'Indie Rock' Bands // p 3 of 4

Ryan Adams

David Ryan Adams (born November 5, 1974) is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, and poet. He has released 16 albums, as well as three studio albums as a former member of rock/alt-country band Whiskeytown.

In 2000, Adams left Whiskeytown and released his debut solo album, Heartbreaker, to critical acclaim. The album was nominated for the Shortlist Music Prize. The following year, his profile increased with the release of the UK certified-gold Gold, which included the hit single, "New York, New York". During this time, Adams worked on several unreleased albums, which were consolidated into a third solo release, Demolition (2002). Working at a prolific rate, Adams released the classic rock-influenced Rock N Roll (2003), after a planned album, Love Is Hell, was rejected by his label Lost Highway. As a compromise, Love Is Hell was released as two EPs and eventually released in its full-length state in 2004.

After breaking his wrist during a live performance, Adams took a short-lived break, and formed The Cardinals, a backing band that accompanied him on his next four studio albums. In 2009, after the release of Cardinology (2009), Adams disbanded The Cardinals and announced an extended break from music due to complications from Ménière's disease. The break-up of Ryan Adams & The Cardinals was also attributed to the death of Ryan’s childhood friend and active bass player Chris Feinstein in 2009. Chris was known to his friends and band-mates as “Spacewolf”. The following year, however, Adams resumed performing and released his Glyn Johns-produced thirteenth studio album, Ashes & Fire, in late 2011. The album peaked at No. 7 on the Billboard 200. In September 2014, Adams released his fourteenth album, Ryan Adams, on his own PAX AM label, and formed a new backing band, The Shining, to support the release.

In 2015, Adams released 1989, a song-for-song cover of Taylor Swift's album of the same name, and worked on up to eighty songs for an album influenced by his divorce from actress and singer-songwriter Mandy Moore. The album, Prisoner, was released in 2017.

In 2019, Adams announced three albums to be released that year. However, the release of these albums was cancelled after several women, including a minor, came forward with sexual misconduct allegations against Adams.

In addition to his own material, Adams has also produced albums for Willie Nelson, Jesse Malin, Jenny Lewis, and Fall Out Boy, and has collaborated with Counting Crows, Weezer, Norah Jones, America, Minnie Driver, Cowboy Junkies, Leona Naess, Toots and the Maytals, Beth Orton and Krista Polvere. He has written Infinity Blues, a book of poems, and Hello Sunshine, a collection of poems and short stories.

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Sam Prekop

Sam Prekop’s boundless imagination is guided by his strong sense of melody. For more than 25 years, as a solo artist or as part of The Sea and Cake, Prekop creates a singular sound inventive and warm. His distinctive vocals, guitar playing and work on modular analog synthesizers are inventive, delicate, and always bear his signature sense of melody. Comma finds Sam Prekop for the first time working extensively with beat programming, focusing his enveloping synthesizer pieces around a newfound rhythmic pulse.

Prekop’s creative process is a combination of preparation and improvisation. Writing sessions for Comma began with an open-ended exploration of sounds and textures from which the first fragments of songs would reveal themselves. The introduction of drum machines and additional synthesizer units to his modular setup shifted things in surprising new directions as he worked to bend them into more traditional pop song structures. Drum tracks and emergent rhythms provided the frameworks and narrative sketches to be fleshed out with lustrous widescreen synth pads and ribboning melodies. In approaching his writing with a completely open mind and letting himself be guided by the music, Prekop maintains a delicate balance between composition and chance, control and spontaneity. Comma embraces the analogue synthesizer’s often unpredictable nature, imbuing the record with a decidedly organic feel even while working within the relative rigidity of beat architectures.

Prekop’s wide-eyed sense of discovery guides his exploration of beat-driven music, pushing him to use rhythm as a narrative tool and to embrace electronic music’s romantic and emotional qualities. “Park Line” and “Circle Line” evoke the relentless forward motion of public transit and commuter routine, one propelled by juddering machine-drums, the other illuminated in glistening neon. “Summer Places” and title track “Comma” are utterly transportive in their intoxicating tropical futurism, aqueous electronic loops cascading over melodic percussion. “September Remember” is notable precisely for its lack of drum track, opening up the field of sound and obliterating all but the faintest after-echoes of skittering percussion in its astral melancholy. “Approaching” achieves an incredible depth of sound and feeling using minimal constituent parts, interlocking synth-lines revealing surprising new sonorities with every repetition. With Comma, Prekop compiles an incredible breadth of ideas into a surprisingly coherent sound-world.

