“We decided to take a break from heavy introspective lyrics. We love the playful banter of classic country duets and wanted to put out a fun and playful homage to what we love,” says husband-wife duo Megan & Shane about their potent new track, “Put Me Down,” which wallops with a bit of Waylon and Loretta but enough humor to keep it real. Check out the Glide premiere of this late ’70s early ’80s foot-stomper that would’ve been a regular player on the ol’ Nashville Network (TNN).
In Their Words: “‘Long Way to California’ was written at a time when I was indeed far from California, and also felt a bit stuck; in fact at the time, I was literally stuck at home with a stranger I didn’t particularly like, a friend of one of my roommates who was staying there while my roommate was on tour. It was written as more of an imagined escape than anything else; little did I know that it would foreshadow moving back to California with someone I love a few years later. Ultimately it’s a song about California and the West as a place of openness and the possibility of a better life, the promise it might have held to my grandparents when they moved there from Ohio in the ‘40s. For me it took living on the East Coast for several years to really understand and see California that way.” — Whitney Lockert
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SeepeopleS – Field Guide For Survival In This Dying World (10/07/2022 – RascalZRecordZ)
Will Bradford is worried about the future. For 22 years, Bradford has toured the country as SeepeopleS’ bandleader, songwriter, and producer, bringing his defiant, politically-charged music to the masses, challenging audiences to question the world around them creating a community of misfits hellbent on speaking truth to power. Now, on SeepeopleS’ brilliant sixth LP, Field Guide For Survival In This Dying World, Bradford has created an empathetic, emotionally intelligent collection of songs that serve as both a documentation of personal struggle and a companion in a world that seems edging closer to collapse.
“Everything I’ve written for SeepeopleS has been about how our world exists and breaks down around us,” says Bradford. “But if this world, our world, is ending, how do we survive it together?”
SeepeopleS’ music has always been characterized by Bradford’s staunch refusal to abide by genre conventions, and Field Guide For Survival In This Dying World continues in that spirit, though Bradford’s talent and decades of experience have allowed him to blend 90s inspired electro, expressive indie-folk, and avant-garde pop into something musically diverse yet wholly cohesive.
“It’s all about connection,” says Bradford. “I’ve always been making an effort to connect everything and everyone, that’s why there’s no genre for SeepeopleS. This is my one project that I’ll always have where I can incorporate everything I love and say whatever the hell I want.”
Bradford started working on Field Guide For Survival In This Dying World in 2017 and was set to release the album and embark on a 20th anniversary tour in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and suddenly the end of the world seemed closer than ever. With plans for the anniversary indefinitely sidelined, Bradford continued to work on the album and, in an effort to foster a sense of community in isolation, decided to make Field Guide For Survival In This Dying World a collaborative effort. Teaming up with his longtime recording partner Will Holland (Pixies, Dead Can Dance, New Pornographers), Bradford performed more than a handful of instruments on the album, and pulled in a variety of collaborators including saxophonist and bass clarinetist Dana Colley (Morphine, Vapors Of Morphine), drummers Nikki Glaspie (Beyoncé, The Nth Power, Maceo Parker), Jerome Deupree (Morphine), and Dan Capaldi (Sea Level), bassists Ian Riley (Cadaverette) and Nate Edgar (The Nth Power, John Brown’s Body), guitarist Tim Reynolds (Dave Matthews Band), pedal steel guitarist “Cowboy” Eddie Long (Taylor Swift, ZZ Top, The Allman Brothers, Hank Williams Jr.), bassoonist Jason Ward (Rustic Overtones), upright bassist David Yearwood (Forêt Endormie, Snap! Thee Asparagus, HX Kitten), cellist Devon Colella (QUAD) and a murderers’ row of backing vocalists including Brooke Binion (theWorst), Courtney Peare, Griffin Sherry (The Ghost of Paul Revere) Sparxsea, who also performed flute to several tracks on Field Guide.
“One of the few good things about the pandemic was that it was really the first time, as musicians, that everyone had time off the road to reconnect with each other,” says Bradford. “I was so depressed at the time, having my friends come to the rescue and get me pumped about the record again was, creatively, exactly what I needed. Also, in some ways, the convenience of the world ending while we were already making an end of the world album, certainly helped motivate us to follow through on finishing this record, and ultimately, this statement”
“This Dying World,” serves as an overture to the album, a dark experimental-pop meditation on social collapse and anxiety for the future laced with pulsing vocals and expressive strings, setting the stage for both the musical and thematic throughlines that propel Field Guide For Survival In This Dying World. The following track, “Blink,” serves as a counter to the anxiety and impending doom of “This Dying World,” instead offering reassurance that suffering is only temporary.
