Ha Ha Tonkais an unmistakable indie-meets-Southern rock band. Sitting at the crossroads of Americana and indie – where Alabama meets Arcade Fire – the quartet recently released their fourth full-length album, Lessons, via Bloodshot Records.
Now, the band unveil their striking video for Lessons album opener “Dead To The World.”A simultaneously poignant & bittersweet oeuvre, the video premiered with American Songwriter.
Ha Ha Tonka will be heading to Telluride, CO on Dec. 30th for a FREE show at the Sheridan Opera House, which will serve as the party/announcement of the Austin City Limits 40th Anniversary weekend aka The Ride 2014. In March, they will be touring down to SXSW Music Festival, and will then head to Europe for a run of headline dates in May/June.
Black Lips just dropped the first single from their forthcoming album Underneath the Rainbow via Vice. The new album was recorded partially in Nashville with the Black Keys‘ Patrick Carney and is out March 18, 2014.
Upcoming tour mates Grouplove remixed “Mason Jar” together with Captain Cuts. Last week, Smallpools announced their upcoming March/April tour withGrouplove and MS MR, which will bring them back to Austin, TX which they visited for Austin City Limits as well as visits to Washington, DC, Atlanta, Arizona and New York for instance.
Last month, the LA band made their national TV debut on Jimmy Kimmel Live, performing their single “Dreaming”. The foursome consist of Sean (vocals/keys), Mike (guitar), Joe (bass) and Beau (drums), the band will divide their time between the studio working on the full-length debut and live shows.
The release of their self-titled debut EP gained them critical acclaim.Neon Gold calls “Mason Jar” “a sepia splash of power-pop that crystallizes into a starscraping smash before the verse even kicks in, as stadium-sized Of Monsters And Men gang vocals ride high on the buoyant flair of Smallpools’ youthful, Two Door-esque ebullience.”
Phantogram have set February 18, 2014 as the release date for their forthcoming new album, Voices.
This is the critically acclaimed New York duo’s first major-label full-length, and it’s already shaping up to be one of the most anticipated albums of the new year. The pre-order for Voices went live yesterday
Moreover, fans who pre-order from iTunes will receive an instant download of the band’s brand new single “Fall In Love”, which is also available at other digital retailers today, and as the A-side of a limited-edition 7″ vinyl single at physical retailers in early 2014.
Before the official radio add date, “Fall In Love” is already captivating radio gatekeepers and fans alike. Its effect proved so powerful that multiple stations in major markets added the song into early rotation. Over the past week “Fall In Love” has become the most-added track at Alternative Radio, and it continues to rise. Feedback has been just as astounding.
The song itself sees duo Sarah Barthel and Josh Carter craft a cerebral and charismatic gateway into the record’s lush landscapes and entrancing lyricism. It’s elegant electronic alternative pop fortified by hip-hop futurism and electro soul. You’ll instantly fall for it.
Phantogram will be performing on the West Coast during the week of the record’s release, making the following stops:
02.20.14 Oakland, CA Fox Theatre
02.22.14 Los Angeles, CA Wiltern Theatre
02.23.14 Ventura, CA Ventura Theatre
Voices follows up the group’s celebrated self-titled EP, which spawned the track “Black Out Days”. Phantogram performed the song on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon in the midst of a triumphant fall tour that saw the pair and their live band headline numerous sold-out houses as well as an unforgettable performance at the historic Hollywood Bowl supporting M83.
Recorded in Los Angeles with co-producer John Hill (Santigold, MIA), Voices resounds immortally. Phantogram‘s full-length debut Eyelid Movies [2010, Barsuk] and Nightlife EP [2011, Barsuk] established them as one of music’s most intriguing indie outfits. Soon, the likes of The Flaming Lips and Big Boi [Outkast] began seeking them out for studio collaborations. Republic Records also recognized their spirit and joined forces with them in 2013.
Today, Dr. Dogwill release a collection of four delightfully weird and heartfelt original Christmas songs. The EP is entitled Oh My Christmas Tree and was initially intended as a gift to the band’s family and friends. Fortunately for the rest of us, the group has decided to make the songs public.
In keeping with the holiday spirit, 100% of artist proceeds from this digital only benefit EP will be donated to Feeding America, the nationwide network of food banks that feeds more than 37 million people, including nearly 14 million children, and leads the nation in the fight against hunger.
As Dr. Dog’s Scott McMicken explains “Last year, in 2012, I wrote these songs and recorded them in two different kitchens over the course of the two weeks leading up to Christmas. I made them with the intent to mail them to some of my friends and family as a christmas present. It wound up being a great gift to myself! The experience definitely showed me once again that stopping to pay closer attention to what things mean, even seemingly familiar things, always brings an added depth and beauty to life. And always in a surprising way. Christmas music can be so playful and fantastical but it can also be very melancholy and foreboding. To me thats the best. The spirit can guide you to balance and the spirit can be found anywhere you choose to look. In the cartoons and in the cold blood. In the wild imagination and in the strictest tradition. These four songs will ultimately live as that reminder for me and hopefully they serve you in some way too. You, the child of wonder. You, of age and grace. Peace be with ye.”
Dr. Dog, whose high energy live shows the New York Times Magazine recently described as “feeling as if you’re at the best house party ever” will begin a North American headline tour this January in support of their soulful new album B- Room, which Magnet proclaimed “Dr. Dog’s career-defining work” and All Music called “a beautifully crafted slice of psych-pop goodness.”
