one could find in the 1990s." -All Music

"A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns ditches MBV as a reference point; the band has rediscovered
pleasant, straightforward guitar pop. “Any Place I’ve Lived” is the best melody Heasley’s written to
date; “Jenny, Andrew, and Me” (a Tsunami reference?) has a clever strummed solo over knotty
chords." -Douglas Wolk, Trouser Press

The opening guitar riff and drums of “Ginger” became widely recognized in the mid-nineties
through use in the notorious CK1 Commercial, as part of Calvin Klein’s Unisex Fragrance Ad
Campaign playing constantly during American Late Night Television. Also used in the
Cadillac 2007 Summer Event Campaign, “Ginger” has been touted as the first Indie rock song
ever used in Corporate Advertising. The song “Any Place I’ve Lived” is heard during the closing credits of the 2006 film, Keeping Up With the Steins.

These recordings, made in Philadelphia between 1993-4, present what Kurt Heasley, LILYS
frontman, founder, and sole constant member, terms as “a maximum listen, that properly
represents the transitional phase” between the 1992 Slumberland LILYS debut In the Presence of Nothing and 1995’s Eccsame the Photon Band (reissued by Frontier Records in 2015). This 2021 version of A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns (also reissued with Frontier) has the previously unreleased track, “G. Cobalt Franklin” which replaces the track “Glosseder” on the original 1994 10 inch (the song will be avail. on the digital version). The songs “Elsa," “Coby," “Timber” and “Hymn” recorded in 1994 during the demoing process for Eccsame The Photon Band, were shelved, then released in 2000 as the Lilys/ Aspera Ad Astra Split EP.

Press photo by Noah Greenberg




LILYS
A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns
(Frontier)
Release Date: Feb. 12, 2021
[click here to pre-order on opaque pink vinyl]

Track Listing:

1. Ginger
2. YCJCYAQFTJ
3. Any Place I’ve Lived
4. Jenny, Andrew and Me
5. Dandy
6. G. Cobalt Franklin (previously unreleased)
7. Elsa
8. Coby
9. Timber
10. Hymn
11. Glosseder (digital only)


LILYS LINKS:

Bandcamp
Twitter
Instagram
Facebook

Lia Ices' 'Family Album' Out Today on Natural Music, Shares Aura Video For Title Track


 
Today, January 29, Lia Ices has released her new LP Family Album, via her own label Natural Music.   Purchase/stream the album HERE.  For Family Album Lia went into the studio with the late producer JR White (Girls) - it marks the last album he worked on. Lia says, “experiencing JR’s creative genius so intimately is a gift I will always cherish and I'm so grateful my songs were touched by his magic. This album means something different to me now that the person I made it with is gone — it is a symbolic reminder that music is eternal, he lives forever in this album.” Lia And JR recorded Family Album all over California: three studios in LA, one in Stinson Beach, and one in San Francisco. “There's a clarity to the album,” Ices says of the production, “you can hear what I'm saying, you can hear what the instruments are doing. But I really think that because the production supports the ethos you can dive in even deeper.” It was organic: Ices, White, and the four-man backing band she had record with her, live in the studio.
 
Today Ices also shares the groundbreaking, cinematic video for Family Album’s title track. Collaborating with director, Aaron Brown (Cass McCombs, Girls), the clip represents a breakthrough in capturing the relationship between the artist and the human aura, which exists beyond the capacity of our physical eyes. Setting out to deconstruct the relationship between invisible human energies and contemporary filmmaking, they used “Aura-photography”, which captures the energies emitted by all living creatures. A frame-accurate camera needed to be sourced - Alumni of LucasArts, S+D got the word out and an obscure camera was made available. The final music video is an unedited, 500 ft. mag of 35mm 4-perf film, quadruple exposed at Step + Direction, Sonoma and developed and scanned at Fotokem, Burbank. More information on the filming of Family Album is HERE

Leading to the release of Family Album Lia has shared three singles, “Hymn,” “Earthy” and “Young on the Mountain.” They have drawn the attention of NPRFloodBrooklyn VeganNorthern TransmissionsUnder The RadarPopMattersand Ghettoblaster, among others.
 
