serpentwithfeet’s GRIP

YEAH YEAH YEAHS // WOLF REMIXED by BOY HARSHER [SINGLE, MAY 2023]

Dream Wife's remix of Don't Ask Me Twice by Porridge Radio from the expanded edition of Every Bad

Anohni and the Johnsons - I Am A Bird Now

Secretly Canadian

2005

Track of the day // Faye Webster - Lego Ring (feat. Lil Yachty)

From the album Underdressed at the Symphony, out March 1st on Secretly Canadian.

Faye Webster - “But Not Kiss”

Photo by Michelle Mercado

Romance, especially in our modern age, can be an exhausting endeavor that you really need to want. All of the second-guessing behind someone’s true intentions, the situationships that can unfold, subsequent disappearing acts and ghostings -- who has the energy for that? But it doesn’t have to be like that either, and that’s where the idealistic longing to keep trying comes into play. “But Not Kiss”, a new standalone single and the first new music from Faye Webster since 2021′s acclaimed I Know I’m Funny haha, puts the Atlanta songwriter right in the middle of those conflicted feelings. “I want to sleep in your arms, but not kiss / I long for your touch, but don't miss / Don't want to regret any of this,” her voices leers over outstretching twang in longing to have it both ways, for self-preservation’s sake. It’s the stammering after thinking those things out loud that keeps the struggle of the emotional mind firmly without a solution, though. Stuck in the middle, Webster gets that it’s nice to have somebody, but sometimes you’re better off being at arm's length, too.

Faye Webster’s “But Not Kiss” single is available now on Secretly Canadian.

Hatchie Paradise Rock Club, Boston, MA 8 November 2022

Porridge Radio — Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky (Secretly Canadian)

Photo by Matilda-Hill-Jenkins

Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To The Sky by Porridge Radio

A waterslide takes you downstream in a giddy froth of running water. A diving board allows you to plummet from terrifying heights. A ladder to the sky lets you rise again, step by step. Porridge Radio’s latest album is all about the vertiginous swoop of ups and downs; of sudden, exhilarating rushes of energy; of equally abrupt descents into obsessive paranoia. It is, possibly, a response to the band’s dizzying rush to the top of the pile with 2020’s Mercury Prize-nominated Every Bad, followed by the dead stop of the pandemic and lockdown. Or not. In any case, it’s full of extremes, musical and otherwise.

This is the most extroverted-sounding album you could make about themes that are fundamentally inward-looking. Singer and bandleader Dana Margolin repeatedly drops the most self-lacerating observations into swelling, anthemic choruses. It’s like she’s whispering her deepest, most horrifying secrets into the maw of an Arcade Fire song. 

Take “Rotten,” for instance, which can’t help but evoke our recent COVID-19 experiences. “This year, the taste of apples changed,” sings Margolin, in her sharp, stirring alto, a voice that always seems to be overcharged and fairly spilling over with emotion. Yet, after she recounts the effects of illness, the soreness of muscles, the well-meaning admonitions to rest and eat well, the odd specificity of walking on the balls of her feet, Margolin lets the chorus fly. “Outside, outside, outside, it’s cold,” she sings, bolstered by buoyant currents of supporting voices, crashing guitars and rumbling, galloping drums. “Inside, inside, inside I can be alone,” she continues, as a circling mass of keyboard sounds swirls around her head. The song conveys both brokenness and giddy, heady healing, zooming from one pole to the other with febrile speed. 

In a similar fashion, “Birthday Party” starts in a smolder and blows into flame. Margolin performs here and elsewhere in a rhythmic chant, spitting out the words with increasing feeling as her songs progress. “I don’t want to be loved,” starts as a statement, but when repeated becomes a moan and then a shriek. The tension is always unbearable and always building. 

It is easy to focus on Margolin, whose voice and presence are so distinctive, but the rest of the band is good, too. They very ably fill out the sound so that it grows without becoming heavy; even as its loudest, Porridge Radio sounds like it could float right off into the sky. Drummer Sam Yardley is particularly fine, putting a punch and kick into these battering sounds, while keyboardist Georgie Stott elicits a dreamy, romantic swell that might remind you of Beach House. Margolin herself unleashes the grand guitar gestures that evoke big rock bands like U2 and, yes, Coldplay. 

