Don’t Sway Above Me is Ostrea Lake’s debut full-length record, following up on 2015’s Rippling Waters EP. Combining atmospheric and rippling sounds with carefully woven imagery, the lullaby folk quartet deliver a cohesive and powerful offering that will draw you into it’s calm depths, before wrapping you in the rise and swell.
There have always been comparisons to The Smiths, U2, R.E.M, as The Ocean Blue has covered some of their music in the early days. As well, lead singer David Schelzel sounds a lot like Bernard Sumner. The comparisons should end here as over the years, they have evolved, and in a way improved upon, their dreamy/jazzy/jangly sound. They now are a tight indie pop outfit. If one did not know their history, they would think that this is an unknown gem band whose songs are enjoyable on repeat.
"Heatwave" is the first track from the compilation to be shared. It was originally released as a bonus 7” included with deluxe version of last year's album. Tunng co-founder Mike Lindsay says that "Heatwave" was "written on one hot and sticky morning whilst working on what would become Songs You Make at Night. It gleefully wrote itself while Sam (Genders, co-founder) was dancing around the mixing desk."
Little sister, I know from where your brown eyes get
Your face on horizon I cannot see
Your face on horizon I cannot say
Chan Marshall is in the “Horizon” video, staring reflectively into the middle distance while playing an acoustic guitar. And the video also captures intimate, quiet moments from a few of Marshall’s friends and loved ones, including the pro skater Sean Pablo, the model Tess Sahara, and the actress and artist Lucia Ribisi.
Her love of pop music is still rooted in the activism that made her band the perfect late-2010s act, but Pleaser purposely doesn’t address those same social issues. Instead, its lyrics are personal and earnest, focusing exclusively on unrequited love and rejection.
Back to the Wall: I woke up one day and really wanted to write an upbeat song. I tend to write moodier songs. They're more in my DNA. Back to the wall is the song that came out of that intention. The funny thing is that the lyrics are pretty serious for what to me is an easy going song. It's about Aaron's and I's relationship. About the intensity of living, working and spending almost all your time with your partner. Things reach a tipping point and we have these almost scripted reactions. We play out the same patterns. The song is me trying to release some of my emotions. Obviously there are highs and lows in every relationship and I've written a lot of love songs to Aaron but this is more of a relationship song.
Lyrically, it's a loose narrative of someone showing up to the house of someone he loves and trying to win her heart for the first time or to get it back. I guess there's room for interpretation but it's maybe also just trying to capture a snapshot of a moment of two people trying to have a conversation that ends in a dance.
When Alexandra Levy endured a recent breakup she used various creative outlets—painting, journaling, making music—in order to recall who she was before and redefine herself in the aftermath. As a result, the Montreal singer-songwriter came up with 10 songs that embody the tumultuous cycle of pain, anxiety, patience, and acceptance that accompanies major heartache. Her debut album as Ada Lea, what we say in private, is a peculiar vortex of intense emotion and experimental pop music.
“‘the party’ came about after spending a magical night on the town with close friends. The song kind of just wrote itself. I always kept trying to make it a longer song, but nothing seemed to fit—or it felt like it was divulging too much,” Lea recalls. “I wanted to capture that delightfully unsatisfying quality of the night; being together but wanting something more to happen, yet reveling in the power that had brought us all together at that special moment. That’s life, though … isn’t it? When you’re truly living the moment, you get home and wish you could live it again and again.”
The second landmark album this year from Big Thief is raw, tactile, and essential. The intimate songs zoom in on a band that feels, at this moment, totally invincible.PF
Nearly every song overflows with tears and blood, bared teeth and broken tongues; living, killing, dying. There are few overdubs, and sometimes you hear the band members instructing each other when to step back or take a solo, like they’re just rehearsing for the actual performance. It makes for a specific kind of rock record: an attempt to capture a band’s imperfect, raw essence, to show what happens when they simply count to four and take off. The approach is best known for accentuating a tough, ragged cohesion, like Neil Young records in the ’70s, but this record goes somewhere different. The more Big Thief zoom in, the more magical they sound.
Big Scary Monsters is an independent currently label based in Oxford. It has so far been responsible for releases from the likes of Minus The Bear, Andrew W.K., Pulled Apart By Horses, Gnarwolves, Kevin Devine, Into It. Over It, Cursive, Meet Me In St Louis, Bear vs Shark, Toe, This Town Needs Guns, Tall Ships, Matt Pryor, Walter Schreifels, Joyce Manor, Algernon Cadwallader and many, many
Spider Bags got it's start in Muskogee, OK at the Air Force base there. Dan McGee was training to be a cadet, as was Gregg Levee. They were both unceremoniously discharged from the Air Force in 2006. Dan is very near-sighted and Gregg is flat-footed. They were waiting for the bus back to New Jersey and they both had guitars, so they started writing songs. By the time they got back to their stop in North Carolina, they had written 20 some-odd songs. They had some friends in North Carolina so they called them up and made a record.
"Alan’s lyrics are often literary (he studied literature in college), but have simplicity and poetry at heart. This aspect mirrors some early influences: Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, David Bowie. His lyrics and sound seat Alan’s music alongside contemporary artists like Big Thief, Deer Tick, Andrew Bird, and Lady Lamb."
- Glide Magazine
"Getto‘s guitar-driven, simple melodies act as a backbone for the lyrical emphasis in his music. Having studied literature, theology, and philosophy in college, his lyrics pay homage to these intense, existential topics, but with a unique, irreverent spin."
- No Depression
"Getto’s simple acoustic number is soft, sweet, and easy to pick-up on. The melody is familiar like a lullaby or, more fittingly, a campfire sing-along."
- Atwood Magazine