“the arrangements she’s crafted are brilliantly tinged with vintage influences and perfectly embody the flowy nature of her Northern Californian setting. With mysticism and incredible intrigue, Lia Ices transports any willing listener to a beautiful, expansive place that is as pleasant as it is wistful. Flood
 
"Her muse is still intact." American Songwriter
 
“Sun-dappled folk-pop..Family Album is effervescent and pastoral, with Ices’ honey-hued vocals blooming across its nine tracks about the grounding of motherhood, the wildness of the West Coast, and the freedom that only comes with radical self-realization....It’s the kind of dreamy place we all hope to get to someday, understanding what we’re here to do and doing it, fearlessly." No Depression
 
“Throughout Family AlbumIces is inspired, renewed, and at peace with the natural world. The nine songs that result as a byproduct of that peace are beautiful and unclouded in a way that Ices reached for but never quite achieved on earlier albums.”  All Music
 
"(Family Album is) stunning" American Songwriter
 
“Family Album reveals itself as a carefully woven tapestry, every song providing a picture, a symbolic moment in Lia Ices’ life...a breathtaking piece of work” Big Takeover
 
"The music is itself mystically reverent: the heartbeat of piano like waves against The Lost Coast, the reverb echo like the vast cathedral hush of towering oaks, and the laid-back drum feel is like our old favorite records caught the electric spiritual current drawn forth by the gentle rhythms of ancient California mountains." OZMA
 
"delicate and intimate" Aupium
 
"The first thing that jumps out when listening to Lia Ices is her voice. It’s one that flutters and purrs and comforts and pulls, always with grace top of mind, taking the listener on a journey through lived-in Americana that straddles a line between real and fantasy."  Vanyaland
 
"home-grown pop-kissed figments" Maximum Ink
 
Lia Ices was pregnant with her first child when she started writing Family Album, a stunning collection of psychedelic-tinged Americana. She was living with her husband, a wine-maker, on Moon Mountain in Sonoma, CA, where she walked from house to studio through a rose garden with an orchard at its center every day to sit at her piano and see what fell out. It was a “total Eden,” Ices describes. “I got pregnant in January, and Una was born in September, so I was on the same ripening mode as all the fruit.” Recently she returned to the garden with Una to pick some flowers and realized Family Album wouldn’t be what it is if she hadn’t made it on the mountain, next to the flora. “This album is terroir,” she says, using a wine-making term used for the complete natural environmental factors that make something taste the way it does. Fully, spiritually connected to the soil on which it was made, to the air Ices breathed.

Ices hasn’t released music for six years, since her last album, Ices, in 2014. It’s been a long personal journey to get to Family Album, which she’s putting out on her own label, Natural Music. After over a decade on the east coast, from New York City to the Hudson Valley, this is Ices’ first California album. It’s also a return to the piano, on the precipice of motherhood. “Coming to California and living on the mountain and being in nature, and then starting to grow a human, I wanted to make something without having any ulterior motives other than letting what naturally happens, happen,” she says. She felt parallels between her musical output and occupying an archetypically feminine space; being confronted with the intense, grounding feelings surrounding motherhood made it hard to bullshit pretty much anything.

The first song Ices wrote for Family Album was “Young on the Mountain,” a breezy folk-rock track about life and death and freedom that’s the album’s highest energy. “You can never lose / What is truly yours,” she sings, between her golden oohs. “When we see impossible colors / we can be impossibly free.” When she moved to the mountain, she felt like she was “creating [her] own reality,” free to be whoever she felt she was at any given moment, digging into the naturalist poets of her new home — she found herself particularly inspired by the environmentalist figure Robinson Jeffers — and thinking a lot about the dichotomy of nature’s beauty and its indifference. “The more real life gets, the more mystical it feels,” she explains.

This idea reaches throughout the album, like on “Anywhere At All,” which is essentially an ode to “how psychedelic it is to be a first time mother,” as Ices puts it. “You brought me to me,” the fluttering song opens, and it really does sound so free. “I totally believe in the Muse,” Ices says. “Just showing up and being there ready for it is more than half the battle.”

