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'Women Who Rock' Bands // p 1 of 7

Darren's favorite bands for his Song Of The Day filtered by Women Who Rock
502 Bands
Alabama Shakes

Alabama Shakes

“We took our time to write this record, and I’m really glad we did,” says Brittany Howard, lead singer and guitarist of Alabama Shakes, about the band’s new album Sound & Color. “We were able to sit down and think about what’s exciting to us, explore all the things we wanted to on our first album. This record is full of genre-bending songs—it’s even harder now when people ask, ‘What kind of band are you?’ I have no clue.”

Sound & Color is the eagerly anticipated follow-up to the Shakes’ 2012 debut Boys & Girls, which earned the group three Grammy nominations, including a nod for Best New Artist. The gold-certified album’s breakthrough paved the way for the Shakes—Howard, guitarist Heath Fogg, bassist Zac Cockrell, drummer Steve Johnson, and touring keyboard players Ben Tanner and Paul Horton—to become one of the most celebrated live acts in the world, as they delivered unforgettable performances everywhere from Saturday Night Live to the main stages of such festivals as Bonnaroo and Glastonbury.

“There was definitely a slight wave of pressure after that success,” says Fogg, “but everyone was really on the same page about letting that pass and making the record that we wanted to make, trying to be creative and free and not limit ourselves.”

The album’s twelve songs reveal a band honed by years on the road, and drawing from a wide range of influences. The bluesy groove of “Shoegaze” or the garage-rock freak-out on “The Greatest” give way to the psychedelic space jam “Gemini.” The gently swaying, chiming title song opens the album with what Howard calls “more of a visual thing, I think of this whole scene going on,” then explodes into the urgent, tightly-coiled funk of “Don’t Wanna Fight.” Long instrumental intros and passages create hazy atmosphere, and then the intensity of Howard’s vocals snaps everything back into riveting focus.

She explains that there were a few specific recordings that were touchstones for Sound & Color. “The Superfly soundtrack, Gil Scott-Heron’s music and how minimal it could be, David Axelrod—not so much wanting to sound like them, but all of their attention to small details. With ‘Gemini,’ I thought about how the Temptations used to write pop songs, but then got really far out on ‘Cloud Nine’ or ‘Psychedelic Shack.’ I imagined myself in the situation of the African-American groups in the ‘70s, when synthesizers had just come out and they were making all of this moody stuff.”

Source AlabamaShakes.com

 'Over My Head'

'Over My Head'
Saturday, March 16, 2019

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 'Future People'

'Future People'
Tuesday, January 8, 2019

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Aldous Harding

Aldous Harding

An artist of rare calibre and intensity, Aldous Harding does more than sing. Her body and face a weapon of theatre, Harding dances with steeled fervor in and through an omnium gatherum of emotions.

As a Bunraku puppet transfigures from graceful maiden into gnashing, black-eyed demon, so Harding spins through sinister torch songs, gentle laments and eerie odes. Her debut release with 4AD Party (produced with the award-winning John Parish; PJ Harvey, Sparklehorse) introduces a new pulse to the stark and unpopulated dramatic realm where the likes of Kate Bush and Scott Walker reside.

Igniting interest with her eponymous debut album released just two years ago, Aldous Harding quickly become a name murmured on many lips, known for her charismatic combination of talent, tenacity and shrewd wit. The album drew attention and accolades from some of the most illustrious corners of the music industry, receiving 4 stars in MOJO and Uncut, while UK blog The 405 hailed her a “toweringly talented song writer”.

Comprising a formidable clutch of songs, 2017’s Party sees Harding shape-shift through a raft of roles: chanteuse, folk singer and balladeer - all executed with her twisted touch of humour, hubris and quiet horror. In other words, she’s having a good time. Stretching her limbs with playful cunning and steely fervor; every note, word and arrangement posed with intellect and inventiveness.

First single “Horizon” is a lover’s call to arms, shockingly powerful for its brutal simplicity and rawness of feeling, love and loathing colliding to devastating effect. “Aldous Harding repeats the line as a mantra, as a truth, as a reality. It's as if the gift of life is right here, with all its beauty and its limitations”, said NPR.