But neither of these bands reveals anywhere near as much of the internal as Porridge Radio. “Cut off my shoes instead of taking them off, cut off my hands because they’re itching so much,” confides Margolin in “The End of Last Year.” Margolin taps into an obsessive, idiosyncratic vein of madness so personal that you’re tempted to look away—and then somehow transmutes it into rock triumph. She sounds nothing at all like P.J. Harvey, so it feels cheap to compare the two, but they have this in common. 

Jennifer Kelly

New Video: SUUNS Share Sludgy and Shoegazy "Wave"

New Video: SUUNS Share Sludgy and Shoegazy "Wave" @suunsband @JoyfulNoiseRecs @pitchperfectpr

Montréal-based experimental rock outfit SUUNS— founding members Ben Shemie (vocals, guitar) and Joe Yarmush (guitar, bass) with Liam O’Neill (drums) — can trace their origins back to 2007: Shemie and Yarmush got together to make some beats, and it quickly evolved to a few songs. The duo was joined by O’Neill and Max Henry (keys) to complete the band’s first lineup. The band signed to Secretly…

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Riot Fest 2022 Preview: 4 Reasons to Come Early, 1 to Stay Late

Bob Vylan

BY JORDAN MAINZER

This year’s Riot Fest offers a lot in the way of postponements from previous years, whether Nine Inch Nails’ headlining set 1 year in the making or My Chemical Romance’s triumphant return to the stage 2 years late. But there are plenty of great bands to check out before the sun sets. I’ve highlighted 4 bands worth showing up early for and 1 that will make you want to stick around. Oh, and even if you’re not going, you can buy some or all of each band’s music on Bandcamp.

FRIDAY

Boston Manor, 1:30 PM, Radicals Stage

Next month via SharpTone Records, British rock band Boston Manor will follow up their breakout record Glue and last year’s Desperate Times, Desperate Pleasures EP with Datura, their biggest but bleakest album yet. Recorded with Hundred Reasons guitarist, vocalist, and producer Larry Hibbitt, Datura reflects the time-warped days of the pandemic, nights filled with drinking too much and mornings filled with the repercussions of the nights. Lead singer Henry Cox immediately rattles off a series of stark observations on the alien opener “Datura (Dusk)”: “There’s a fire in the cark park / I see it smoldering / Heard my neighbor kill his own dog for going in the bins.” The music of Datura mirrors a similar pervasive sense of dread, harsh noise enveloping the otherwise dreamy guitars of closer “Inertia” and synth bounce of “Crocus”. The rest of the band--lead guitarist Mike Cunniff, rhythm guitarist Ash Wilson, bassist Dan Cunniff, and drummer Jordan Pugh--provide storming instrumentation alongside the pulsating electronics of “Floodlights on the Square” and synth glitches of instrumental “Shelter From The Rain”. 

Live, Boston Manor should play at least a couple of the singles from Datura, such as the reflective “Foxglove” and the dramatic “Passenger”, while also taking the Glue victory lap they weren’t able to experience at the height of the pandemic.

Bob Vylan, 4:15 PM, Rebel Stage

The liner notes on the deluxe version of Bob Vylan’s debut album We Live Here start with the words, “Recorded in 2019, mastered in 2020 and relevant today!” You could follow the same formula for all songs from the UK punk rap duo. Even the song that begins with an order to kill the now late queen may be updated on their current tour to use King Charles’ name instead. Bob Vylan’s music lives in constant urgency. Their second album, the phenomenal Bob Vylan Presents the Price of Life (Ghost Theatre), begins with a sample of a speech from Guyanese historian and activist Walter Rodney: “People in their day-to-day lives will know what it means to be living in a state of economic crisis.” Considering the ever-present ills of colonialism, an unprecedented cost of living and housing crisis, and even some food banks closing on Monday for Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral, Bob Vylan speak from their own experiences and on behalf of others. With a combination of driving guitars, propulsive beats, shouted choruses, and limber flow, the duo target everything from the surveillance state (“Phone Tap”) and big pharma (“Drug War”) to the blissfully ignorant (“Turn Off The Radio”) and fake progressives (“Bait the Bear”). “They say I’m violent,” laughs Bobby Vylan, before declaring, “The whole country’s fucking violent.” Fighting fire with fire out of survival, they’ll bring the riot to Riot Fest in true spirit rather than just aesthetic.