Creating a life and creating this record at the same time is only part of the story. Those two acts also brought Ices closer to who she really is, and to the music she’s supposed to make. There’s a holistic energy around Family Album, epitomized by the opening track, “Earthy,” a gorgeous, dynamic song that begins with Ices solo on the piano, and midway through becomes a total psych-Americana jam. “I never wanted to sing” — that’s how the whole record begins — “Well I thought I’d be a dancer / use my body like a language...I never wanted to write / Sometimes it comes right through me / Not a choice, It is a duty.” Though it starts the album off, even by the end it’s clear this is the record’s centerpiece, both its introduction and its heart; she sings about the Muse, about life and death, about both being here and giving herself away in order to find herself. That’s the Muse, that’s motherhood, that’s a beautifully solid sense of self.

In fact, where Ices would have typically had her “little paws over every aspect” on past records, with Family Album she embraced collectivity and collaboration. (The record’s title is apt in a multitude of ways.) She worked with producer JR White (Girls) all over California: three studios in LA, one in Stinson Beach, and one in San Francisco. Ices describes White as a “Brian Wilson type” with a singular mastery over gear; she says even just the way he rigged the mic while she was singing allowed her to get some of her best-ever vocal performances. “There's a clarity to the album,” she says of the production. “You can hear what I'm saying, you can hear what the instruments are doing. But I really think that because the production supports the ethos you can dive in even deeper.” It was organic, Ices, White, and the four-man backing band she had record with her, live in the studio. And for the album’s accompanying visuals, she entrusted good friend and filmmaker Conor Hagen to follow her and her band around the west coast of California on tour over the course of 9 months for the album’s first single ‘Hymn’, as well as director Aaron Brown (Cass McCombs, Arctic Monkeys) to help her make the aura-themed video for the record’s title track. Written during the first of three weeks in which Ices and her husband were evacuated from their home during the forest fires in 2017, “Family Album” is about immediacy and memory, and again that piercing contrast between the beauty of nature and its aloofness. “Wherever we are, there we are,” she croons over just keys and a subtle drum beat.

“Making art is communal,” says Ices. But that doesn’t mean Family Album isn’t the most Lia Ices album to ever exist. Part of that is allowing a higher level of collaboration than ever before, part is motherhood, part is Sonoma’s Edenic Moon Mountain, part is the Wild West freedom inherent in Californian lifestyle, part is an awareness of herself, and, most significantly, of growing ever more into that. Ices started her own label, Natural Music, because she felt empowered by herself, by the places that she was able to reach within herself and translate into music, and she wanted to follow the freedom that feeling gave her. “There's a synchronicity to it, about the way things have happened or who I've met,” Ices says of Family Album. There’s a “universal timing” to this record that it’s had since its beginning, with Ices’ ripening. “It keeps being a teacher to me, it has its own energy field around it.”
 
Find Lia Ices here:

THE BESNARD LAKES - New album 'The Besnard Lakes Are The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings' Out Today! Livestream series kicks off Feb 5

THE BESNARD LAKES


NEW ALBUM THE BESNARD LAKES ARE THE LAST OF THE GREAT THUNDERSTORM WARNINGS OUT TODAY, JANUARY 29 VIA FAT CAT RECORDS (USA) AND FLEMISH EYE (CANADA)


3-DATE LIVESTREAM TOUR VIA NOONCHORUS - FEBRUARY 5, MARCH 6 AND APRIL 3

The Besnard Lakes have released their new album The Besnard Lakes Are The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings via Fat Cat Records (USA) and Flemish Eye (Canada). Next week the band kick off a 3-date series of livestreams via Noonchorus. The band will perform on February 5March 6, and April 3. The streams go live at 7pm EST for each show and tickets are available here

Leading to today’s LP the band have shared 3 singles, “Our Heads,Our Hearts on Fire Again” “Feuds With Guns,” and “Raindrops.” The singles were picked up by, among others, StereogumBrooklyn VeganExclaim!Northern Transmissions, and Under The Radar.  

"Absurdly Maximalist...epic-as-it-sounds Besnard Lakes Are the Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings, (is) a weighty, demanding listen, but the band's 18-year history has given them plenty of experience that helps them pull it off in classic
Besnard Lakes style.”  Exclaim! 