Renowned for the captivating state of possession she occupies in live performance, Aldous Harding has won crowds the world over playing alongside Deerhunter, Frankie Cosmos and Perfume Genius, as well as to hoards of eager crowds at Great Escape, Golden Plains, SXSW and more. Aldous’ 2017 touring schedule spans Europe, the US and the United Kingdom for much of the year.

Source AldousHarding.com

 'Passion Babe'

'Passion Babe'
Monday, June 19, 2023

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 'Elation'

'Elation'
Tuesday, January 5, 2021

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 'Hunter'

'Hunter'
Tuesday, August 13, 2019

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 'Titus Groan'

'Titus Groan'
Tuesday, March 26, 2019

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 'Imagining My Man'

'Imagining My Man'
Saturday, February 9, 2019

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Alice Boman

Alice Boman

Alice Boman is a singer-songwriter from Malmö, Sweden.

She recorded her first EP, Skisser (which means "sketches" in Swedish) in her bedroom, never intending it to be publicly released. She treated the recordings like demos, and sent them to a studio with the intention of getting the songs professionally recorded. However, she said that "the guy at the studio liked [the demos] so much that he sent them to Adrian Recordings, and they wanted to release them." The EP came out on Adrian Recordings on the 22nd of May 2013, and it has since been re-released on limited edition vinyl. An EP containing remixes of Skisser tracks 'Waiting' and 'Skiss 2' was digitally released in November 2013. It contained remixes by 1987, NATTEN, Summer Heart, Kalter and PAL.

A video for 'Skiss 3' was released in January 2014, directed by Henric Claesson at Studio Pop.

In June 2014, Alice Boman released her second EP called EP II. The video for the first single ”What” was filmed and directed by Studio Pop. The Fader premiered the video on April the 9th, 2014.

Boman released her single ”Dreams” in September 2017. It earned praise by Billboard (magazine), The New York Times and Gorilla vs. Bear among others. The video was filmed in Vårhallarna, Sweden.

Alice Boman’s music has been featured in a wide range of TV-shows and films, such as Suits, Paper Towns, Transparent. and The Resident.

Source Wikipedia

 'Red Eyes'

'Red Eyes'
Wednesday, May 25, 2022

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 'Be Mine'

'Be Mine'
Monday, May 2, 2022

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 'What'

'What'
Saturday, January 16, 2021

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 'Over'

'Over'
Sunday, May 19, 2019

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 'All Eyes On You'

'All Eyes On You'
Tuesday, April 9, 2019

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Alice Phoebe Lou

Alice Phoebe Lou

Alice Phoebe Lou (born 19 July 1993) is a Berlin-based South African singer-songwriter. She has released three EPs and four studio albums. In December 2017 her song "She" from the film Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story was included on the Oscars shortlist for Best Original Song. Since 2019 she had also been active in her side project Strongboi.

She has released four studio albums to date — Orbit (2016), Paper Castles (2019), Glow (2021) and Child's Play (2021) — alongside two live albums and various singles.

Early life

Lou spent her childhood in Kommetjie on west coast of the Cape Peninsula in South Africa and attended a Waldorf school. Her parents are documentary filmmakers. She took piano and guitar lessons as a child. When she was 14 years old she was fond of trance music and started to take photographs from concerts, sometimes even getting paid for them. In 2010 she spent her summer holiday in Paris living first with her aunt but soon moved to live with a friend and started earning money by fire-dancing.

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 'Something Holy'

'Something Holy'
Thursday, February 23, 2023

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Angel Olsen

Angel Olsen

Angel Olsen (born January 22, 1987) is an American singer-songwriter and musician from St. Louis, Missouri who lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

Early life and education

Angel Olsen was born on January 22, 1987 in St. Louis, Missouri. At age three, Olsen was adopted by a foster family that had cared for her since shortly after her birth. The difference in years between her and her parents left an impression. "Because there are so many decades of difference between us, I became more interested in what their childhood was like," she says of her parents, both of whom still live in St. Louis. "I fantasized about what it was like to be young in the ’30s and ’50s, more so than other kids my age." Olsen explained that "my mother just has this capacity for children."

