Indie Folk
The Mountain Goats Reveal New Single “Get Famous”: Stream
Next month, The Mountain Goats will drop their second album of the year, Getting Into Knives. A first preview came via “As Many Candles As Possible”, which featured contributions from Al Green’s own organist Charles Hodges. The indie outfit is now sharing another single in “Get Famous”. While most wish for popularity and success, The Mountain Goats are making us seriously reconsider these lofty dreams. The new song encourages listeners to follow their ambitions, but paints fame as something not at all worth coveting. Or as a press release succinctly puts it, frontman John Darnielle sings the title “as if it were a curse.” “Cold, grey world/ All these obedient sheep/ They act like they know, but they’re all sound asleep/ You arrive on the scene like a message from God/ Listen to the people ...
Phoebe Bridgers Performs Three Punisher Songs on CBS This Morning: Watch
Phoebe Bridgers has kept up her prolific streak into September. After taking part in a Daniel Johnston livestream tribute, playing a Tiny Desk (Home) concert in a miniature Oval Office, and covering Radiohead in a church, Bridgers stopped by CBS This Morning over the weekend for a Saturday Sessions performance. Bridgers delivered a trio of tracks off her latest full-length, Punisher, one of our favorite albums of the year thus far. Dressed in her now familiar skeleton suit, she sang “Garden Song”, “I Know the End”, and one of 2020’s best songs, “Kyoto”. Watch all three performances below. Earlier this summer, Bridgers contributed to a voters’ rights compilation alongside R.E.M., Hayley Williams, Angel Olsen, and others; teamed with Courtney Barnett to cover Gillian Welch’s “Everything...
Angel Olsen Covers George Harrison’s “Beware of Darkness” from Quarantine: Watch
The pressure to be productive while in quarantine continues to be very real, but Angel Olsen has made it look fairly effortless. In addition to rolling out a stellar new album, Whole New Mess, she’s spent the last few months sharing cover after cover. In March, she took on Roxy Music’s “More Than This”, followed by the Tori Amos original “Winter” in April. For her latest reworking, Olsen has tackled “Beware of Darkness” by George Harrison. Originally appearing on The Beatles guitarist’s All Things Must Pass album, the 1970 track was described by Olsen as “pretty great.” Her rendition, uploaded directly to IGTV late Thursday night, is similarly impressive in its vulnerability and starkness. “I’m just messing around like a tired sad shit,” Olsen wrote of her version, which was filmed in...
Colin Meloy and Laura Veirs Join Raye Zaragoza on New Song “They Say”: Stream
Colin Meloy (photo by David Brendan Hall), Raye Zaragoza (photo by Cultivate Consulting), and Laura Veirs Folk artist and protest music songwriter Raye Zaragoza has announced a new album, Woman in Color. Due out October 23rd through Rebel River Records, it’s being previewed today with a single called “They Say”, featuring harmonica from The Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy and banjo arrangements courtesy of veteran folk musician Laura Veirs. A timely number, it finds Zaragoza taking the US government to task for its piss-poor response to the coronavirus crisis. “This song is about the dysfunction of American power structures. It’s about how the systems built to support the people don’t support all people,” she explained in a statement. “Especially during a pandemic, it’s been ex...
Phoebe Bridgers Covers Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees” in a Church: Watch
In addition to releasing one of the year’s best albums so far, Phoebe Bridgers has spent the summer months covering a number of iconic artists. In June, she shared her official recording of John Prine’s “Summer’s End”, which she then followed up with a rendition of Gillian Welch’s “Everything is Free”, done in collaboration with Courtney Barnett. Now, Bridgers has taken on an alt-rock classic in “Fake Plastic Trees”. The indie folk artist’s Radiohead cover came as part of the BBC Radio 1 program Phil Taggart’s Chillest Show. And chill it certainly was. Bridgers recorded her delicate version of The Bends original inside of a church with help from rising R&B star Arlo Parks, who provided icy piano accompaniment. Bridgers previously covered “Fake Plastic Trees” live in concert in 2017, as...
The Decemberists’ Colin Meloy Shares New Song “Slint, Spiderland”: Stream
Colin Meloy of The Decemberists has shared the new solo song “Slint, Spiderland”. The Decemberists have been in hibernation since 2018, when the band released I’ll Be Your Girl and the Traveling On EP. Currently, Meloy is writing his fifth book, having published four children’s titles since 2011. But in April, as the reality of quarantine settled in, he had a bizarre experience that caused him to set the prose aside. As Meloy told NPR, he watched a documentary about the making of the Slint album Spiderland, when the normalcy of what he was doing suddenly struck him as bizarre. He said, “I don’t know that it particularly spoke to the current moment in any way other than it felt completely disconnected from it. Thing is about the lockdown and the quarantin...
Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker Announces Two Solo Albums, Shares “anything”: Stream
Adrianne Lenker of Big Thief has revealed two new solo albums, songs and instrumentals. Both projects are due out October 23rd, and Lenker has provided a preview with the new single “anything”. This wasn’t part of the plan. Lenker had hoped to be on tour with Big Thief most of this year, capitalizing on the success of their twin 2019 releases U.F.O.F. and Two Hands. But when the pandemic scuttled that trek, the notoriously prolific songwriter retreated to a one-room cabin in the mountains of western Massachusetts. With the help of engineer Philip Weinrobe, she embarked on an all-analog (AAA) recording process. They began each day with an improvised acoustic jam, and they ended each session with the same. These off-the-cuff explorations landed on the instrument...
Angel Olsen Reveals New Album Whole New Mess: Stream
Angel Olsen has released her new album Whole New Mess. Stream it below via Apple Music and Spotify. Today’s release follows last year’s stunning All Mirrors, which was one of the best records of 2019 and the 2010s overall. However, whereas that effort was an opulent extravaganza of 11-piece string arrangements and orchestral ambiance, Whole New Mess is a decidedly quieter and more intimate affair. It mostly features early, acoustic renditions of songs off All Mirrors, but also offers some new material like the beautiful title track. It’s technically the first true solo album Olsen’s made since her 2012 debut Half Way Home, but she sounds comfortable as ever in this raw and emotive musical environment. In a revealing interview with Pitchfork, Olsen opened up about how the aforemen...
Angel Olsen’s Whole New Mess Redefines Familiar Specters: Review
The Lowdown: In October 2018, Angel Olsen and engineer Michael Harris stayed in the small town of Anacortes, Washington, for 10 days and recorded music in a legendarily haunted Catholic church converted into a studio. These were the sessions that ultimately unfurled into All Mirrors, Olsen’s darkly expansive masterpiece from just last year. Olsen returns now with Whole New Mess — a reimagining and reconfiguring of much of that same work, but through a far more restrained and personal lens. The Good: The tracks on this album are brilliantly haunting. The stripped-back production lets Olsen’s vocals shine through with breathtaking clarity on tracks like “Summer Song”, which feels like a siren song rising through the depths of a sea cave. The same effect surfaces on “Impasse (Workin’ for the ...
Elliott Smith’s Self-Titled Album Receives 25th Anniversary Reissue: Stream
Elliott Smith’s sophomore self-titled album turned 25 years old last month, and Kill Rock Stars is celebrating the anniversary by releasing a new deluxe reissue of the LP. Stream it below via Apple Music and Spotify. This deluxe edition features a fresh remaster of all of the album’s tracks, thanks to the official Smith family archivist Larry Crane pulling the from reels, cassettes, files, and DAT tapes to get recordings as close to the original Elliott Smith mix as possible. In addition to the original tracklist, the reissue includes the previously unreleased Live at Umbra Penumbra, capturing a September 17th, 1994 performance at Portland, Oregon’s Umbra Penumbra that’s the earliest known recording of Smith playing a solo acoustic show. “There are fan-traded MP3s out there of this sh...
Bright Eyes Return with New Album Down in the Weeds Where the World Once Was: Stream
Bright Eyes have returned with their first new album in nine years, Down in the Weeds Where the World Once Was. Stream it below through Apple Music or Spotify. Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis, and Nate Walcott released nine albums from 1998 through 2011. Together they led an indie rock revolution off of Dylan-esque folk tunes, but by the time of 2011’s The People’s Key, Oberst had somewhat soured on his earlier work, calling it “rootsy Americana shit.” In retrospect, perhaps they just needed a break. Oberst especially has been busy these last nine years, pumping out solo records, founding Better Oblivion Community Center with Phoebe Bridgers, and then co-writing five songs on her outstanding new album Punisher. While Oberst helped Bridgers become a star, she’s now returning th...
Briston Maroney Teases Debut Album with New Single “Deep Sea Diver”: Stream
After releasing a string of EPs, including this year’s Miracle, Nashville songwriter Briston Maroney is ready to drop his full-length debut album. The effort is slated for arrival sometime in 2021 ,and as a preview, he’s sharing a new single called “Deep Sea Diver”. A freewheeling and folksy number, it finds Maroney struggling to pull himself out of a major rut. “Sick and tired of this old routine,” he laments early on, adding, “I’m a deep sea diver, I’m in too deep.” Maroney goes on to ponder his own “selfish pride” and “fear of rejection”, and whether they are keeping him from being an authentic and honest person. He also considers taking drugs to escape the present, but only momentarily. (Maroney might just be a genius for rhyming “Bowling Green”, “ketamine”, and “next week” all in one ...