Comma is Prekop’s modern minimal pop album that taps into the experimental heritage of the synthesizer. The album places Sam Prekop’s work squarely in the tradition of electronic music pioneers like Brian Eno and Yellow Magic Orchestra who brought together the unrestrained ambition of the avant-garde with the immediacy and accessibility of pop music.

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Shearwater

Shearwater is an American indie rock band from Austin, Texas, led by multi-instrumentalist and lead singer Jonathan Meiburg, a singer-songwriter. The band's music is notable for its imagery based in nature, cerebral yet intimate melodic songs, as well as Meiburg's vocals.

Early years
In 1999, Okkervil River band members Jonathan Meiburg and Will Sheff founded Shearwater as an outlet for quieter songs on which they were collaborating. The band's name comes from the shearwater, a tribe of seabirds related to petrels and albatrosses. Meiburg, who holds a master's degree in geography with a focus on ornithology, picked the name mostly for the sound of the word.

Shearwater's debut, The Dissolving Room, introduced Kim Burke on upright bass; shortly after, drummer and vibraphonist Thor Harris joined the band. The addition of multi-instrumentalist Howard Draper plus tours and support dates with The Mountain Goats, Akron/Family and Blonde Redhead brought them exposure. Shearwater continued to produce music under this lineup in Everybody Makes Mistakes (2002) and Winged Life (2004), as well as the Thieves EP (2005).

In May 2006, Shearwater released Palo Santo, their fourth full-length album and last to be released on Misra Records, to much acclaim from critics and fans. The song "Red Sea, Black Sea," was featured as an NPR Song of the Day. NPR's Stephen Thompson subsequently named Palo Santo as the best album of 2006. Although Sheff appeared as an instrumentalist for the recording of Palo Santo, the album's songs were composed and sung entirely by Meiburg, as the band felt that the songs that Meiburg had written were best suited for the project. Sheff then left the band to concentrate on other projects.

Matador Records
Midway through the tour for Palo Santo, the band was notified by Misra Records that they would be unable to continue to distribute Shearwater's music. Meiburg personally emailed the owner of Matador Records, Gerard Cosloy, who subsequently signed Shearwater to a multi-album deal. On April 10, 2007, Shearwater released a two-disc edition of Palo Santo which featured five re-recorded tracks, remastered versions of the other six tracks, as well as a bonus disc of outtakes from the original sessions. Meiburg had felt that the original Palo Santo suffered from "murkiness", and could be improved upon in the studio.

Matador Records released the album Rook on June 3, 2008. On the tour that followed, Shearwater opened for Clinic and later Coldplay. Additional touring accompanists were added at that time: Jordan Geiger of Hospital Ships and Minus Story (on cornet, synthesizer, and percussion) and Kevin Schneider of Black Before Red (on keyboard, bass, and guitar) replaced Howard Draper.

On February 23, 2010, Shearwater released their sixth album, The Golden Archipelago, which the band produced with John Congleton. The band toured extensively behind the record in 2010, with an international tours in the spring (with Wye Oak and Hospital Ships opening) and additional U.S. dates in the fall (with special guest Damien Jurado). The Golden Archipelago concluded the band's Island Arc trilogy, a project also encompassing Palo Santo and Rook.

On November 6, 2010, the band released an instrumental album, Shearwater is Enron, via Bandcamp. The album was recorded in the spring of 2010 and includes live material recorded at a performance under the pseudonym "Enron." It introduces some textures not traditionally associated with the band, such as electronic drum tracks and squalling guitar rock. Members of Wye Oak and Hospital Ships assist on the live tracks.

Sub Pop Records
In February 2012, a new full-length album called Animal Joy was released. It was Shearwater's first record with Sub Pop Records. The record signaled a new chapter for the band after the conclusion of the Island trilogy, as the album included more rock elements. Following the release of the album, the band opened for the North American tour of Sharon Van Etten.

