Patrick Damphier has established himself as a band guy in the Nashville scene, playing with the likes of Paper Rival, the Mynabirds, Lionlimb and others. But these days he’s working under his own name and gearing up for the Feb. 1 release of his first solo album, Say I’m Pretty, whose single “Pretend It,” featuring Richard Swift and Molly Parden, is premiering exclusively below. READ MORE…
For a relatively unknown project, the persona of EE Beyond has found a bold and distinct niche. Following in the footsteps of artists like Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill, the LA-based artist born Elaine Faye reckons with her life through music. Her debut EP, Watercolor Lies, is packed with societal commentary and personal experiences, speaking about living as a woman, a person of color, an American and a dreamer. READ MORE…
The Pinx, the Atlanta-based rock band headed up by MC5‘s Wayne Kramer sideman Adam McIntyre, sounds a lot like what I’d imagine would happen if Deep Purple and The Atomic Bitchwax had a kid. READ MORE…
It’s hard to imagine this past Sept. 11 was punctuated by Ben Lee turning 40. Especially when you consider just how long we’ve been listening to the Australian indie pop artist, who first caught the attention of acts like Sonic Youth and Beastie Boys when he was part of the Sydney youth punk group Noise Addict in the early ’90s.
Since then, he’s established himself as one of the great singer-songwriters on the L.A. music scene, releasing 13 solo albums beginning with 1995’s Grandpaw Would, which came out on the Beasties’ Grand Royal label when Lee was still in high school and highlighted by one of that year’s best singles in the Pixies-plugging “Pop Queen.”
“I remember very specifically several moments on the journey through 25 years wondering if the ride was going to be over,” Lee says. “I’m sorta entrepreneurial so I’ve managed to do different things along the way. But at the end of the day, I think when you start out really young, that feeling of documenting your journey and expressing yourself, when that gets into your blood it’s hard to imagine a life without it. Even in those moments where I was unsure what the future held, I’m so certain of my love for artistic expression that I’ll just cross my fingers and keep going.”….READ MORE
We’ve all got a past. We can either tread water and ultimately drown or swallow it down and absorb it into our blood stream. Amidst such a furious, critical process, the seasons rise and fall and clash upon each other in iron-struck blows. Senses are numbed, and there’s absolutely no conceivable way out ? allowing the metaphorical catacombs to multiply and wriggle its tentacles between layers of time. Music can be the proper healing agent, of course, unraveling the complex, stealthily-bound contraptions that serve only to confine and choke. “I can’t let go of the past,” Mad Crush‘s John Elderkin sings on essential cut “My Pre-Existing Conditions,” framed around the ongoing healthcare debate but scrawled more intimately, from the band’s self-titled debut LP, out this Friday (November 16).
Mad Crush floats between airy acoustic orbits and is greatly indebted to Elderkin’s various romantic entanglements through the years, as well as previous work with The Popes, on a rock opera with another band called ¡Moonbeams No Mas! and on a sequel to David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust record. “Having pulled that off, I decided to try the equivalent of an ongoing Netflix or HBO show, focused on the same main characters over time,” Elderkin tells B-Sides & Badlands, premiering the album in-full today. “I’d been listening to a lot of June Carter, Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons, and that was my jumping-off point with the songs and stories. Now, Joanna and I are like characters that I try to place in new situations as I write new songs.”….READ MORE
Ward White is the singer-songwriter equivalent of the cool, quirky kid who used to sit behind you in high school and crack you up with ultra-droll observations about everything within his purview. READ MORE…