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Talkhouse

Liz Carney is a singer/songwriter based in Springfield, Missouri. She performs under the Izabel Crane moniker and her music incorporates a unique mix of autobiographical elements, otherworldly storytelling, and the ever-present influence of her Ozarkian surroundings.
(Photo Credit: Cole Simmons)

Izabel Crane

Music

Introducing: Izabel Crane’s “Creature”

Vanta Black is the debut album from Rare DM, the solo project of Brooklyn singer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Erin Hoagg. Following in the shadows of the previously released “Almost a Year” and the more recent single “Caracal,” Vanta Black tackles subjects and moods fit for the titular hue, itself the blackest manmade pigment (currently under exclusive license to artist Anish Kapoor’s studio). Erin’s Billie Holliday-indebted croon lilts with the relaxed calm of someone whose already cried away all the tears they could muster long ago — too exhausted to fret and now comfortable enough in the darkness to blend in with it. She sings tales of relationships damaged by distance and destructive tendencies, somewhat reluctantly relieved by freedom yet ridden with separation anxiety. Her pulsating, twilight-lit productions that accompany recall mid-aughts-to-modern-day takes on goth, post-punk, and new wave. Perhaps in a nod to the still-burgeoning live synth and dance scene in her hometown of Brookyln, Hoagg prefers to play her concert sets fully live, all analog, seamlessly blending Octotrack, Machinedrum, triggers, and synth.

Rare DM

Introducing: Rare DM’s “Jade”

Little Mazarn is Lindsey Verrill and Jeff Johnston, an electric banjo and singing saw duo from Austin, TX. Inspired by the 1960s primitive folk revival and early &#8220;high lonesome&#8221; Appalachian sound, as well as modern minimalism and ambient music, they combine imaginative songwriting with dreamy and innovative use of traditional instruments and textures. Since 2016 they&#8217;ve been performing live in rock clubs, folk listening rooms and unconventional spaces such as dry riverbeds, abandoned buildings, galleries, theaters, and churches in the United States and Canada.
Their first record, a collection of original songs and reinterpreted traditional ballads, was released in December 2017. In May 2019 they will be releasing their second album titled Io recorded in August at Ramble Creek Studios.
Verrill and Johnston are also known individually for their work with Bill Callahan, Dana Falconberry, Okkervil River, Thor and Friends, and many others.
(Photo Credit: Mike Manewitz)

Little Mazarn

Introducing: Little Mazarn’s “Peace Like A River”

Shara Nova is a classically trained vocalist and self-taught multi-instrumentalist who records dazzling shapeshifting music as My Brightest Diamond. Over the course of five groundbreaking albums, including her most recent LP A Million And One, she has resisted the conventions of genre, blending elements of rock, art pop and chamber music into a sound totally her own. During her career, Nova has also collaborated and played with a long list of talented artists and filmmakers including but not limited to Sufjan Stevens, Laurie Anderson, The Decemberists, David Byrne &amp; Fatboy Slim, Sarah Kirkland Snider, and Matthew Barney. Last fall she was announced as one of the four Carolina Performing Arts Creative Future Fellows and is a Kresge Fellow, Knights Grant recipient and a United States Artists fellow. She has composed works for yMusic, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Young New Yorkers’ Chorus, Brooklyn Rider, Nadia Sirota, and Roomful of Teeth and performed at Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Kennedy Center.

Shara Nova

Introducing: My Brightest Diamond’s “Another Chance”

<div>Los Angeles quintet Young Hunting&#8216;s sound is formed around gentle, lush dream pop interspersed with stark, desolate gothic folk. Primary songwriters Hari Rex and Ilya Mxx first met in 2007, quickly bonding over a shared appreciation for Nick Cave, Jason Molina, Can, and the classic California pop of the 60s and 70s.</div>
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<div>The initial collaboration led to the &#8220;Into Yr Mind/Sonata&#8221; seven-inch record, distributed by K Records and released in 2010. Their debut album, Hazel (Gold Robot Records, 2013), was recorded in various locations around Southern California, including a former ranger&#8217;s station in the Angeles National Forest, Grandma&#8217;s Dojo studio in LA&#8217;s Koreatown, a rented one-bedroom desert house outside of Joshua Tree, and living rooms, garages, and guest houses across Echo Park.</div>
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<div>Over the last few years, members of the band toured with other artists including The Pharcyde and soul legend Syl Johnson. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Hari and Ilya wrote new songs, which were sporadically recorded with Patrick Taylor (bass) and Miles Senzaki (drums) and mixed at Grandma’s Dojo in Koreatown. The result is True Believers, a psych-soul dream for the lovelorn. The record deals extensively with loss of future and loss of past, encountering the void on intimate terms—watching a familiar life evaporate from your hands, merging the self and the shadow-self.</div>
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<div>(Photo Credit: Zack Rockwood)</div>

Young Hunting

Introducing: Young Hunting’s “Sargasso”