In 2013, Fellow Travelers was released on Sub Pop, a Shearwater album consisting entirely of cover songs by bands that Shearwater had toured with. Each band that was covered on the album was also invited to play on the album, under the condition that they could not play on their own song.

The band's last record Jet Plane and Oxbow was released on Sub Pop January 22, 2016. Frequent collaborator, producer Danny Reisch, worked on the album, as did composer Brian Reitzell, Wye Oak's Jenn Wasner, drummer Cully Symington, Howard Draper, and regular band members Jesca Hoop, Lucas Oswald, and Abram Shook.

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Shook Twins

Shook Twins is a folk music group originally from Sandpoint, Idaho and currently based in Portland, Oregon, formed in 2004. The nucleus of the band consists of identical twin sisters Katelyn (guitar, mandolin, banjo, glockenspiel, telephone microphone) and Laurie Shook (banjo, guitar, tambourine, golden egg).

Their style of music incorporates acoustic instrumentation including banjo, guitar, mandolin, glockenspiel, and their signature golden egg. Twin harmonies layered on top of acoustic and electric instrumentation are coupled with Laurie's beatboxing and inventive use of a looping machine, and Katelyn's repurposed telephone microphone. The band members have performed with or opened for Ani DiFranco, Gregory Alan Isakov, Greensky Bluegrass, Mason Jennings, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Sarah Jarosz, Laura Veirs, Trace Bundy, Jonatha Brooke, Indigo Girls, Walk Off the Earth, Crooked Still, Jason Webley, John Craigie, Elephant Revival, The Head and the Heart, The Infamous Stringdusters, and many more.

They have toured coast to coast performing at festivals including High Sierra Music Festival, Oregon Country Fair, Hulaween, Northwest String Summit, Summer Camp Music Festival, Electric Forest, Lightning in a Bottle, Joshua Tree Music Festival, Arise Music Festival, Four Corners Folk Festival, Fayetteville Roots and more.

“I love the harmonies of the Shook Twins, the dreamlike songs that seem somehow permeated by the American Folk tradition, without actually being part of it. They make music that twines through your soul the way vines cover an abandoned shack in the woods.” – Neil Gaiman, New York Times Best-Selling Author

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Soccer Mommy

Sophia Regina Allison (born May 27, 1997), better known by her stage name Soccer Mommy, is an American singer-songwriter and musician from Nashville, Tennessee.

History
Allison was born in Switzerland in the late 1990s and grew up in Nashville, Tennessee. She attended Nashville School of the Arts, a specialty high school where she studied guitar and played in the swing band.

She first picked up a guitar at age six and started making music. She began posting home-recorded songs to Bandcamp as Soccer Mommy in 2015, during the summer when she was about to leave for college at New York University (where she studied music business at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development). While in college, Allison played her first show as Soccer Mommy, at the community art space Silent Barn in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and shortly after landed a record deal with Fat Possum. She dropped out of college after two years in 2017 to return to Nashville and pursue her music career.

Her first full-length album as Soccer Mommy, For Young Hearts, was released in 2016 on Orchid Tapes. Her second album, Collection, was released in 2017 on Fat Possum Records. Her debut album proper, titled Clean, was released on March 2, 2018.

She has toured with Stephen Malkmus, Mitski, Kacey Musgraves, Jay Som, Slowdive, Frankie Cosmos, Liz Phair, Phoebe Bridgers and others. She joined Paramore and Foster the People on the first half of their 2018 summer tour. Soccer Mommy opened for Vampire Weekend in the fall. She also opened for a few shows for Wilco in the fall of 2019. In February 2020, she played at one of Bernie Sanders's presidential rallies and endorsed his 2020 presidential campaign.

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Sparklehorse

Sparklehorse was an American indie rock band, led by singer and multi-instrumentalist Mark Linkous. Sparklehorse was active from 1995 until Linkous' 2010 death by suicide.

