Darkplace is an anonymous art-project that emerged on the music scene with impressive presence and storytelling earlier this year. The music is rooted in post punk, but incorporates a variety of other genres in ist sound, among which Experimental Rock, Alt-Pop and Shoegaze are prominent. The debut album 'About the End of the World' is a monumental release, speaking not only through the medium of sound, but also through stunningly glum digital paintings and animations. The concept behind the album is set in a grim future, or perhaps present, where the world is depicted through imagery inspired by real life places, mostly centred around the bleak landscape of Stockholm's east suburbs - but with a dark, imaginative twist.
Kenny Boothby, Canadian artist and the architect behind DYI indie pop band Little Kid joined me from his Toronto apartment to discuss his faith, his music and how he used the two in his freeing creative process. Raised a Christian in rural Ontario, Kenny explained that religion was just something that you did in small communities, but as Kenny grew up and started writing music his beliefs started to flush out many questions he had about faith, religion and being a Christian. The themes throughout Little Kid’s catalogue is spattered with religious conflict, which ultimately leads to self discovery and long sought after freedom. A great conversation. Enjoy ๐️
That’s a great question. For Forever is our first album in a long time. 18 years, if anyone is counting and we sincerely hope they are not.
Is it real?
It is. On October 27th, it is. You can preorder it here, and it will ship to you on the 27th. It will also be available for streaming the following day. If you’re in Austin and would like to hold one in your hands (I’ve done this… it’s incredible), you can do this at Breakaway, End Of An Ear, or Waterloo Records on or after October 27th.
Are these new songs?
They are!
When was it made?
We started playing together again in 2013 and began work on For Forever in 2015. We finished it in 2019 and left it under the couch for a few years while the world was on fire.
With every album I try to give myself some new challenge. For Only One Left, I learned how to produce my own recordings at home. For my upcoming LP I learned to play better piano, and wrote all of the songs on that instrument. I work hard on the lyrics. I try to boil my ideas down into plain and simple language. The simpler the better
About the song, Ludwig-Leone explains: “I had this feeling after going through a breakup, like, ‘well screw you, if you don’t want to be with me, I don’t want to be with you,’ which turns out to be a pretty universal feeling. The wordplay was fun, messing around with different inflections of the refrain to hint at different meanings.”
Paul Murphy is a prolific Canadian musician. Fronting indie rock’s Wintersleep is only half of Paul’s greatness, the other half is embedded in his outstanding “side-project” POSTDATA. Joining me from his home/studio in Halifax Nova Scotia we had a profound conversation about Paul’s musical process, his beginnings as an artist in eastern Canada, and how he approaches writing songs for two different styled bands. On POSTDATA's latest record Run Wild we get Paul’s popper side surfacing, and good for us! Run Wild is solid song writing through and through, an addictive indie pop gem where the songs relentlessly building on one another making this an instant classic in songwriting and alt-aesthetic. Stay tuned till the end of the cast to hear POSTDATA’s masterful single "Look To The Stars” enjoy ๐️
Run Wild, POSTDATA’s forthcoming fourth LP, from its first springtime keystrokes, is a brilliant, technicolor indie rock odyssey.
There is a palpable sense of magic and possibility and light to the record, even in its heavier moments. With this collection of 10 songs, Murphy has crystallized the elements he’s played with for decades: pop melodics and structure, prog-and indie-rock arrangements, avant-folk intimacy and quirk. Murphy plays the mad alchemist, precisely combining these pieces to create a record that feels like a thick, sprawling, sun-soaked magic garden, where listeners can sprint and jump and scream and laugh, and feel whatever it is they need to feel.
“I felt like it was time to take POSTDATA someplace new, and be a little more free with what it is,” he says. “I was trying to go all-out stylistically, and trying to flesh out all the differentplaces that it could actually take it. I wanted to give it more space, allow it to go wherever it needed to.”
“These songs carry a common mood that is somewhere between wistful and contemplative”, Andy explains. “The architecture of these stories allowed us to draw on our musical influences and immerse our listeners into each song’s time and place.”