Despite early adolescent aspirations to be a "pop star", her interests later shifted in high school. Olsen became more introverted, regularly attending punk rock and noise music shows at the Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center and the Creepy Crawl as well as Christian rock shows throughout the city. She began learning the piano and guitar and writing her own music. At the age of 16, she joined a local band called Good Fight, self-described as "a meeting of early No Doubt and punk rock." Two years after graduating from Tower Grove Christian High School, Olsen moved to Chicago.

Career

After releasing her first EP, Strange Cacti, and a debut studio album, Half Way Home, on Bathetic Records, Olsen signed with Jagjaguwar, ahead of her first full-band record, Burn Your Fire for No Witness, which was released on February 17, 2014. The closing track of the album, "Windows", was featured in the final episode of the Netflix original series 13 Reasons Why in 2017.

Olsen's third studio album, My Woman, was released on September 2, 2016. In a review for Consequence of Sound, critic Ciara Dolan described the album as a "startling record of unimpeachable strength and honesty", while Pitchfork's Jenn Pelly described it as "her best record yet".

In addition to her work with Bonnie "Prince" Billy and the Cairo Gang, Olsen has collaborated with a number of other notable figures of American indie rock, including Tim Kinsella of Cap'n Jazz, LeRoy Bach of Wilco and Cass McCombs. Her collaboration with Kinsella and Bach, as well as with Chicago poet Marvin Tate, resulted in the album Tim Kinsella Sings the Songs of Marvin Tate by Leroy Bach Featuring Angel Olsen which the group released on Indianapolis label Joyful Noise Recordings on December 3, 2013.

Olsen's fourth studio album, All Mirrors, was released on October 4, 2019 to critical acclaim. Laura Snapes of Pitchfork described the album as "breathtaking", and a "strong wind" that blows in and "leaves you undone", while Alexis Petridis of The Guardian described it as "challenging and intriguing", and Luke Saunders of Happy Mag described it as a change of "theatric transcendency", when compared to her previous releases.

Olsen plays a vintage Gibson S-1 guitar from 1979.

On August 28, 2020, Olsen released her fifth studio album Whole New Mess through Seasick Records.

Source Wikipedia

 'Lark'

'Lark'
Sunday, December 13, 2020

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Aoife O'Donovan

Aoife O'Donovan

Aoife O'Donovan (/ˈiːfə/ EE-fə, Irish: [ˈiːfʲə]; born November 18, 1982) is an Irish-American singer and Grammy award-winning songwriter. She is best known as the lead singer for the string band Crooked Still and she also co-founded the Grammy Award-winning female folk trio I'm with Her. She has released three critically acclaimed studio albums: Fossils (2013), In the Magic Hour (2016), and Man in a Neon Coat: Live from Cambridge (2016), as well as multiple noteworthy EPs, including Blue Light (2010), Peachstone (2012), In the Magic Hour: Solo Sessions (2019), and Bull Frog's Croon (and Other Songs) (2020). She also spent a decade contributing to the radio variety shows Live from Here and A Prairie Home Companion. Her first professional engagement was singing lead for the folk group The Wayfaring Strangers.

O'Donovan has performed with the Boston Pops Orchestra, the Kansas City Symphony, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Louisville Orchestra, and the Utah Symphony Orchestra. In 2012, she sang on most of the tracks on the album Be Still by the jazz group the Dave Douglas Quintet, featuring trumpeter Dave Douglas. During the summer of 2013, she toured with Garrison Keillor and his A Prairie Home Companion Radio Romance Tour. She also performed at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark 2014. In summer 2017, she joined Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home "Love and Comedy" Tour.

She has performed, recorded and collaborated with a large variety of acclaimed musicians including Ollabelle, Karan Casey and Seamus Egan, Jerry Douglas, Jim Lauderdale, Darol Anger, Sarah Jarosz, Sara Watkins, Christina Courtin, Chris Thile (Nickel Creek, Punch Brothers), Noam Pikelny (Punch Brothers), Edgar Meyer, Stuart Duncan, Greensky Bluegrass, Kronos Quartet and Yo-Yo Ma. Her songwriting has also led her to be featured in films and television and came to the attention of Alison Krauss, who recorded Aoife's song "Lay My Burden Down" on her album Paper Airplane (2011 Rounder Records) and is used in the film Get Low (2010 Sony Pictures). She has had songs placed on True Blood (HBO) and Private Practice (ABC).