Sparklehorse's first album, Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot (1995), was a modest college radio success. In 1996, while touring Europe with Radiohead shortly after the album's release, Mark Linkous consumed a combination of anti-depressants, valium, alcohol, and heroin in a London hotel room. Unconscious and with his legs pinned beneath him for almost fourteen hours, the resulting potassium build-up caused his heart to stop for several minutes after his body was lifted up. The ensuing surgery almost caused him to lose the use of both legs and as a result he needed to use a wheelchair for six months and he required dialysis for acute kidney failure.

Good Morning Spider (1998) was recorded following this incident. Critics have conjectured that Linkous's brush with death inspired the sombre tone of the album, though Linkous stated that much of the material on GMS had already been written. One song that did result from it is "St. Mary", which is dedicated to the nurses at the eponymous hospital in Paddington where Linkous recuperated.

In 1999 Sparklehorse performed at the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto. 2001 saw the release of It's a Wonderful Life, featuring appearances by Tom Waits, PJ Harvey, Bob Rupe, Nina Persson and Dave Fridmann. Whereas much of Vivadixie... and Spider were recorded solely by Linkous on his Virginia farm, the new album was a more collaborative work. Linkous expressed his satisfaction with the overall sound of It's a Wonderful Life, which was engineered by Joel Hamilton, while also claiming that he would have preferred to include more experimental and instrumental material.

On September 25, 2006, Sparklehorse released their fourth album, Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain, collaborating with Danger Mouse, Christian Fennesz, and Steven Drozd. This album featured the radio release "Don't Take My Sunshine Away" and a remastered version of "Shade And Honey", which Linkous originally wrote for Alessandro Nivola to sing in the 2003 movie Laurel Canyon, as well as a virtually unchanged re-release of "Morning Hollow," the bonus track from It's a Wonderful Life.

In 2008, Sparklehorse recorded a cover of the song "Jack's Obsession," from Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas for the official compilation album Nightmare Revisited. In 2009, Sparklehorse teamed up with Danger Mouse and David Lynch in the project Dark Night of the Soul.

In 2009, Linkous teamed up with electronic ambient-music artist Christian Fennesz to create In the Fishtank 15, a wafting album EP of experimentation and dreamy atmospherics. The last four live shows, Linkous did together with Fennesz during a European tour that was held during October 2009.

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Sun Kil Moon

Sun Kil Moon is an American folk rock act from San Francisco, California, founded in 2002. Initially a continuation of the defunct indie rock band Red House Painters, Sun Kil Moon is now the primary recording moniker of vocalist and guitarist Mark Kozelek. The project is named after the Korean super flyweight boxer Sung-Kil Moon.

Following the delayed release of Red House Painters' final studio album, Old Ramon (2001), vocalist and guitarist Kozelek began recording new material under the name Sun Kil Moon with bandmates Anthony Koutsos (drums) and Jerry Vessel (bass), alongside Geoff Stanfield and Tim Mooney. The resulting album, Ghosts of the Great Highway, was released in 2003 to widespread critical acclaim. The project's second studio album, Tiny Cities (2005), was composed entirely of Modest Mouse cover songs.

In 2008, the band released its third studio album, April. Recorded as a three-piece by Kozelek, Koutsos and Stanfield, the album was well received and featured guest vocal appearances from noted indie rock musicians Will Oldham and Ben Gibbard.

Inspired by classical guitar music, Kozelek recorded Sun Kil Moon's fourth studio album, Admiral Fell Promises (2010), as a solo act, and continued to record mostly alone on its follow-up, Among the Leaves (2012). In 2013, Kozelek released three studio albums under his own name before releasing Sun Kil Moon's sixth studio album, Benji, in February 2014, to widespread critical acclaim and increased exposure, with the band releasing their seventh studio effort, Universal Themes, in 2015. Sun Kil Moon's eighth studio album, Common as Light and Love Are Red Valleys of Blood, was released in February 2017, which was followed by their ninth studio album, This Is My Dinner, in November 2018.

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The Bees

The Bees (known in the United States as A Band of Bees) are an English band from Ventnor on the Isle of Wight. Although their sound is generally classified as indie rock or psychedelic rock, the band have a colourful range of styles and influences, such as 1960s garage rock, country, reggae and jazz.