"...think Spiritualized on peyote, performing at midnight in a forest—is never unwelcome." 
AV Club

“Few bands do ‘epic’ as well as this Montreal six-piece, and they are in especially fine form here…(they) create magisterial rock made of layer upon layer of guitar, vintage synthesizers, crashing drums, rumbling bass, and gorgeous harmonies led by Lasek's otherworldly falsetto. (The album is their) grandest statement yet” 
Brooklyn Vegan (Album of The Week #1)

“There is a certain note of freedom in these nine sprawling gems...the band stretch languorously into the void with the combined sense of grandeur and exploration that has been a hallmark since their early days...in wrestling with mortality they tap into a well of vital energy that makes the group appear revitalized and full of vigor.” All Music 

“'Feuds With Guns' is indeed a floaty, melancholic little dream-state pop song, all manner of wistful little key melodies running through it. Stereogum

with “Feuds With Guns” Besnard Lakes also delivers one of their most intoxicating 
pop songs yet. Under The Radar

"’Raindrops’ combines shoegaze atmospherics and Beach Boys-eque harmonies in a widescreen sound that is signature Besnard Lakes." Brooklyn Vegan

“heavenly vocals.” MXDWN on “Feuds With Guns”

"the slow-burning, dream pop-like ‘Feuds With Guns’ is one part Prince, one part Beach House." Joy Of Violent Movement

“Raindrops is right in that dreamy, hazy sweet spot this band has.” Stereogum

"Montreal's The Besnard Lakes lay the groundwork for intentional and ethereal soundscapes in their latest album..." Rebel Noise 


The Besnard Lakes have passed through death and they're here to tell the tale. Nearly five years after their last lightning-tinted volley, the magisterial Montreal psych rock band have sworn off compromise, split with their long standing label, and completed a searing, 72-minute suite about the darkness of dying and the light on the other side. 

The Besnard Lakes Are The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings is the group's sixth album and the first in more than 15 years to be released away from a certain midwestern American indie record company. After 2016's A Coliseum Complex Museum - which saw Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas attempting shorter, less sprawling songs - the Besnards and their label decided it was time to go their separate ways; with that decision came a question of whether to even continue the project at all. What use is a band with an instinct for long, tectonic tunes - rock songs with chthonic heft and ethereal grace, five or 10 or 18 minutes long? How do you sell that in an age of bite-sized streaming? How do you make it relevant? 

"Who gives a shit!" the Besnard Lakes realized. Ignited by their love for each other, for playing music together, the sextet found themselves unspooling the most uncompromising recording of their career. Despite all its grandeur, ...The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings honours the very essence of punk rock: the notion that a band need only be relevant to itself. At last the Besnard Lakes have crafted a continuous long-form suite: nine tracks that could be listened together as one, like Spiritualized's Lazer Guided Melodies or even Dark Side of the Moon, overflowing with melody and harmony, drone and dazzle, the group's own unique weather. 

Here now, the Besnard Lakes finally dispensed with the two/three-year album cycle, taking all the time they needed to conceive, compose, record and mix their opus. Some of its songs were old, resurrected from demos cast aside years ago. Others were literally woodshedded in the cabanon behind Lasek and Goreas's "Rigaud Ranch" - invented and rereinvented, relishing this rougher sound. Some of that distortion makes its way into the final mix: an incandescent crackle that had receded from the Besnards' more recent output.  

Rightly - nay, definitively! - The Besnard Lakes Are The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings is a double LP. "Near Death" is the title of the first side. "Death," "After Death," and "Life" follow next. It's literally a journey into (and back from) the brink: the story of the Besnard Lakes' own odyssey but also a remembrance of others', especially the death of Lasek's father in 2019. Being on your deathbed is perhaps the most psychedelic trip you can go on: in Lasek's father's case, he surfaced from a morphine dream to talk about "a window" on his blanket, with "a carpenter inside, making intricate objects." That experience pervades the album, catching fire on the song "Christmas Can Wait"; elsewhere the band pays tribute to the late Mark Hollis and, on "The Father of Time Wake Up," they mourn the death of Prince. 

In late 2020, as the world burns, there might be nothing less trendy than an hour-long psych-rock epic by a band of Canadian grandmasters. Then again, there might be nothing we need more. ...The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings is a bright-blazing requiem: nine tunes that are one tune and six musicians who make one band - unleashed and unconstrained, piercing and technicolour. At the end of the golden day, the Besnard Lakes are right where they should be. 