Dr. Dog Tour Dates:
1/24/14 – University Theatre – New York, NY
1/25/14 – Terminal 5 – New York, NY
1/27/13 – Town Ballroom – Buffalo, NY
1/28/14 – Higher Ground – Burlington, VT
1/29/14 – Cabaret Mile-End – Montreal
1/31/14 – Electric Factory – Philadelphia, PA
2/01/14 – Electric Factory – Philadelphia, PA
2/03/14 – Madison Theatre – Cincinnati, OH
2/05/14 – Turner Hall – Milwaukee, WI
2/06/14 – First Avenue – Minneapolis, MN
2/07/14 – First Avenue – Minneapolis, MN
2/08/14 – Riviera Theatre – Chicago, IL
2/19/14 – Civic Theatre – New Orleans, LA
2/20/14 – Warehouse Live – Houston, TX
2/21/14 – Stubb’s – Austin, TX
2/22/14 – House of Blues – Dallas, TX
2/24/14 – Crescent – Phoenix, AZ
2/25/14 – Crescent – Phoenix, AZ
2/26/14 – The Observatory – Santa Ana, CA
2/27/14 – Wiltern – Los Angeles, CA
2/28/14 – The Catalyst – Santa Cruz, CA
3/1/14 – Warfield Theatre – San Francisco, CA
3/3/14 – Crystal Ballroom – Portland, OR
3/4/14 – The Venue, Vancouver, BC
3/5/14 – Neptune Theatre – Seattle, WA
3/7/14 – The Complex – Salt Lake City, UT
3/8/14 – Fox Theatre – Boulder, CO
3/10/14 – Liberty Hall – Lawrence, KS
3/11/14 – Slowdown – Omaha, NE
3/12/14 – The Pageant – St. Louis, MO
3/14/14 – 9:30 Club – Washington, DC
L.A.-based singer-songwriter MEIKO has recorded a remake of the Paul McCartney holiday classic, “Wonderful Christmastime”, and has made the track available as a free download on her website, http://www.meikomusic.com
Meiko will perform an online concert, viewable worldwide, via Stageit.com on Sunday, December 15 at 2PM (PST). A portion of the proceeds from this ‘pay what you can’ performance will be donated to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Last month I posted the video for “Slaver” from the band Pompeya. Now, the US full-length debut is available! Tropical is an ode to 70s disco and 80s new wave in a sound that is pop music in its finest form. The Moscow-based group has seen “Power”, “90”, and “Slaver” as the record’s first singles, each accompanied by all new music videos. The LP will be paired with a remix EP, which features contributions from Psychemagik, Fred Falke, Jimmy Edgar, and more. The official Remix EP will be included as a free download for those that purchase the 12” special edition double vinyl, and will be released officially in December 2013.
Check out another new track from Chromeo’s highly anticipated release, White Women. Dave 1 and P-Thugg follow up the infectious “Over Your Shoulder” with a 6 minute funk odyssey called “Sexy Socialite” (which they’ll be performing TONIGHT with special guest on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon). MIGHT just be my new favorite!
“A delightful shock from China ….. a sly variant on Seventies New Wave: a dynamic singer, Helen Feng, who bears a strong vocal resemblance to Blondie’s Debbie Harry, fronting a White Stripes-style rhythm section – male guitarist, wicked female drummer – that threaded loops and programming through heavy blues and dance floor rhythms….. – at once rough and digital… my first best of the fest.” – ROLLING STONE (David Fricke, Senior Editor)
If the music planet these days is inhabited by candy colored pop munchkins, ruby red dance floors, and twerking teddy bears, here comes the Wicked Witch of the East. Staunchly opposed to the oh so technicolored predictable dance tracks that have goo’d and gaga’d the world, a band out of China, yes you heard me, China, has produced an electronic EP finally with a nasty, nasty side to drive fear into the all the denizens of OZ.
This is not for the club, but for the lonely, lonely walk home after a night at the club. It’s music for walking through streetsfilled with tranny prostitutes (Beautiful Boys) and coming down from lord knows what (My Song 9). As if emerging from the polluted fog of Beijing, Nova Heart gives you garbled transmissions from an enemy satellite, telling you that for every up there is a down, for every pleasure there is a price.
And this message, like an ominous counterpoint, is filled with sex unfulfilled and builds that lead to a slide into oblivion. Dark analog scenes created by Italian cowboy Rodion are filled to the brim with the siren’s call of lead singer Helen Feng that promises both sex and mortality – all at the same time. Deceptive pop melodies that lead you down the road as if setting you up for the kill before they diverge and you drop down that endless well.
Live, Nova Heart is like watching a gathering at a religious service gone dangerously wrong. The world’s most amazing female drummer, ATOM, the size of a munchkin herself, powers through a show that feels like a voodoo ceremony while Helen holds the pulpit like an evangelical preacher shaking and panting as if she´s feeling some spirit possessing her body and asking for your souls. The guitarist (LOOP), sends only the dirtiest warbliest Floyd-like hooks out in crashing waves as the bassist plays distorted grooves that seems some strange baby called industrial funk.
And from the music and the sound they tease at past hours on that ruby dance floor, dancing around aged genres but never landing flat footed in anything predictable. Perhaps only a group coming out of China can dare to make such predictions, the exuberance of the never ending 80’s finally in coda, and all we are left with is an illusion, the afterglow of the ecstasy, and the fear of facing the consequences of our excess. Perhaps it takes a band that lives in a place where the foibles of a self-obsessed world are exaggerated to 1.6 billion degrees to create the come down album of their generation. This is not a political statement as it is more of a moment of contemplation on just how it feels when the party is over. And if you’re lucky, these are the tracks for the after-after party in purgatory.
Musically Amusing 