JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates AC/DC co-founder Angus Young’s 71st birthday.
Throwback: Happy 58th Birthday, Celine Dion!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Celine Dion’s 58th birthday.
Throwback: Happy 62nd Birthday, Tracy Chapman!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Tracy Chapman’s 62nd birthday.
Throwback: Happy 64th Birthday, MC Hammer!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates MC Hammer’s 64th birthday.
New Audio: Rising Aussie Artist Tullara Shares a Lush, Feminist Anthem
Tullara is a Ramornie, Australia-born, Grafton, Australia-based indie pop and folk/roots rocker, whose 2017 debut EP, Better Hold On went on to win a Best EP Award at the 2017 Australian Roots Music Awards. Since then, the rising Aussie artist, who proudly adheres to a DIY ethos, which includes being self-managed, has amassed over 1,700,000 streams on Spotify.
She has opened for acclaimed and beloved Aussie acts like Xavier Rudd, The Waifs, Ocean Alley, Bernard Fanning and Paul Dempsey, Cold Chisel‘s Ian Moss, INXS‘ Andrew Farriss, The Dreggs, Jeff Lang, Troy Cassar-Daley and a lengthy list of others. She has also opened for international acts like Donavon Frankenreiter, Wallis Bird, The East Pointers and a list of others during their respective Australian tours. And adding to a growing profile, the rising Aussie artist has made a run of the global festival circuit, playing sets at Woodford Folk Festival, Queenscliff Music Festival, Goolaholla Festival, Artswell Festival, Robson Valley Music Festival, Cur LeCheile Festival, Umefolk, Floating Castle Festival and a growing list of others.
Building upon a growing national and international profile, Tullara will be releasing her highly anticipated full-length debut, Rebound this year. Recorded and produced in Vancouver, Rebound reportedly showcases a bold, genre-defying evolution of her sound that embraces modern pop and rock, while blending her introspective lyricism with catchy melodies and cutting, world-class, modern production.
Released earlier this year, the forthcoming album’s first single “I Don’t Believe in Giving Up” features looping, reverb-soaked electric banjo paired with lush electronics serving as a supple bed for the Aussie artist’s expressive delivery singing lyrics about self-value and self-determination. Drawing from Celtic folk and contemporary pop, the new single sonically brings rootsier Dido to mind while being a feminist anthem.
Throwback: Happy 77th Birthday, Michael Brecker!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 77th anniversary of the birth of Micheal Brecker.
Throwback: Happy 67th Birthday, Perry Farrell!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Perry Farrell’s 67th birthday.
Throwback: Happy Birthday — To Me!
Some song and brief thoughts on my 47th birthday.
Throwback: Happy 71st Birthday, Reba McEntire!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Reba McEntire’s 71st birthday.
Throwback: Happy 60th Birthday, Salt!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Cheryl “Salt’ James’ 60th birthday.
Throwback: Happy 69th Birthday, Oran “Juice” Jones
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Oran “Juice” Jones’ 69th birthday.
New Video: Sunglaciers Shares Meditative “Ballad for Eddy”
With the release of 2019’s Foreign Bodies, 2022’s Subterranea and 2024’s Regular Nature, Calgary-based JOVM mainstays Sunglaciers — founding duo Evan Resnik (vocals, guitar, synths, piano, sampling) and Mathieu Blanchard (drums, percussion, production) along with Nyssa Brown (vocals, guitar) and Kyle Crough (bass) — have firmly cemented a sound that blurs the boundaries between polished melodicism and opaque experimentation, auspicious romanticism and unbridled descent. Though anchored in the strange realties of our time, their songs are laced with a certain optimism through well-placed and well-calculated psych elements and vibrant rhythms.
The Calgary-based outfit’s highly-anticipated fourth album, Spiritual Content just dropped today through Mothland. The album sees the band further exploring the chiaroscuro depths of post-punk while simultaneously setting out to redefine their sound. Thematically, the album explores modern day life through allegorical songwriting, elevated by genuinely catchy melodies, resolute arrangements and stylish production.
Over the course of its breakneck 35-minute run, the album’s indie rock-meets-post-punk-tinged, nine songs capture fleeting yet endearing moments in time, their narrative bent, twisted and distorted into expansive and highly evocative soundscapes. The album is meant to layout like a psychedelic sequence where grooves dance and wiggle in and out, awaking feelings of wonder and awe, while also trigging emotions like bewilderment, fear and alienation.
The album sees Resnik and Blanchard turning to their bandmates Brown and Brougham along with acclaimed producer and multi-instrumentalist Chad VanGaalen (synths, vibraphone, electric piano and additional production) to flesh out the album’s material. The band also continued their collaborations with mixing/mastering engineer Mark Lawson and former Besnard Lakes‘ Richard White, who took on vinyl mastering duties.
Spiritual Content includes the Freedom of Choice-era Devo-inspired “Eye to Eye” the Heaven Up Here-era Echo and the Bunnymen, early The Cure and Gang of Four-like “Only Love” and the album’s latest single “Ballad for Eddy.”
