Hurricane Bells :: Monsters

Hurricane bells used to hang from the tops of seaside trees, heavy bells designed to ring out only when a storm approached. Fittingly, Tonight Is The Ghost, the debut album from the band Hurricane Bells, is a moody affair. A mix of somber undercurrents and chiming guitars, the album is at once plaintive and triumphant, bathed in echo and reverb. Yet there’s a looseness, hope, and soulfulness in its melancholic tempest; a late night thundershower with a new day on its heels.

Hurricane Bells is a new project from Steve Schiltz, singer and guitarist of Longwave for nearly ten years. After touring the better part of last year around Longwave’s fourth album Secrets Are Sinister – a critical success and arguably the best of the band’s career – Schiltz set up shop to create a new project with little else than his MacBook and an Mbox. He wrote, played, recorded, and mixed every note himself, arranging what would become Tonight Is The Ghost. Some songs were fully crafted within the past 18 months, while others are newly architected from pieces written throughout his years as a Read the full story

Screaming Females – “Bell”

“Jack White, Dinosaur Jr., and Amy Ray are all fans. Here’s why you should be, too.  There are many bands that could use a boost from Jack White, but Screaming Females aren’t one of them. The New Brunswick, NJ-based trio have been doing just fine building up a cult following on their own, thank you very much.

Since forming in 2006, the band has released three albums, played around 300 shows, and turned everyone from Dinosaur Jr. (who they’re opening for in New York on June 25) to the Indigo Girls’ Amy Ray into vocal fans. While there’s only one screaming female in the group (the electrifying Marissa Paternoster, who just might be our generation’s official guitar hero), the name hints at the power and fury that comes out when this band hits play; there are spitting bass notes (from King Mike), pulsing drum lines (courtesy of Jarrett Dougherty), scorching shout-sung lyrics, and incendiary guitar solos. It sounds totally familiar yet completely new—the fact that bands as diverse as Weezer, Sleater-Kinney, The Slits, and Spoon are cited as the band’s influence tells you everything and Read the full story

Holly Golightly started her musical career as a founding member of all girl garage band Thee Headcoatees, aBilly Childish/Thee Headcoats splinter group in 1991. She spent a good few years as a Headcoatee before making her debut solo record, The Good Things, in 1995. Where the Headcoatees sound was a blend of girl-group sounds and three-chord garage-rock, with all the original songs coming from the pen of Billy Childish, Holly’s solo sound is more a blend of pre-rock electric blues, folk, soul and less frantic elements of rock & roll.

Presented by Five Three Dial Tone Records and Eat This City

Laura Marling :: Alpha Shallows
The Middle East :: Blood

Laura Marling is an English folk singer. The twentysomething small town girl – Reading, United Kingdom just outside of Eversley to be exact – sings about love, lust and romance, the futility of religion, self-loathing and human psychology. She began playing the guitar at the age of three, first being taught the blues by her father in front of the family fire, and has been in thrall to the songs and lyrics of the likes of Neil Young, Bob Dylan, James Taylor and John Mayall ever since.

The Middle East are a unique band out of Townsville in Queensland, Australia. They use various influences from post-rock to folk to ambient, creating a magical, hypnotic sound featuring varying instrumentation and gentle, addictive guitar hooks.

Jaguar Love is an American indie rock band from Portland, Oregon / Seattle, Washington that formed in 2007. Jaguar Love is one of two bands that have sprung out of the 2007 break-up of experimental hardcore band The Blood Brothers (the other being Past Lives, comprising ex-singer Jordan Blilie, ex-drummer Mark Gajadhar, ex-bassist Morgan Henderson, and original Blood Brothers guitarist Devin Welch).

“Kenny Tudrick sits in the bar drinking a Pabst. Wisps of his cigarette smoke twist leisurely around his face, and, for a split-second, in the ashy evening light coming through the window, he looks sullen as all hell. He’s wearing a tightly fitted blue-jean jacket over a black T-shirt that reads, in near-irony, “Tough Guy Pizza” and, along with his pal and bandmate Nick Lucassian, professional painter’s pants complete with hammer hoops. His Gram Parsons shag is perfect, though, and his ’70s country-rockstar facial hair shows wayward whiskers, suggesting neglect, maybe a couple hard days. And it is becoming a hard day’s night: He and Lucassian, who’s sporting a skullcap and flannel shirt, were up at 7 this morning painting the interior of “some house” in Grosse Pointe, and they could just as well be a couple workin’ stiffs here, blowing off steam over beers and shots at their preferred east side drinking hole. But all of a sudden Tudrick’s grin reboots the tone. He’s psyched about his new rock ‘n’ roll combo, Cannon.” Read the full article by Brian Smith of Metro Times HERE.

The Windish Agency presents a Movement after party featuring some of the scene’s heaviest hitters: Simian Mobile Disco (DJ Set), Matthew Dear, Michael Mayer and Alter Ego (Live).

=================================

Simian Mobile Disco is an English production and remix team. Formed from the ashes of Simian in 2005 its members are James Ford and Jas Shaw. In addition to his work with Simian Mobile Disco, James Ford is a producer and has worked for bands such as the Arctic Monkeys, Peaches and Klaxons. Read the full story

Sybris :: Oh Man!

Sybris has been around. In the background of your photos, slightly out of focus. Hiding in the shadows of the side stages of Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits and Virgin Festivals but feeling most at home in a smokey bar on a tiny stage.

Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby have individually been making distinctive and original music for decades, he a British iconoclast and wild-card survivor of the early Stiff Records, she as a long-standing heroine of the New York pop scene. For the last three years they have been touring in the US, UK and Europe. In 2008 the self-styled `two piece rock ‘n’ roll group’ released their debut album “Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby”, which enjoyed rapturous critical acclaim in the USA and has been the subject of a four star review in Mojo. They have also recently recorded a new double A side single, “Teflon Wok” c/w “Bobblehead Doll”.

Read the full story