Oakland garage rockers The Helltones bring a beachy, modern doo-wop vibe to their new album Medusa (out Nov. 17), drawing inspiration from psychedelic surf, soulful Americana & retro rhythm and blues; its harmonized backing vocals, sun-kissed hand claps, grooving organ and overdriven guitar create a cinematic album about love, addiction, picking fights, making up and navigating adulthood while maintaining your sanity.
Portland, Maine indie-noir singer-songwriter Whitney Walker’s new single “Love Keeps No Record of Wrongs” carries a dark folk-rock melancholy weight. It’s a direct quote from the priest at his cousin’s wedding while Walker was dealing with the pain of an unfaithful fiancée. “Nobody would accuse me of being perfect except god,” sings Walker over Crooked Fingers style fingerpicked guitar and Colley’s somber bass clarinet.
“I don’t believe in God,” says Walker, “but I believe something’s out there. This is a divine intervention song. I’ve been far from perfect. I’ve been emotionally unavailable to people, and it took me a long time to figure that out.”
“A Night in the Woods” is a perfect pick for the spooky season as the protagonists of the song, The Bridgewater Astral League, were written about like the graverobbing punks of the ’80s by Terricloth, and brought to life by vocalist Brittany Luna”
Cleverly letting each song speak for itself, the band marches through a variety of genres (e.g. synth-rock, hard rock and shoegaze, just to name a few) but are held together through Brandsness and Warren’s virtuosic riffs and fiery back-and-forth vocals. Ripping guitars serve elsewhere to punctuate brooding synth-rock and even morph into earth-shaking shoegaze on album highlight, “Your Love Is A Phantom” (out 10/26).
NYC artist Boris Pelekh (NME, Brooklyn Vegan, Consequence) is getting ready to release his debut EP I See It Now (out June 24), a collection of gentle indie-folk meditations with psychedelic undertones, soul-baring vocals and intimate incantations of love restored. A seasoned veteran of the New York music scene and ace guitarist for Gogol Bordello, Pelekh has toured around the world, sharing stages with iconic artists spanning from Aretha Franklin to Philip Glass to Wu-Tang Clan.
Los Angeles composer/producer Andrew Yarovenko is preparing to release his debut solo LP, Start Somewhere, an evocative instrumental journey through disillusionment in the face of modern manufactured mass culture and the coercive incentives and rituals of American society, due out May 20. READ MORE…