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 'Lucky Star'

'Lucky Star'
Friday, May 20, 2022

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BALTHVS

BALTHVS

Hailing from Bogotá, Colombia. BALTHVS can be seen as spearheading a musical psychedelic revolution in their home country, where it's conservative roots have historically shunned counterculture. But their sound is not about freaking out, rather it's about flowing and grooving gently amidst the general anger and chaos of 21st century society. After all, the band doesn't know anything else, it was formed 2 months before the rise of the COVID pandemic, making them one of the first pandemic bands out there. They are not strangers to the digital realm, embracing it fully, while retaining time tested values such as live musicianship, steady songwriting and journeying into different musical traditions from all over the world. The trio composed by Balthazar Aguirre (Guitar) Johanna Mercuriana (Bass) and Santiago Lizcano (Drums) explore the limits of funk, disco, dream pop, vaporwave, soul, r&B and world music while enveloping everything with their innate psychedelic essence.

So sit back, relax, and melt down the cosmic grooves

MACROCOSM is BALTHVS' first LP. The name implies the diverse nature of the music, the substantial genre blending throughout the record and the general psychedelic vibe of the songs. It's a cross continental trip across time, styles, languages and rhythms.

Source spotify.com

 'Johanna's Dream'

'Johanna's Dream'
Thursday, February 11, 2021

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Beabadoobee

Beabadoobee

Beatrice Laus[a] (born 3 June 2000), known professionally as Beabadoobee (/biːbəduːbiːˈ/; stylized in all lowercase), is a Filipino-born British singer-songwriter. Since 2018, she has released four extended plays under the independent label Dirty Hit including Lice (2018), Patched Up (2018), Loveworm (2019) and Space Cadet (2019). Her debut studio album, Fake It Flowers, was released in October 2020.

Beabadoobee served as a supporting act for labelmates The 1975 during several legs of their Music for Cars Tour, as well as American singer Clairo during her Immunity Tour. She was nominated for the Rising Star Award at the 2020 Brit Awards, and was presented with the Radar Award at the 2020 NME Awards. Beabadoobee was also predicted as a breakthrough act for 2020 in an annual BBC poll of music critics, Sound of 2020.

Early life

Laus was born in Iloilo City, Philippines on 3 June 2000 and moved to London with her parents at the age of 3. She grew up in West London listening to original pinoy music as well as pop and rock music from the 1980s. While she was a teenager, she listened to indie rock including Karen O, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Florist and Alex G. She was expelled from Sacred Heart High School before completing her thirteenth year at Hammersmith Academy. Laus spent seven years learning to play the violin, before getting her first guitar second-hand at the age of 17. She taught herself how to play the instrument using YouTube tutorials. She was inspired by Kimya Dawson and the Juno soundtrack to start making music.

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 'How Was Your Day'

'How Was Your Day'
Monday, October 19, 2020

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Beach House

Beach House

Beach House is an American musical duo formed in Baltimore, Maryland in 2004. The band consists of vocalist and keyboardist Victoria Legrand and guitarist, keyboardist, and backup vocalist Alex Scally.

Their self-titled debut album was released in 2006 to critical acclaim and has been followed by Devotion (2008), Teen Dream (2010), Bloom (2012), Depression Cherry (2015), Thank Your Lucky Stars (2015), B-sides and Rarities (2017), 7 (2018), and Once Twice Melody (2022).