Elsewhere, the shimmering indie-rock of “Path of Least Resistance” perhaps best encapsulates all that Field Guide For Survival In This Dying World stands for as Bradford explores the toll that navigating the pressure of modern life takes on us and while simply trying to find a way to live. Meanwhile, on the muted and shuffling bedroom-pop track “Shame,” Bradford examines the fear and pain of living in a country under constant threat of violence, where safety can not even be guaranteed in schools.
“I started writing ‘Shame’ right after Sandy Hook, when my son described the mass shooter drills they do at school,” says Bradford. “It’s all about what it means to be innocent and young and afraid, and how vulnerable to violence we are.”
Field Guide For Survival In This Dying World does not so much offer answers for the ills of modern life, as it provides reassurance that no one suffers alone. It is neither a bible nor a roadmap, but a present companion and a shoulder to lean on through trying times.
“Dabbling in indie-folk, 90’s electro, and art-pop, [Bradford’s] songs are inclusive, in both theme and influence, drawing from divergent musical histories to form a coherent aesthetic that only he could wrangle…an anthem for whatever cause contours to your heart, a walloping rush of sound that blasts away all hesitancy.” – Beats Per Minute
“Consider it tragic that Will Bradford of SeepeopleS isn’t as recognizable a name as Bonnie Prince Billy or Sam Beam. As the bandleader/songwriter/producer of this unique band with a must-listen discography for 22 years, there is no band that can nail down so many facets of indie rock as if each genre was truly their own offspring.” – Glide Magazine
“Stunning.” – Spill Magazine
“Eclectic.” – Jambase
“Upbeat, but with a carefully placed provocativeness.” – The Other Side Reviews
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ELPENTHE – ELPENTHE I
Los Angeles art-pop producer ELPENTHE explores the organic and intimate side of electronic dance in his debut EP, ELPENTHE I. ELPENTHE, aka Elliott Beenk, started in rural Iowa, where at six years old he discovered a promotion on the lid of a Pizza Hut box. After collecting enough tokens, he traded them in for a mix CD that introduced him to the Red Hot Chili Peppers – and he was hooked. He found a love of environmentalism in college that would rival his love of music, leading a solar-powered bike tour with his college band. He earned a master’s degree in Environmental Engineering, then moved to LA where he made connections that led him to working with his hero, Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers). He has since also collaborated with Lissie, Leo Nocentelli (The Meters), Finish Ticket, Brian West (Maroon 5, U2, Nelly Furtado, K’Naan), and Janelle Monae. ELPENTHE takes its name from the ancient Greek nepenthe, a potion used by the gods to chase away sorrow. On ELPENTHE I, his hypnotic synths and propulsive beats do more than just that.
On the EP’s first two songs, Half Wolf spills their guts to the pulsing beat with quirky tenderness and a fierce honesty. “Mistakes” opens with the sound of a forest and dives into a life on the run. While Half Wolf sings about wanting to leave the party, the production urges them to jump and sway. In “What We Got Away With,” their confessions become a drug, and their vocals a resounding cry. On “Already Know,” Devan Glover sings a rising anthem that comes out of deep sadness unapologetic, embracing the freedom that comes with hitting an emotional rock bottom. Over soothing guitar and trembling synths, the Wild Rivers vocalist resolves her pain with an invincible hook to be shouted in a crowd or whispered on the drive home. “Forbidden” compares the dance floor with the Garden of Eden, and the seductive lyrics of Josh Dean bear a soft fearlessness in the heat of the moment. Finally, “Scar Tissue” synthesizes the EP’s natural themes and its search for connection by draping a shimmering sonic instrumental over the classic chorus. The only song to feature ELPENTHE’s own vocals, he reimagines Anthony Kiedis’ ballad of addiction into a dance at dawn.
On Already Know, Devan Glover sings a rising anthem that comes out of a deep sadness unapologetic. ELPENTHE worked with Glover on the song remotely throughout the pandemic from L.A. and Toronto. He sent her his gentle guitar groove, and the Wild Rivers vocalist sang full of self-loathing, and yet finding herself indestructible. “There’s an invincibility that comes with being aware of your limitations,” says Glover, “and realizing that you’re your own worst enemy.” Over soothing chords and trembling synths, she resolves her own pain with an unyielding hook that could be shouted in a crowd or whispered on the drive home: You can’t say anything about me that I don’t already know. Glover went on about the process and meeting the art pop producer in person. “Elliott and I wrote it remotely over zoom and back-and-forth voice notes during 2021. We met up later that year when I went to LA for a writing trip and became good friends. I can’t wait for him to launch his artist project, and I’m honored to be part of it.”