The Bees have released four albums: 2002's Mercury Prize-nominated Sunshine Hit Me, its 2004 major label follow-up Free the Bees (which was recorded at Abbey Road Studios), and 2007's Octopus. Their fourth album, Every Step's A Yes, was released on 11 October 2010.

The first two albums featured songs that have been used in British television advertisements, which are partially responsible for the band's recognition: Sunshine Hit Me's "A Minha Menina", a cover of an Os Mutantes track, appeared in a Citroën car commercial and also an advert for Magners Irish Cider, whilst "Chicken Payback" and "Wash in the Rain", both from Free the Bees, were incorporated in adverts for Sure Deodorant for Men and Sainsbury's,respectively. The song was also used to introduce the Northern comic character Stan Hibbert on Sky's Soccer AM. "Chicken Payback" is also used as the 'bed' track for The Radcliffe and Maconie programme on BBC Radio 6 Music. The official video for "Chicken Payback" featured the band in an arcade-type dance game machine in a Japanese video arcade. The lead character, apparently a rock and roll dance diva, dances so quickly that his shoes catch fire. The song was used in a 60-second flagship advert produced by Karmarama commissioned by Age UK to launch the charity's 2011 "Thank You" campaign. It was performed by 81-year-old Joy Graham accompanied by a jazz orchestra and was directed by BAFTA winning director Becky Martin of Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show.

The Bees supported Oasis in 2005, and Madness in December 2007 during their Christmas tour, and supported Paul Weller in the UK on selected dates of his "Winter Arena Tour". In 2010, The Bees performed a set for The Sun, covering "We Speak No Americano" and playing songs from their album, Every Step's A Yes. Paul Butler appeared on stage at the Glastonbury Festival in 2010 with Devendra Banhart, after performing two sets of their own.

In 2011, The Bees supported Fleet Foxes on their UK tour.

One of the influences the Bees have cited is the mind-altering drink called ayahuasca. Butler came to drink this plant medicine with shamans in Peru after being introduced to it by Banhart. "The whole thing has brought a lot of joy into my life. I think this kind of cleansing helps with your natural rhythm. Everyone has a song within them or a rhythm that is individual and personal only to you … and this kind of activity unlocks that."

In 2018, Fletcher and Parkin announced that they had formed a new group, 77:78, and that their debut album Jellies was set to be released through Heavenly Recordings on 5 July.

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The Mother Hips

The Mother Hips is a rock band based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Tim Bluhm (vocals/guitar), Greg Loiacono (guitar/vocals), Isaac Parsons (bass) and Mike Wofchuck (drums) met in 1990 while attending California State University-Chico, living off campus in Bradley Hall. They jammed and played some original songs at a few parties (once billed as Pippi Longstocking and the Trunk-of-Funk), but soon Isaac and Mike were lured away by the prospect of playing Led Zeppelin and Jane's Addiction covers at big parties as the rhythm section of the Keystones. Meanwhile, Tim and Greg played acoustic guitars and sang harmonies to songstress Ali Weiss in the mellow trio Ali and the Cats.

These bands played throughout 1990, but in early 1991, Tim, Greg, Isaac and Mike got back together and got serious about being a rock band. It didn't take long to step up from parties in Chico, CA to local bars and dance clubs like LaSalles and Juanita's. They began playing original songs rather than covers. The band released Back to the Grotto in February 1993. It was produced by the band with Bay Area-based musician/producer Paul Hoaglin (who would subsequently replace Parsons on bass upon his departure in 2002).

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The National

The National is an American rock band from Cincinnati, Ohio, formed in 1999. The band consists of Matt Berninger (vocals), Aaron Dessner (guitar, piano, keyboards), Bryce Dessner (guitar), Scott Devendorf (bass) and Bryan Devendorf (drums).

Founded by Berninger, Aaron Dessner, and Scott and Bryan Devendorf, The National released their self-titled debut album, The National (2001), on Brassland Records, an independent record label founded by Dessner and his twin brother, Bryce Dessner. Bryce, who had assisted in recording the album, soon joined the band, participating as a full member in the recording of its follow-up, Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers (2003).