2004–2007: Formation and Beach House

Vocalist and organist Victoria Legrand, who graduated from Vassar College in 2003, and guitarist Alex Scally, who graduated from Oberlin College in 2004, formed the band in 2004 after meeting in Baltimore's indie rock scene, producing music composed largely of organ, programmed drums, and steel guitar. Of the origins of the band name Scally said: "We’d been writing music, and we had all these songs, and then there was that moment where you say ‘what do we call ourselves?’ We tried to intellectualize it, and it didn’t work. There were different plant-names, Wisteria, that kind of thing. Stupid stuff. But, once we stopped trying, it just came out, it just happened. And it just seemed perfect." In an interview with Pitchfork, Legrand addressed their being a two-member status thus: "It's a way to challenge ourselves: What do you do when it's just the two of you? ... One of the reasons this has been such a fulfilling experience for me is that with two people, it's so much easier to achieve things that feel exciting and new."

In August 2006, their song "Apple Orchard" was featured on a Pitchfork MP3 mixtape. By October 2006 the band's self-titled debut album, Beach House, was released through Carpark Records, and was ranked 16th on Pitchfork's Best Albums of that year. The album was recorded on a 4-track over a two day period in Scally's basement.

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 'Real Love'

'Real Love'
Wednesday, May 11, 2022

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Big Thief

Big Thief

Big Thief is an American indie rock band with folk roots based in Brooklyn, New York, United States. Its members are Adrianne Lenker (guitar, vocals), Buck Meek (guitar, backing vocals), Max Oleartchik (bass), and James Krivchenia (drums). All four members of Big Thief attended the Berklee College of Music, but only formed a group after each had graduated.

The band's first album, Masterpiece, was released on Saddle Creek Records on May 27, 2016.

On April 4, 2017, Big Thief premiered a new single, "Mythological Beauty," on NPR. The following day, the band released the single's official video and confirmed that the song would appear on their next LP, Capacity. The full album was released on June 9 via Saddle Creek.

In 2019, Big Thief released two albums and several singles. In the lead up to their third album, U.F.O.F., the band released three singles, ''U.F.O.F", "Cattails", and "Century." The album was released on May 3, 2019. The band's fourth album, Two Hands, was later released on October 11, 2019. Its release was preceded by the singles "Not" and "Forgotten Eyes." Both albums received critical acclaim.

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 'Mary'

'Mary'
Thursday, October 1, 2020

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 'Great White Shark'

'Great White Shark'
Sunday, May 24, 2020

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Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday

Eleanora Fagan (April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959), better known as Billie Holiday, was an African American jazz singer with a career spanning nearly thirty years. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. She was known for her vocal delivery and improvisational skills.

After a turbulent childhood, Holiday began singing in nightclubs in Harlem, where she was heard by the producer John Hammond, who commended her voice. She signed a recording contract with Brunswick in 1935. Collaborations with Teddy Wilson yielded the hit "What a Little Moonlight Can Do", which became a jazz standard. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Holiday had mainstream success on labels such as Columbia and Decca. By the late 1940s, however, she was beset with legal troubles and drug abuse. After a short prison sentence, she performed at a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall, but her reputation deteriorated because of her drug and alcohol problems.

She was a successful concert performer throughout the 1950s with two further sold-out shows at Carnegie Hall. Due to personal struggles and an altered voice, her final recordings were met with mixed reaction, but were mild commercial successes. Her final album, Lady in Satin, was released in 1958. Holiday died of cirrhosis on July 17, 1959.

She won four Grammy Awards, all of them posthumously, for Best Historical Album. She was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1973. Lady Sings the Blues, a film about her life, starring Diana Ross, was released in 1972. She is the primary character in the play (later made into a film) Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill; the role was originated by Reenie Upchurch in 1986, and was played by Audra McDonald on Broadway and in the film. In 2017 Holiday was inducted into the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame.

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 'Autumn in New York'

'Autumn in New York'
Friday, November 22, 2019

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Björk

Björk

jörk Guðmundsdóttir (/bjɜːrk/; Icelandic: pjœr̥k]; born 21 November 1965) is an Icelandic singer, songwriter, composer, actress, record producer, and DJ. Over her four-decade career, she has developed an eclectic musical style that draws on a range of influences and genres spanning electronic, pop, experimental, classical, trip hop, IDM, and avant-garde music.

Born and raised in Reykjavík, she began her music career at age 11 and first gained international recognition as the lead singer of the alternative rock band the Sugarcubes, whose 1987 single "Birthday" was a hit on US and UK indie stations and a favorite among music critics. After the band's breakup, Björk embarked on a solo career in 1993, coming to prominence as a solo artist with albums such as Debut (1993), Post (1995), and Homogenic (1997), while collaborating with a range of artists and exploring a variety of multimedia projects.