SATURDAY

Alexisonfire, 4:30 PM, Radicals Stage

They reunited 7 years ago, but it wasn’t until this June that Canadian post-hardcore greats Alexisonfire actually released a new record, their first in 13 years. Otherness (Dine Alone) strikes a delicate balance between remaining faithful to what makes the band tick while exploring new genres and styles, like the 8-minute folk, psychedelia, prog metal closer “World Stops Turning”. While they might not whip that one out during their hour-long Riot Fest set, Alexisonfire should churn through Otherness highlights like “Sweet Dreams of Otherness” and the surprisingly soft “Sans Soleil”. Of course, they’ll play classics from albums like Crisis and Old Crows / Young Cardinals, but the Otherness songs should fit in nicely in a live set.

Read our review of Otherness.

SUNDAY

Zola Jesus, 2:50 PM, Riot Stage

On Zola Jesus’ 6th album ARKHON (Sacred Bones), Nika Roza Danilova bares all. The record was born out of a state of vulnerability--heartbreak, change, writer’s block--with Danilova reaching out to collaborators earlier than ever in the creative process, including producer Randall Dunn and percussionist Matt Chamberlain. The result is the most outwardly expressive Zola Jesus album to date. On “The Fall” and “Desire”, Danilova straight up belts, dynamically over a shuffling groove on the former and raw-like over acoustic piano on the latter. “Lick my wounds like you can taste them,” she asks of a partner on “Desire”, making them tangibly consider the end of a relationship. Importantly, though the record is immensely personal, a product of intense alienation, Danilova finds common ground with the listener, finding subtle, clever ways to express the universality of her themes. She sings around syncopated samples of a Slovenian folk choir on “Lost”, the voices individually disjointed but unified in spirit. Her vocals intertwine with Louise Woodward’s chamber accompaniment on the cinematic and thrilling “Dead and Gone”, and with sinewy synths and cascading drums on “Into the Wild”. Ultimately, she speaks for all of us, wondering “How can love be misguided when your heart learns to beat?” ARKHON is forever truthful and empathetic.

Though Zola Jesus is somewhat embedded within the dark wave or industrial realms, her set should be a comparatively experimental outlier within Riot Fest, a can’t-miss at the festival for those looking for something different.

Photo by David Black

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, 7:10 PM, Roots Stage

The firmly rooted NYC three-piece are back, the band responsible for such Aughts indie rock classics as Fever to Tell and It’s Blitz! bringing their beer swilling, microphone swallowing live show to the Riot Fest grounds. More importantly, they’ve got a brand new album out at the end of the month. Cool It Down (Secretly Canadian) is, remarkably, only their fifth album in over two decades of existence, and judging by the early singles, it might be another gem in the band’s catalog. Expect to hear plenty of it on Sunday night, including slow-burning anthem “Spitting Off The Edge of the World” and the building, orchestrated “Burning”.

RobMoro TV | Marlon Williams - 'Easy Does It'

RobMoro TV | Marlon Williams – ‘Easy Does It’

New Zealand singer-songwriter Marlon Williams presents a new single titled ‘Easy Does It’, from his forthcoming album “My Boy”. The track reels with serene guitar notes. while Williams’ vocals glides over the bluegrass sound. Speaking loosely on the imagery used by director Martin Sagadins, Williams described the scene as; “the boys, sweaty from the days digging and dancing, launching into the…

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Stella Donnelly review for The Weekend Australian

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Burning (from Cool It Down out Sept. 30th) The second single from Yeah Yeah Yeahs for their new album Cool It Down out next month on Secretly Canadian!

Yeah Yeah Yeahs — Cool It Down. 2022 : Secretly Canadian.

! listen @ Bandcamp ★ buy me a coffee !

Here We Go Magic - "Hard To Be Close" (Official Video)

Track of the day // serpentwithfeet - Damn Gloves ft. Ty Dolla $ign & Yanga YaYa

From the album Grip, out February 16th on Secretly Canadian.