ELPENTHE is building something new, focusing on bringing people together with the same communal spirit that brought him to environmentalism. He tapped Ben Darwish (Shawn Mendes, BANKS, Mike Posner) to add additional keys on “Mistakes.” He brought in TK Kayembe (Lizzo, Kehlani, Kid LAROI) for additional production on “What We Got Away With.” 2022 Grammy-nominated Kevin Smith (Harry Styles, Phoebe Bridgers, Frank Ocean) mixed the songs, and Stuart Hawkes (Amy Winehouse, Lorde, Charli XCX) mastered the EP. Through its inspired lyricism and mesmerizing production, ELPENTHE I is an experience grounded in a love of connection. The artist project lives up to its name in chasing away today’s worries, with a record to be played on repeat long after tomorrow.
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Piranha Rama – Omniscient Cloud Cover (out 09/30/2022 – Brokers Tip Records)
For Richmond, VA psychedelic rock & roll collective Piranha Rama, there’s always room for more. After their formation in 2017, the genre-bending outfit’s numbers quickly grew, developing a spirit of community that drives their brilliant experimental-pop endeavors. On their exceptional third LP, Omniscient Cloud Cover, Piranha Rama dive headfirst into maximalism with a rotating cast of twelve different players performing eight psych-pop tracks that defy categorization while exploring humanity’s need for connection and the importance of community.
Sonically, Omniscient Cloud Cover runs the gamut from festival-ready indie-pop earworms to big band jazz-tinged psychedelic rock and hazy bedroom-pop, constantly shifting in a way that feels simultaneously meticulous and unpredictable. Though the band plays jump rope with genre-lines, their masterful arrangements and pop finesse keep the songs from ever feeling disjointed.
“This record started during quarantine as an instrumental meditation, stuff to kind of space out to,” says multi-instrumentalist and producer John Sizemore. “Once I brought it to the band, everyone wanted to jump on it and was really excited, so we just decided to see where we could take it.”
The core trio of Piranha Rama—Sizemore, vocalist & lyricist Chrissie Lozano, and drummer Tim Falen—started tracking Omniscient Cloud Cover at Sizemore’s studio, The Bat Grave, while under shelter-in-place orders during the COVID-19 pandemic, utilizing Sizemore’s production prowess as a means to experiment with song structures and sonic landscapes, before eventually relocating to Richmond’s Virginia Moonwalker to finish up recording.
“Doing all of the production in-house was a kind of different approach than what we’d done before,” says Sizemore. “We really took things way farther out in the sonic spectrum than we probably would have if I had just brought these songs to a live practice; there was so much room to experiment.”
“When we went to Moonwalker, instead of doing building-block recording from scratch, we got to focus on layering on top of something that was already mostly done,” adds Falen. “We went at it kinda crazily, it really gave us a fresh perspective on the record.”
In addition to Sizemore, Lozano and Falen’s contributions, Omniscient Cloud Cover also features performances from a cadre of Richmond’s finest including trombone player & vocalist Reggie Pace (Bon Iver, No BS! Brass), trumpet player Bob Miller (The Mountain Goats, Matthew E. White, Foxygen), saxophonist Gordon Jones (Black Masala), pedal steel guitarist Stephen Kuester, twelve-string guitarist Kyle Harris, flutist & vocalist Lauren Serpa, harmonica player & vocalist Russell Lacy—who also co-engineered alongside Sizemore and Falen—and vocalists Kenneka Cook & Kelli Strawbridge.
“Having all these different players in town is great, you can just call people up with an opportunity and they’re like ‘Tell me when and where,’” says Falen. “It’s really non-restrictive, we can kind of do anything.”
Omniscient Cloud Cover opens with the jangly guitars and chiming synthesizers of “Daylight,” a grooving psych-pop track that showcases Lozano’s emotive vocals atop atmospheric swells of pedal steel as she sings an ode to the friendships that make it possible to overcome life’s obstacles. Next, the lilting 60s pop melodies of “A Door” create a hypnotic atmosphere for Lozano’s pensive musings about escaping to alternate realities, inspired in part by Alix E. Harrow’s acclaimed novel The Ten Thousand Doors of January.
“At the start of the pandemic, when I realized I was going to be stuck inside for a while, I bought all the recommended fiction from a local bookstore and became fascinated with the idea of other worlds,” says Lozano. “It became a kind of overarching theme in my writing and really informed a lot of the material on the record.”