Leaving behind their day jobs, the National signed with Beggars Banquet Records and released their third studio album, Alligator (2005), to widespread critical acclaim. The band's fourth and fifth studio albums, Boxer (2007) and High Violet (2010), increased their exposure significantly. In 2013, the band released its sixth studio album, Trouble Will Find Me, which was nominated for Best Alternative Music Album at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards. In 2017 the band released the album Sleep Well Beast, which won the Grammy award for Best Alternative Music Album at the 60th Annual Grammy Awards. Their eighth studio album, I Am Easy to Find, was released on May 17, 2019.

Four of the band's albums were included on NME's 2013 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

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The Shins

The Shins are an American indie rock band formed in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1996. The band's current lineup consists of James Mercer (vocals, guitar, songwriter), Jon Sortland (drums), Mark Watrous (guitar, keyboards), Casey Foubert (guitar), Yuuki Matthews (bass, keyboards), and Patti King (keyboards). The band is based in Portland, Oregon.

The band was formed by Mercer as a side project to Flake Music, who were active from 1992 to 1999. The band released two 7" singles and a full-length album When You Land Here It's Time to Return on Omnibus Records and were touring with Modest Mouse when they were signed to Sub Pop Records. The band's first two records, Oh, Inverted World (2001) and Chutes Too Narrow (2003) performed well commercially and received critical acclaim. The single "New Slang" brought the band mainstream attention when it was featured in the 2004 film Garden State. Consequently, the band's third album, Wincing the Night Away (2007), was a major success for the group, peaking at number two on the Billboard 200 and earning a Grammy Award nomination.

Following this, the Shins signed to Columbia Records and Mercer parted ways with the entire original lineup, deeming it "an aesthetic decision". Following a near five-year hiatus, Port of Morrow, the band's fourth studio album, was released in 2012. Their fifth album, Heartworms, was released in March 2017.

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The War On Drugs

The War on Drugs is an American indie rock band from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, formed in 2005. The band consists of Adam Granduciel (lyrics, lead vocals, guitar), David Hartley (bass guitar), Robbie Bennett (keyboards), Charlie Hall (drums), Jon Natchez (saxophone, keyboards) and Anthony LaMarca (guitar).

Founded by close collaborators Granduciel and Kurt Vile, The War on Drugs released their debut studio album, Wagonwheel Blues, in 2008. Vile departed shortly after its release to focus on his solo career. The band's second studio album Slave Ambient was released in 2011 to favorable reviews and a lengthy tour which proceeded.

The band's third album, Lost in the Dream, was released in 2014 following extensive touring and a period of loneliness and depression for primary songwriter Granduciel. The album was released to widespread critical acclaim and increased exposure. Previous collaborator Hall joined the band as its full-time drummer during the recording process, with saxophonist Natchez and additional guitarist LaMarca accompanying the band for its world tour. Signing to Atlantic Records, the six-piece band released their fourth album, A Deeper Understanding, in 2017, which won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album at the 60th Annual Grammy Awards.

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Tindersticks

Tindersticks are an English alternative rock band formed in Nottingham in 1991. They released six albums before singer Stuart A. Staples embarked on a solo career. The band reunited briefly in 2006 and more permanently the following year. The band recorded several film soundtracks, and have a long-standing relationship collaborating with French director Claire Denis.

History

Staples, Boulter, Fraser, Macauley and Hinchliffe, all former members of Asphalt Ribbons, formed the band in 1991. The final line-up for the Old Horse mini-LP (1991) was: Stuart Staples (vocals), Dave Boulter (organ and accordion), Neil Fraser (guitar), Dickon Hinchliffe (guitar and strings), Al Macauley (percussion and drums), and John Thompson (bass). Mark Colwill was recruited when Thompson left the Asphalt Ribbons, but it is not known if he played any gigs under the Asphalt Ribbons name. They then changed their name to Tindersticks after Staples discovered a box of German matches on a Greek beach.

Tindersticks started recording demo tapes in 1992, and formed their own label Tippy Toe Records to release their first single, "Patchwork", in the same year.

Their self-titled first and second albums established their signature sound and received widespread critical acclaim. Their live performances, often augmented by large string sections and even, on occasion, a full orchestra, were well received. The live album The Bloomsbury Theatre 12.3.95 is a recording of one such concert. By the time of the third album, Curtains, however, it was clear that a change of direction was called for.