Several of Björk's albums have reached the top 20 on the Billboard 200 chart, the most recent being Vulnicura (2015). Björk has had 31 singles reach the top 40 on pop charts around the world, with 22 top 40 hits in the UK, including the top 10 hits "It's Oh So Quiet", "Army of Me", and "Hyperballad". She is reported to have sold between 20 and 40 million records worldwide as of 2015. She has won the 2010 Polar Music Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Music in recognition of her "deeply personal music and lyrics, her precise arrangements and her unique voice." Björk was included in Time's 2015 list of the 100 most influential people in the world. She was ranked both sixtieth and eighty-first in Rolling Stone's 100 greatest singers and songwriters lists respectively. Björk also won five BRIT Awards, and has been nominated for 15 Grammy Awards.

Outside her music career, Björk starred in the 2000 Lars von Trier film Dancer in the Dark, for which she won the Best Actress Award at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, and was nominated for Academy Award for Best Original Song for "I've Seen It All". Her 2011 album Biophillia was marketed as an interactive app album with its own education program. Björk has also been an advocate for environmental causes in her home country Iceland. A full-scale retrospective exhibition dedicated to Björk was held at the New York Museum of Modern Art in 2015.

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 'Venus as a Boy'

'Venus as a Boy'
Thursday, February 28, 2019

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Bodywash

Bodywash

On the song “Sunspots”, Bodywash vocalists Chris Steward and Rosie Long Decter sing, “When everything is so serene, it’s hard to see/We miss the cracks that open up beneath our feet.” It’s the perfect distillation of the Montreal band’s new full-length record, Comforter, both in mood and sound. Long Decter and Steward’s harmonies rise over an icy sheet of programmed drums and a fog of synth and guitar, deceptively peaceful on the surface, hiding the roiling chaos underneath.

Bodywash was formed in 2014 when Chris Steward and Rosie Long Decter began jamming in a basement rehearsal room at McGill University. Bonding over a shared affection for shoegaze and dream pop, the two found an immediate chemistry. “There is an excitement that comes from having people of diverse backgrounds and personalities in one room,” says Steward, “trying to make something beautiful together.” Tom Gould joined soon after on bass, and they recorded an EP in 2016.

When it came time to make a full-length album, Bodywash enlisted Nigel Ward to record the LP. However, the road to Comforter wasn’t easy. The recording process spanned two years and five recording studios, with the band constantly rewriting, reworking, and rearranging songs, until every note and tone felt exactly right. Drummer Ryan White joined the band mid-way through the recording process. “The album evolved as we were evolving as a band,” says Long Decter. “You can hear us grow and change with each song.” The final product was mixed by Taylor Smith and Austin Tufts of the band Braids, and was mastered by Evan Tighe.

“The joy of experimentation is everything,” says Steward. “The whole thing is alchemic, trying to combine a bunch of ingredients together to make gold, or whatever gold is.” Long Decter agrees. “We’re perfectionists,” she says, “but it comes from a place of feeling.”

The result is the perfect insomniac’s record, a late-night album of emotional extremes, from the enveloping warmth of shoegaze to the stark electronics of 90s trip-hop and IDM. Guitars blur in and out, melodies vanish and appear, synths blinking like lights in a fog. It’s an album of obsessive detail buried in a blur of reverb. It draws you in and pushes you away in equal measure.

Album standout “Twins” began as a thirty-second guitar loop, with Steward adding layer after layer of synths. It careens from despair to an exhilaration, a manic scream of a song that reaches a full catharsis. “We deal a lot in sonic moments of anxiety,” says Long Decter, “but the goal is to live in that space between extremes, between worry and comfort.” The band’s restless experimentation can best be seen on the shimmering “With Heat.” Initially a guitar-driven indie rock tune Steward wrote for a contest, the song took on new life when Long Decter broke the song into spare parts on a computer, slowing it down, changing the key, adding layer after layer until something entirely new emerged, and the song took its final form.