“Ballad for Eddy” is a meditative sway of a tune, featuring brooding, undulating drum and percussion, gently buzzing synth bass and bursts of twinkling keys serving as a lush bed for Resnik’s dreamy and ethereal melody. Written to pay tribute to the legendary Eddy Grant, “Ballad for Eddy” lyrically touch upon youthful idealism, the search for connection and meaning amidst difficulty and strife. The result leaves the listener to wonder what role — if any — music can play in overcoming adversity.
Featuring footage shot and edited by the band’s Evan Resnik, the accompanying video captures life in the studio and on the road as a DIY band. And at the core of the video is a sweet nostalgia over going on a series of adventures that you and your friends/bandmates can only really understand. It’s a unique, difficult to explain relationship that becomes one of the most important of your life.
“I was struggling to come up with a concept for the video for ‘Ballad for Eddy’ and I came across these old tour clips,” the bands Evan Resnik explains. “We’ve been doing bigger cross-country trips around the US and UK in the last few years so there was a lot of footage. Most of it I forgot I had! It got me a little sentimental, reliving all these great experiences and moments that we’ve shared as a band. It reminded me that all the hard work is worth it for the friendship and camaraderie.
‘The song is inspired by Eddy Grant—who wrote ‘Electric Avenue’—and how tireless and dedicated to music he was. Sure, being in a band booking DIY tours, recording albums, and sleeping on couches and floors is hard. But we’re also really lucky for the opportunity, and the memories that come out the other side are priceless. I’m even more inspired by Eddy Grant when I think about how much harder it all was for him as a young person of colour in a foreign land. His life story is really interesting, you should check it out!”
New Audio: The Twilight Sad Returns with Bittersweet Yet Anthemic “Chest Wound to the Chest”
Scottish post punk outfit The Twilight Sad — currently, vocalist James Graham and multi-instrumentalist Andy MacFarlane — just released their long-awaited sixth album an first in seven years, It’s The Long Goodbye today through through Rock Action Records.
The origins of the album’s material can be traced back to 2016: Graham and McFarlane returned from the giddy “pinch yourself” high of a tour with The Cure to learn that Graham’s mother had been diagnosed with early onset frontotemporal dementia.
Roughly 80% of the album was written while Graham wrestled with the contrasts between the pure joys of his life — marriage, parenthood, a successful career — and the bitter cruelty of his mother’s decline, followed by her death.
Over the course of the next seven years, the album’s material was further developed with the London-based MacFarlane stockpiling musical ideas during COVID-19 lockdown, while exchanging words and sounds with Graham. The Cure’s Robert Smith, now a longtime close friend of the duo, provided invaluable input on the album’s demos and contributed guitar on “Waiting For The Phone Call,” mellotron on “Dead Flowers,” and six-string bass on “Back To Fourteen.”
“Then we had to piece together a band,” Graham says, now that the band is primarily centered on him and MacFarlane. Sometimes Arab Strap members David Jeans and Mogwai touring member Alex Mackay were recruited to play drums and bass respectively, with the album produced and recorded by the band’s MacFalane and addition production from Andy Savours at Willesden, UK-based Battery Studios, a location rich in The Cure history.
The end result may arguably be the most personal yet relatable album to date from a band whose portraits of bruised and battered humanity have helped to forge close ties with their audience. “In the past, I’ve used a lot of metaphors within my lyrics,” Graham says, “With this, there’s not as much. The record is heavily influenced by my mental health, grief and loss, and the need to be strong in positions where you’re not feeling it. It’s a very human story, I think – this is just my version of it. I feel that everybody goes through something like this. Everybody loses somebody. Everybody questions life.”
Graham adds, “To know that I’m saying things that connect with other people, that’s such a powerful thing. I want to be a relatable person that talks about things that can happen and give an opportunity for people to go, well you’re not alone. I want people to be able to listen to this record and hear that it comes from a place of raw emotion. The album is an opportunity to share my experience and move forward with my life.”
The album includes “Waiting For The Phone Call” featuring The Cure‘s Robert Smith, “Destined To Lose,” “Attempt A Crash Landing — Theme,” and the album’s fourth and latest single “Chest Wound to the Chest.”
“Chest Wound to the Chest” may arguably be the most Brit Pop-like song on the entire album. Sonically bringing Starsailor and Travis to mind (for me, least), the new single is anchored around the bittersweet longing for a dear one, who is no longer around.
New Audio: Boston’s Jonah Hiro Shares Dreamy, Lo-Fi “i gaze at mars”
Jonah Hiro is a Boston-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer, who specializes in a brand of bedroom psych pop informed by his obsession with blown out sounds, trippy and hypnotic soundscapes, paired with dreamy vocals.
Hiro released his debut EP, lost at sea earlier this year. The EP’s opening track “i gaze at mars” is a mind-bending and mesmerizing tune, featuring buzzing bass synths, blown out, skittering beats, twinkling keys as a lush, chilled-out bed for the Boston-based artist’s dreamy delivery. The result is a song that kind of reminds me of a lo-fi take on JOVM mainstays Tame Impala, GUM and POND while showcasing Hiro’s ability to craft a remarkably catchy hook.