The fourth album, Simple Pleasure, lived up to its title with a series of snappy, direct songs influenced by soul music. The female backing vocals on several tracks, and the respectful cover of Odyssey's "If You're Looking for a Way Out", signalled the band's wish to move towards lighter, more soulful material. However, the inner sleeve's documentation of the number of takes each track went through was evidence that the band continued to adopt a painstaking approach to recording.

The fifth album, Can Our Love..., continued the band's soulful direction, in particular evidence on the tender "Sweet Release" and in the nod to The Chi-Lites in the title of "Chilitetime".

The sixth album, Waiting for the Moon, was more stripped down and introspective in nature, particularly on the harrowing "4.48 Psychosis" (based on the play of the same name by the British playwright Sarah Kane) and "Sometimes It Hurts". Only the bouncy "Just a Dog" lightened the otherwise melancholy mood of the album.

In 2005, Staples embarked on a solo career and there was resultant speculation that the band had split. Staples has so far produced two solo albums, Lucky Dog Recordings 03-04 and Leaving Songs. The title of the second album, and Staples' notes on it, indicated that change was in the air: "These are songs written on the verge of leaving the things I loved and stepping into a new unknown life, both musically and personally. I was always aware that these songs were the end of something, a kind of closing a circle of a way of writing that I started so long ago and I knew I had to move on from."

In September 2006, the band played a one-off concert at London's Barbican Centre, performing their second album in full with a nine-member string section and two brass players, including former collaborator Terry Edwards on trumpet.

Staples later acknowledged that this show, while being a happy triumph, was also "tinged with sadness of the knowledge that the six of us had made all the new music we were going to make together." However, it also rekindled his determination to make a new album.

In 2007, a stripped-down line-up of three of the original band, Staples, Boulter and Fraser, spent time writing and recording in a newly equipped studio in Limousin, France. They were joined by Thomas Belhom on drums and Dan McKinna on bass, with Ian Caple engineering. The resulting album, The Hungry Saw, was released on Beggars Banquet in April 2008. Tindersticks played a number of other European dates during the summer festival season and also announced a winter 2008 European tour.

In 2010, the eighth studio album Falling Down a Mountain was released on 4AD/Constellation Records with a changed band line-up, with Earl Harvin replacing Belhom on drums and David Kitt, a solo artist in his own right, joining the band on guitar and vocals.

The group's ninth studio album The Something Rain was released in February 2012. The following tours in spring, summer (festival concerts) and autumn, showed the band now touring in their again reduced 5-member core line-up (Stuart Staples, David Boulter, Neil Fraser, Dan McKinna and Earl Harvin), supported at selected gigs by Terry Edwards on horns.

In October 2013, after missing the band's 20th anniversary the years before, the band released their tenth studio album, the retrospective Across Six Leap Years, containing ten re-recorded songs from their back-catalog and from Stuart A. Staples solo album period. In the autumn of 2013 they toured several European capital cities in their Across Six Leap Years anniversary tour, supported by Terry Edwards on saxophone and horns and Gina Foster on backing vocals.

In 2016 they released their eleventh studio album The Waiting Room, followed by an extensive tour in February to May 2016.

Their 12th studio album, No Treasure But Hope, was released in later 2019 to positive reviews, with a tour planned for 2020. Ahead of these tour dates, the band released the four-song See My Girls EP along with a video for the title track.

U.S. and European tour dates were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which is why the core band focused on working on a new album during 2020. In January 2021, the band announced their thirteenth regular album Distractions, which was released on February 19th and charted at number 15 in the Offizielle Deutsche Charts' Album Top 100 in Germany.

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TV On The Radio

TV on the Radio is an American indie rock band from Brooklyn, New York, formed in 2001. The bands core members include Tunde Adebimpe (vocals, loops), David Andrew Sitek (guitars, keyboards, loops), Kyp Malone (vocals, guitars, bass, loops) Jaleel Bunton (drums, vocals, loops, guitars) and Gerard Smith (bass, keyboards, loops) until his death in 2011. Other contributors have included David Bowie, Nick Zinner of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, Kazu Makino of Blonde Redhead, Martin Perna of Antibalas, Colin Stetson, and Katrina Ford of Celebration. The group has released several EPs including their debut Young Liars (2003), and five studio albums: Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes (2004), Return to Cookie Mountain (2006), Dear Science (2008), Nine Types of Light (2011), and Seeds (2014).