Here’s a nice spooky season surprise for ya! Elliott Fullam’s new official music video for “Let’s Go Somewhere” just dropped. Track taken from his new album End of Ways out now on Kill Rock Stars.
Neptune’s Core is an all female Chicago band compromised of two sets of sisters, Sofie and Hannah Richter and Jackie and Kaitlin Cywinski. Three members joined me for a wonderful chat about their beginnings, their influences, their process and the tough themes they dabble in as a group of young women. Hot off their latest release, Called Upon, they dive head first into a classic slow/fast indie rock playbook with deeply emotional lyrics, that empower the listener to reflection and release the many turmoils we are faced with daily. Neptune’s Core are a young up and coming band that needs to be on your radar, three records in and they are only becoming stronger songwriters. Check out their single Inside at the end of the cast.
"Their age belies the sophistication of the songwriting and instrumentation... classic alternative era with delicate fragile quiet moments exploding into loud dynamics... I hear some Soccer Mommy and Snail Mail influences but what I don't hear are artists still in their teens" Jim DeRogatis, Sound Opinions reviewing the Evolving album as a Buried Treasure
“The Main Thing” sees Ducks Ltd. embark on their most collaborative effort to date. Featuring Ratboys' Julia Steiner on backing vocals alongside Dehd's Jason Balla and Moontype's Margaret McCarthy, the track is propulsive, jangly and as hook-laden as any in the band's catalog. Written by singer Tom McGreevy, it concerns growing apart from a person whose views you once shared, and may be the first jangle-pop single to make reference to both professional baseball and ritual magick.
“My favorite line in this song is, ‘They were gods in my eyes, all of the people that I saw as grown up and now I am the same age as they were then and I still don’t feel grown,’” says Heltai. “I was talking to an old highschool teacher of mine, and she mentioned that when I first met her, she was the age I am now. How we view and experience the world is relative, and dictated by our own subjective experience. As obvious of a statement as that might seem, moments when that is truly brought into clear view, really stick with me.”
The stripped-back, acoustic quality of ‘Emily’ is a demonstration of simplicity at its very best, with Sophia’s vocals being the focal point of the song alongside the light strumming of an acoustic guitar. ‘Emily’ is the ideal track for your autumn playlist, being comforting and warming in all its mellowness and the lovely delicacy embedded deep into it.
It’s been awhile since Eric Lindley aka Careful has released a record, but with a new baby, the pandemic all whirling, the wait has been well worth it. Eric is a musical scientist/psychologist who deconstructs his songs to see why humans react to certain chord structures, certain crescendos, tapping into the depths of a composition’s truth. This reflective pulling apart and reassembly of songs makes Careful’s songs so powerful, drenched in restrain and emotion. It’s probably best he only puts out a record every handful of years because they are so profound. On Careful’s latest LP Promise/Practice, it’s a journey of the purest indie pop you'll hear in a long time. Our featured track is the sublime "White light” which you’ll hear at the end of the cast.
“Gorgeous . . . . From a tradition of unnervingly confidential, light-voiced male singers: Joรฃo Gilberto, Arthur Russell, Lou Barlow of Sebadoh, Elliott Smith, Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu.” —Ben Ratliff
The South African band Beatenberg announce The Great Fire of Beatenberg, their first album in five years. Produced by Ross Dorkin and Matthew Field from the band and mixed by Nathan Boddy (Mura Masa, PinkPantheress, Gabriels), it’s the London based band’s most diverse and genre agnostic offering yet, melding far-flung rhythms and acoustic and electronic instrumentation in a melting pot of styles. It will be released on April 5, 2024 via Leafy Outlook with their biggest headline show in the UK to date at Koko on April 18.