Stream/purchase The Besnard Lakes Are The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings here (Canadian fans can mailorder the LP via Flemish Eye here).  
The Besnard Lakes Are The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings tracklisting:

1.  Blackstrap
2.  Raindrops
3.  Christmas Can Wait
6.  The Dark Side Of Paradise
7.  New Revolution
8.  The Father Of Time Wakes Up
9.  The Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings

Find The Besnard Lakes here:

The OBGMs Blur the Lines Between Punk & Rap with "The Outsah Tape"  

 
 

THE OBGMS CONTINUE TO BLUR THE LINES BETWEEN PUNK ROCK AND RAP WITH NEWLY RELEASED SINGLE: “THE OUTSAH TAPE”


FEATURING REMIXES BY THE OXYMORRONS, FEMDOT., AND CLAIRMONT THE SECOND, LISTEN HERE: https://smarturl.it/theobgmsoutsahtape

 
 

“The Outsah Tape” cover

 
 

Jan. 29, 2021, TORONTO – The OBGMs, the critically-lauded Canadian punk trio who “just ooze cool” (Kerrang!), have released a three-song single, dubbed “The Outsah Tape” (https://smarturl.it/theobgmsoutsahtape) featuring remixes by NYC-based BIPOC alt-rock-hip hop band Oxymorrons (333 Wreckords Crew) with The OBGMS’ own Cola H., and Chicago-based rapper femdot. with Clairmont The Second.


“’Outsah’ is my favourite song on The Ends,” explains The OBGMS frontman Densil McFarlane. “We invented the remix on this punk shit. Teaming up with heavy hitters Oxymorrons, femdot., and Clairmont The Second is a dream come true.”


The Oxymorrons added: “This is the collaboration you didn’t know you needed! It’s NYC meets The 6! This is international Black Punk Rock Rap shit, baby! Enjoy or you can meet us Outsah!”


The OBGMs released The Ends in October, with the 10-song album, which was produced by Dave Schiffman (PUP, Rage Against The Machine), bringing the Toronto-based punk trio to international attention. Brooklyn Vegan said “The OBGMs hold nothing back and are clearly not afraid to write punk songs that sound like they’re built to fill stadiums.” Guitar World described firecracker Densil McFarlane’s approach as “lyrics with the sneer and bulldozing attitude of Keith Morris-era Black Flag, but his riffing and hooks could give even the Billie Joe Armstrong of the world a run for their money,” while Vice said the band “barrel through hook-laden, guitar forward, tracks… it’s like… the Strokes covering The Stooges.”

 
 

Photo credit: Amanda Fotes

 
 

JULIA STONE & MATT BERNINGER FROM THE NATIONAL RELEASE "WE ALL HAVE"; NEW ALBUM OUT APRIL 16th

JULIA STONE UNVEILS NEW TRACK & VIDEO 
"WE ALL HAVE" FEATURING MATT BERNINGER 
FROM THE NATIONAL

NEW ALBUM SIXTY SUMMERS 
PRODUCED BY ST. VINCENT OUT APRIL 16th 

WATCH JULIA STONE PERFORM FOR SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL'S SPEAKEASY: SOUND & VISION ON FEBRUARY 1st 
AND A YOUTUBE FUNDRAISER STREAM FROM AUSTRALIA,

WATCH & LISTEN TO "WE ALL HAVE" & PRE-ORDER 

Artwork: Filip Custic

Julia Stone has shared a new song and video, "We All Have" featuring Matt Berninger from The National, from her forthcoming album Sixty Summers, due now on April 16th, 2020 (via BMG) - due to a delay in vinyl production. Watch & listen HERE.

"We All Have" is Sixty Summers' most tender song, a sweet ballad celebrating every human's ability to heal even in the face of devastating pain. With its spare piano and finger-plucked guitars, "We All Have" represents the duality of the album. "This song is about how everything transforms and moves; even though you feel so shitty at one point, it might shift into something new," says Stone of the inspiration behind the song. "Love is all that we really need to be here for -not love with someone else but love in your heart."