The album closes with the epic “Another Plane.” Built on a combination of krautrock-style rhythms and breakbeats with a haze of guitars and synths hovering above, it glimmers with possibility. The song is a harrowing account of the frantic moments when reality begins to blur, a gaze over the emotional edge of things. With its increasing emphasis on electronics, “Another Plane” is also a look into what sonic possibilities might lie ahead for the band.

Comforter is a document to a band’s own becoming, the exhilaration that comes from constant exploration, the drive for perfection and the joy of learning how to let things just be. It’s a mix of contradictions, the smothering warmth and the frigid cold, the chaotic and the peaceful. It’s a testament to the way that from many familiar ingredients something new can be formed, the joy and wonder of what’s possible when four people are in a room together, trying to make something beautiful.

– Jimmy Cajoleas

Source luminellerecs.com

 'Paradisiac'

'Paradisiac'
Monday, December 2, 2019

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Broken Social Scene

Broken Social Scene

Broken Social Scene is a Canadian indie rock band, a musical collective including as few as six and as many as nineteen members, formed by Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning. Most of its members play in various other groups and solo projects, mainly in the city of Toronto. These associated acts include Metric, Feist, Stars, Apostle of Hustle, Do Make Say Think, KC Accidental, Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton, Amy Millan, and Jason Collett.

The group's sound combines elements of all of its members' respective musical projects, and is occasionally considered baroque pop. It includes grand orchestrations featuring guitars, horns, woodwinds, and violins, unusual song structures, and an experimental, and sometimes chaotic production style from David Newfeld, who produced the second and third albums.

Stuart Berman's This Book Is Broken (2009) covers the band from its inception to its critical acclaim. In 2010, Bruce McDonald made This Movie Is Broken, a movie about the band's Harbourfront show during the 2009 Toronto strike.

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 'Sweetest Kill'

'Sweetest Kill'
Tuesday, April 6, 2021

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Catherine MacLellan

Catherine MacLellan

Catherine MacLellan is a Canadian folk singer-songwriter, based in Prince Edward Island.

Early Life

The daughter of Canadian songwriter Gene MacLellan, MacLellan was born in Burlington, Ontario but raised in Summerside, Prince Edward Island.

Before beginning her solo recording career, she sang with The New Drifts, a four-piece band featuring Island musicians James Phillips (guitar, mandolin), Stéphane Bouchard (bass) and Dave Gould (drums & percussion). She spent time working at the box office of Summerside's Harbourfront Jubilee Theatre.

Career

MacLellan released two albums, 2004's Dark Dream Midnight and 2006's Church Bell Blues, independently before signing to True North Records, which rereleased Church Bell Blues in 2007. She followed up with Water in the Ground in 2009; Dark Dream Midnight was included as a bonus disc with physical copies of that album. She toured Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom throughout 2009 to support the album, including performances on CBC Radio's Canada Live and The Vinyl Cafe. Her album Silhouette was released by True North Records in July 2011. Her album "The Raven's Sun" was released August 2014.

She has also participated in two collaborative "Canadian Songbook" tours: in 2008 with Murray McLauchlan, Stephen Fearing and Paul Quarrington, and in 2009 with McLauchlan, Barney Bentall and Nathan Rogers.

In November 2009, she recorded a new song, "Singing Sands", for CBC Radio 2's Great Canadian Song Quest.

In 2014 MacLellan released her first independent record since signing with True North, The Raven's Sun. The record was recorded in Woodstock, New York at Hidden Quarry Studio, Engineered by Danny Blume, and produced by MacLellan's long-time musical partner Chris Gauthier. The Raven's Sun was received with critical-acclaim and won many awards including a 2015 JUNO award.

In 2017 she made a record on True North records with songs of her father Gene MacLellan. This record was named after the LP her father recorded in 1977 If It's Alright With You. This album tied in with a show by the same name in the summer of 2017 that MacLellan wrote based on her father's life and music.

In 2019 she self-produced and released a new record, Coyote, which she pronounces kahy-oh-tee

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 'January Song'

'January Song'
Monday, April 4, 2022

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Bands, p 1 of 7

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