Gahan, 23, has plenty of creative folks to revere—her father, Dave Gahan, is the frontman for the 1980s and ’90s electronic band Depeche Mode; her mother, Jennifer Sklias-Gahan, is a filmmaker and the founder of the production company 18 Bleecker Films. But the musician is on her own sonic journey. She’s set to release her debut album, Eyes of Glass, in April, and has put out two singles, “Angel” and “Muddled Man” with her band, The Dead Language, after years of playing in coffee shops, dive bars, and local venues across the city. This week, she’s coming out with a new single, “Faithful,” a track which speaks to the range of her musical abilities. Where “Angel” is a quiet, vulnerable ballad and “Muddled Man” contains hints of electronica beneath punk rock guitar licks, “Faithful” is a dark, heavy metal song through and through. W
Cassie Wieland of Vines joined me from flooded Brooklyn to talk origin story, the writing process that found her voice and the wild life of an independent musician. Classically schooled, you can hear that fine tuning in the ambient and expansive indie pop songs. Vines uses a harmonizer to help in the creating of this minimal pop music, only adding to the depths and breath on her new record Birthday Party, an eight song journey into a mystic place of sound and reflection. We feature a stunning cover of Modest Mouse’s The World at Large at the end of the cast. Check out Vines at https://cassiewieland.com/watch-listen/
Cassie Wieland (pronounced หkรฆ-si หwee-lษnd) is an Illinois-born and Brooklyn-based composer. Praised by The New York Times as “sweetly shimmering,” Wieland masterfully experiments the relationship between intimate and massive sound worlds to achieve the “hand-made” sound she is often looking for: imperfect, but intentional. Her music has been featured on outlets including New Sounds, NPR, Stereogum, KEXP, The New York Times, Financial Times, Musical America, I Care if You Listen, AnEarful, and The Road to Sound.
Sullivan has been writing and performing music since the age of eighteen, working mostly independently with her guitar as a songwriting partner. Her first musical inspirations met at a nexus of nineties Top 40, Americana, and singer-songwriters, crystallized by figures such as Alanis Morissette, Sheryl Crow, and Lisa Loeb. These influences then flowed seamlessly into a love for indie songsters of the 2000s such as Mirah, whose song “The Struggle” is homaged with Sullivan’s “Cautiously.” The songwriting process behind GOOSE shows how Sullivan’s approach has developed into a discipline and craft. While Sullivan’s previous music relied on events in her life as catalysts, Sullivan no longer wants to “wait for the next heartbreak” to motivate a song. Instead of composing in a flash of inspiration, Sullivan views songwriting as more conversational now, a dialogue between herself and the music as she continually returns to shape it.
Her vocal melodies lilt and flicker above the sinuous aural silhouettes, airy in their approach, but each word is sharper than obsidian. - Foxy Digitalis
Earnest and unflinchingly intimate songs leavened with pop melodies and confident vocals - Various Small Flames
Lana del Rey meets Grizzly Bear in a Cincinnati dive bar - Post-Trash
Mol’s voice is her ultimate weapon. It’s sensitive, rangy, and capable of murmurs, shouts, and chorus-pure melodies - The Revue
Marking their first release of the year, ‘Thank You For Your Time’ represents a slight departure from the band’s thus far signature West Coast psychedelic stylings as they continue to diversify their sound. The song lurches in on all fours, with a thunderous rhythm and a smokescreen of dense, resonant feedback and enigmatic synth - more reminiscent of modern Aussie Psychedelic Rock than euphoric 60’s Californication.
David Dondero is a prolific songwriter. Nominated amongst top singer songwriters on NPR in 2016, compared to such as Bob Dylan and Elliot Smith. David is a volcanic musician, always brewing… brewing... with frequent creative explosions in his writing process, leading listeners to countless connections to truth; at times gut wrenching but always authentic expressions of humanity. His latest LP, Immersion Therapy is a covid record. It pulls back the curtain on the pandemic, exposing the mental healthy afflictions many of us suffered. I loved this conversation. ๐️ enjoy.
Immersion in nature or immersion in something that produces anxiety for therapy. Immersion in music or immersion in crowds full of strangers. This immersive pathway can flood your mind and force a reset or an internal confrontation. What makes you panic? What makes you depressed? What brings you into the light of love and happiness? Are you lost within’ the wrinkles of your mind? Hiding inside yourself with extreme social anxiety? Did the man at the bowling alley just smile and calmly spray the shoes with a disinfectant? Have you unraveled all the way? Spun out into oblivion?
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