The first release from TV on the Radio (initially just founding members Adebimpe and Sitek) was the self-released OK Calculator (the title being a reference to Radiohead's album OK Computer). They were later joined by Kyp Malone, and released the Young Liars EP in 2003. This was followed by the full-length Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes which earned the band the 2004 Shortlist Music Prize. They released a second EP, New Health Rock, later that year.

Their second album, Return to Cookie Mountain, leaked in early 2006 and garnered pre-release praise from Pitchfork Media before its official release in July overseas. U.S. and Canadian release was in September on Interscope. Spin magazine named Return to Cookie Mountain its Album of the Year for 2006. The album features guest appearances from David Bowie, Omega Moon, Celebration, Dragons of Zynth, Martin Perna and Stuart D. Bogie of Antibalas, Blonde Redhead, Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Nick Zinner. Bowie contributed back-up vocals on the song "Province". In promotion of the album, the band performed " Wolf Like Me" on the Late Show with David Letterman, which has garnered over 2 million views on YouTube. During the U.S. tour, the band performed a few covers with Bauhaus singer Peter Murphy and Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor.

The band's third album, Dear Science, was released September 23, 2008 on Interscope. It was made available for streaming on their Myspace page and subsequently leaked onto the internet on September 6, 2008. The album was named the best album of 2008 by Rolling Stone, The Guardian, Spin magazine, The A.V. Club, MTV, Entertainment Weekly, the Pitchfork Media's readers poll as well as the Pazz and Jop critic's poll. It was also named the second best album of 2008 by NME and the fourth best album of 2008 by Planet Sound.

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Whitney

Whitney is an American band from Chicago, which formed in 2015 and is signed to Secretly Canadian. The band was formed shortly after the breakup of members Max Kakacek and Julien Ehrlich's band Smith Westerns in late 2014. They released their debut album, Light Upon the Lake, in June 2016 and have toured internationally.

Career
After the breakup of Smith Westerns in 2014, guitarist Kakacek joined with drummer Julien Ehrlich, who also played drums for Unknown Mortal Orchestra, to form Whitney. As roommates, the duo shared songwriting duties while Ehrlich became the main vocalist. Initially the band featured members of the Touching Voids, Ehrlich's previous band. In June 2015, the band made the song "No Matter Where We Go" available digitally through the Lead Riders label. It included former Smith Westerns member Ziyad Asrar on rhythm guitar, Malcolm Brown on keyboards, bassist Josiah Marshall and brass player Will Miller.

During 2015, the band played around thirty shows, mostly in support of other artists. This included Tobias Jesso Jr. who got the band in contact with Jonathan Rado, the producer of the album. In September of that year, they joined Rado at his Los Angeles home studio to record. In January 2016 the band released the single "No Woman" supported by a video and toured Europe in anticipation of the new album. They also featured on the 2016 edition of the SXSW festival.

On June 3, 2016 the album Light Upon the Lake was released. In support they embarked on their first headlining European tour.

In 2017, the band announced a new demos album with a previously unreleased song, "You and Me".

In March 2017 Whitney released two new songs, "You've Got a Woman" and "Gonna Hurry (As Slow as I Can)". Both are covers.

In an interview published in April 2019 the band mentioned their second album, due in 2019, will deal with "fear, confusion, and substance abuse". They shared a song titled "FTA" from the album in June 2019 and released the lead single “Giving Up” on June 6.

The album "Forever Turned Around" was released on August 30, 2019.

Style
Ehrlich outlined the approach to songwriting as "when we were writing for Whitney, we were doing what we wanted to do, the music was really freeing". Paul Lester in the Guardian described the band as "think Bon Iver, with elements of folk and country, only given a Chicago soul makeover". They cite Levon Helm and Allen Toussaint as inspiration.

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