Elsewhere on the album, “Golden Blues” finds the band at their most danceable, with prog-inspired guitar riffs and steady backbeat drums punctuated by stings of brass and woodwinds as multiple vocalists explore the paradox of isolation in a hyper-connected world.
“I kept thinking about how odd it feels to be so sad in a time when you’re so removed from everything around you, but you’re also more connected than ever,” says Sizemore. “It’s weird not being able to communicate in the ways you need when you can technically communicate so easily.”
Now, with touring a once-again viable option, Piranha Rama are preparing to bring their musical collective to those across the country. There are multiple tours in the works in the wake of Omniscient Cloud Cover’s release, including dates with 90s indie-rock legends Pavement, whose multi-instrumentalist Bob Nastanovich has championed Piranha Rama for years and who will be releasing Omniscient Cloud Cover on his vinyl-only record label Brokers Tip Records. It’s only a matter of time before Piranha Rama’s community becomes much, much bigger.
Omniscient Cloud Cover is out September 30th, 2022 on Brokers Tip Records.
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Late Cambrian – Future Snacks (out September 23rd, 2022 – Mifflin Street Music)
On their new album Future Snacks, John Wlaysewski and Olive Hui—the creative and romantic partnership behind the Brooklyn-based future-pop/indie-rock duo Late Cambrian—have crafted a work of art that explores the many facets of modern social consciousness while still giving listeners a reason to dance. From the fear of impending technocracy and corporate-sponsored nostalgia to the uncertainty of the future and long-term emotional effects of the pandemic, Future Snacks is a record that is concerned with ideas and questions, with the acceptance that answers may be hard to find.
Future Snacks is both musically and thematically diverse while never feeling derivative or out-of-control, an impressive feat that is largely testament to the unique partnership between Wlaysewski and Hui. The record was recorded in Wlaysewski and Hui’s Brooklyn apartment, with Wlaysewski acting as the primary songwriter, producer and arranger, and Hui acting as a production consultant and editor while also contributing vocals, lyrics, and keys throughout the record.
“I played 98% of the music on this record, but Olive’s input is so important,” says Wlaysewski. “When we write, Olive plumbs the depths of her unorganized imagination and then I try to organize those ideas into something that has rhythm and melody. I tend to be more rational, which drives the sound of the songs, but then sometimes some barriers need to be broken, and that’s where Olive comes in.”
The album kicks off with “The Last Wave” a dance-rock track that showcases the duo’s melodic prowess as Wlaysewski’s vocals float atop buzzy synthesizers and a pulsing rhythm section. On its surface, the track serves as a festival-ready indie-pop song belying its nature as a subtle introduction to the album’s ominous tone.
“Catching the last wave feels like something really upbeat and positive,” says Wlaysewski. “But there’s this underlying feeling of grabbing life by the horns before it’s over, that something ominous is on the horizon. Like, it’s the last wave before what?”
There’s a pervasive darkness churning beneath the bubbly surface of each track on Future Snacks. The album’s title track, inspired by Wlaysewski’s time organizing and running sound at underground cannabis events in Manhattan, explores the exciting but unsettling disconnect of being the architect of your own experience, physically present but acutely aware of the manufactured nature of the event, and the ever-present reality of mortality.
“We were originally going to call the album Future Ghosts, but I thought it was too grim,” says Wlaysewski. “Future Snacks came out of that idea of planning for a party, creating an experience, but then underneath that there’s the creeping sense that it can all end at any time. In a way, we’re all future snacks.”
Elsewhere on Future Snacks, Late Cambrian dive head first into the metaverse, as the future-pop masterpiece “Sydney Sweeney” explores the horror of being terminally online, escaping reality and embracing the downward spiral. After three minutes of genre-bending synth-pop and biting lyrics skewering the endless scroll, the duo close the album with a heavily modulated, “It can’t be worse than last year, humanity says proudly: ‘Hold my beer…’”
Late Cambrian first formed over a decade ago after Wlaysewski and Hui met while working on set on an episode of Nurse Jackie. Almost immediately, the duo started writing and releasing music together, and released four LPs over the course of seven years. Now, with Future Snacks, Late Cambrian have built on the legacy that they have created, often taking inspiration from their own past works to inspire themselves in the present.
“Future Snacks started almost as an intellectual pursuit, trying to capture the feeling of a few of our earlier songs on something new,” says Wlaysewski. “It’s kind of like our past life meeting our current life,” adds Hui.
As for the future, there’s no telling what it may look like, but Late Cambrian are ready to provide the soundtrack.
Future Snacks is out September 23rd, 2022 via Mifflin Street Music.