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Daniel Norgren is a Swedish songwriter from the tall woods of the north. He’s working through the small indie label Superpuma Records and has been doing so since 2006.
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Daniel Norgren

Introducing: Daniel Norgren’s “The Flow”

Rosie Tucker’s songs are worlds unto themselves. They start in conversation with an immediate environment: small, detailed, characters and landscapes drawn vividly, with life and wit. Only as they progress do they reveal bigger themes.
Starting with the first track “Gay Bar” and then throughout their new album Never Not Never Not Never Not out March 8, 2019 on the New Professor label, Tucker’s songs talk with and echo the queer, blacklisted, and forgotten female songwriters of the 1960s: Dusty Springfield, Buffy St. Marie, Sibylle Baier, Norma Tanega, Karen Dalton. Like them, Tucker uses emotionally rich images of the world, and while the lyrics have political implications, politics are not the first concern of the songs.
Made with close collaborators Anna Arboles, Wolfy, and Jessica Reed, who form a muscular, guitar-driven quartet, Tucker’s songs call to mind a few contemporaries: Hop Along, Frankie Cosmos, Mitski. But they’re set apart in their specificity, self-awareness, and obvious care for the craft of songwriting and the practice of making art.
(Photo Credit: Shabnam Ferdowsi)

Rosie Tucker

Introducing: Rosie Tucker’s “Habit”

Having toured since her teens, Katie Harkin&#8216;s reputation as an in-demand multi-instrumentalist has seen her pass through thirty countries whilst writing and releasing three critically acclaimed records with her own band Sky Larkin. Her work garnered the attention of friends and fellow former Leeds dwellers Wild Beasts, with whom she worked across their Smother tour, and reverberated across the pond to urgent cult trio Sleater-Kinney, who recruited her as a touring member upon their triumphant return to the live stage. Most recently, Harkin has performed across North America with Jenn Wasner of Wye Oak&#8216;s solo project, Flock of Dimes and across the UK with Low. Now, (as she unveils her debut solo project) the collaborator steps out as the singular, her new setup giving further platform to her idiosyncratic, muscular guitar-playing and revealing a body of work that is equally propelled by a life on the move and anchored by her romance for the North of England.

Katie Harkin

Introducing: Harkin’s “Mist on Glass”

Tim Kinsella and Jenny Pulse have consummated their love on disc. The result is Good Fuck, an erotic exploration of experimental literary techniques and adventurous electronic beats.
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There’s audible chemistry in Good Fuck’s sound; Kinsella’s extensive history in genre-pushing rock and roll (Joan of Arc, Cap’n Jazz) is strikingly complimented by Pulse’s fresh ear for minimalist electro sounds. The album’s eerie synth soundscapes and chanted vocals flow effortlessly from track to track. The music of Good Fuck melds the sensual with the cryptic, the erotic with the esoteric. Good Fuck reminds us that experimental music doesn’t necessarily need to be caustic or harsh, it can exist comfortably in the groove of a seductive electronic beat.
(Photo Credit: Evan Jenkins)

Good Fuck

Introducing: Good Fuck’s “Jenny Dreams of Pies”

H.Grimace is a London-based post-punk quartet.
Born of a partnership between vocalist/guitarist Hannah Gledhill and guitarist Marcus Browne, the band draws from the dark and enigmatic, occasionally allowing shades of shoegaze and psych to slip through the cracks.
Bassist Corin Johnson and drummer Diogo Gomez provide a driving rhythm to complement Gledhill and Browne’s songwriting; together H. Grimace has drawn comparisons to Savages and Sister-era Sonic Youth.

H.Grimace

Introducing: H.Grimace’s “She’s In a State”

For the better part of a decade, guitarist/vocalist Steve Hartlett has been consistently churning out impeccable guitar music and amassing an impressive catalog of distortion-drenched cult classics while fronting college rock stalwarts Ovlov, as well as Stove—an endeavour that’s allowed Hartlett to explore a different side of all things catchy and fuzzed-out. Initially a solo project, Stove has bloomed into a full-fledged band with the additions of drummer/vocalist Jordyn Blakely, bassist Alex Molini, and guitarist Mike Hammond.

Stove

Introducing: Stove’s “Duckling Fantasy”

Free Cake For Every Creature is a soft pop band currently based in Philadelphia. Beginning in upstate New York in 2012 as the recording project of songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Katie P. Bennett, the band has since expanded to include a rotating cast of friends and musicians.
For the newest collection of songs, The Bluest Star, Katie, long-term band members Francis Lyons and Heeyoon Won, and many friends spent the second half of 2017 slowly recording tracks in various rooms in Katie and Francis’ apartment on a busy street in West Philly. While these songs are a return to Katie’s comfortable home-recording beginnings, they also lay the foundation for a growing project based on collaboration, experimentation, and intentional arrangements. With specificity and honesty, Bennett sings about friendship, love present &amp; past, and the painful process of letting people out of her life.
(Photo Credit: Francis Lyons)

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