Matt Berninger, frontman of The National who features on the stunning track, shares his elation of his involvement on "We All Have": "It's always really inspiring to hear old friends creating such amazing music. I've been a big fan of Julia's work for a long time, and it was so fun to be invited to be a part of this song!"

The single is accompanied by a video directed by twice ARIA nominated director Gabriel Gasparinatos (Baker Boy, ONEFOUR). Featuring Gabriel's cousin Jesse Gasparinatos, a second-generation Abalone diver based out of Australia's southernmost Tasmanian town, the clip was shot over a week spent on Jesse's fishing boat late last year. Shot in one of Tasmania's most remote landscapes, the clip follows the secluded relationship between a diver and their deck-hand, exploring the lightness and darkness in grief and isolation.

Landing on over 20 New Music Friday playlists on Spotify across the world, "We All Have" stands as the fourth track to be released from Sixty Summers. It follows Stone's first solo single in a number of years, "Break", drenched in dazzling moonlit pop, the ethereal and otherworldly "Unreal" and, most recently, the dreamy, rose-colored "Dance". Each of the singles have arrived with award-worthy visuals imagined by Stone and her creative collaborators Jessie Hill for "Break" and "Dance" and Bonnie Moir for "Unreal". At the end of 2020, Stone revealed a reimagining of the three singles to date on an EP titled Twin. She also found time to release a four-track Christmas EP titled Everything Is Christmas.

Her first solo album in eight years, Sixty Summers arrives as a powerful rebirth for one of Australia's most prolific artists. Emerging from the wildernesses of folk and indie-rock, on Sixty Summers Stone dives head first into the cosmopolitan, hedonistic world of late-night, moonlit pop. The stunning album brings us the grit and glitter of the city, with all its attendant joys, dangers, romances and risks. It is Stone at her truest, brightest self, a revered icon finally sharing her long, secret love affair with this vibrant and complex genre.

Recorded sporadically over five years from 2015 to 2019, Sixty Summers was shaped profoundly by Stone's key collaborators on the album: Thomas Bartlett, aka Doveman, and Annie Clark, the Grammy-winning singer, songwriter and producer known as St. Vincent. Bartlett and Clark were the symbiotic pair Stone needed to realize her first pop vision. A wizard of production and songwriting, Bartlett helped coax Sixty Summers' independent, elemental spirit from Stone, writing and recording over 30 demos with her at his studio in New York. Itself a thoroughfare for indie rock luminaries, some of whom, such as the aforementioned Matt Berninger from The National and Bryce Dessner, ended up on the album, Bartlett's studio was perfect fertile ground for Stone's growth. "Making this record with Thomas, I felt so free. I can hear it in the music," says Stone. "He brings a sense of confidence to recording sessions."

The scope of Sixty Summers is dizzyingly vast; miles away from Stone's past work, it is a world unto itself, a surreal and breathtaking new landscape. Where Stone's previous solo records, 2010's The Memory Machine and 2014's By The Horns, found her grappling with the natural darkness that comes with loving too much, Sixty Summers finds Stone claiming every part of herself: fire, fury, love, lust, longing. Touching on reference points as disparate as the avant-funk of Talking Heads (on "Break") the romantic 2am musings of Serge Gainsbourg ("Free", "Dance") and the sleek, ecstatic synth work of Lorde's Melodrama ("Substance"), Sixty Summers is an album you can dance to and one you can lose yourself in completely.

Tune in Monday, February 1st to see Julia Stone perform as part of Sundance Film Festival's Speakeasy: Sound & Vision and set a reminder for her fundraiser stream, Julia Stone: Live From The Old Castlemaine Gaol, February 4th on YouTube, live from Australia.

LISTEN TO & WATCH "WE ALL HAVE"

LISTEN TO & WATCH "BREAK"

LISTEN TO & WATCH "UNREAL"

LISTEN TO & WATCH "DANCE" 

SET REMINDER FOR THE FUNDRAISER STREAM JULIA STONE: LIVE FROM
THE OLD CASTLEMAINE GAOL

PRE-ORDER SIXTY SUMMERS

Artwork: Filip Custic



Photo Credit: Brooke Ashley Barone

MORE INFO:

RIDE @ Fonda Theatre // 12.19.24 // THE PORTABLE INFINITE

All photos taken by Martin Worster