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Talkhouse

Across almost 25 years, Michael Feuerstack has built an underground canon of crooked and beautiful songs. Aside from his own song-craft under his name and former alias Snailhouse, his reputation is also as an exceptional collaborator, producer and general facilitator of music. Mike is a core member of Bell Orchestre, producer for Camille Delean, Paper Beat Scissors, and has contributed to countless performances and recordings with the likes of The Luyas, Thus Owls, Land of Talk, Julie Doiron, and many many more. While Feuerstack arranged and recorded his new album Harmonize the Moon completely solo at his apartment in the spring of 2020, the songs that compose it were written over the past couple years, on wanderings and tours as well as at home. He embarked on a slow process of balancing the poetic with the narrative, producing songs that flow naturally instead of adhering too rigidly to established forms. The result is a collection that’s pensive but playful, introspective yet generous, and achingly intimate.

Michael Feuerstack

Music

Three Great Things: Michael Feuerstack

As a band, Lake Street Dive epitomizes democracy in action: the group, expanded into a quintet since touring keyboardist Akie Bermiss officially joined in 2017, share writing and arrangement duties. Their personalities, skills, and wide-ranging taste in pop, rock, R&amp;B, and jazz have long blended together to make an impressively cohesive sound, both sophisticated and playful, combining retro influences with contemporary attitude. For their new album Obviously, the band turned to Mike Elizondo — songwriting collaborator for Dr. Dre and Eminem, producer for Fiona Apple, Mary J. Blige, and more — to help flesh things out and take them in a new direction.
(Photo Credit: Shervin Lainez)

Lake Street Dive

Three Great Things: Lake Street Dive

Visionist is the UK-based electronic artist Louis Carnell. His third album, A Call To Arms, is out now via Mute.
(Photo Credit: Peter De Potter)

Visionist

A Guide to Visionist’s A Call To Arms

A son of country music royalty, a teenaged Baptist preacher turned addict and actor, Waylon Payne sings about fathers and sons, faith and addiction, recovery and renewal with devastating clarity. His latest character-rich collection, Blue Eyes, The Harlot, The Queer, The Pusher &amp; Me, harks back to a way of telling stories in song that revealed kept secrets and promised mystery. Over his years, Payne has felt the terrible power secrets can hold and learned the transformative value of releasing them. Finally, he’s in a place where he can harness that power to create transcendent work.

Waylon Payne

Three Great Things: Waylon Payne

Push Back is the first full-length record from Jetty Bones, the relentlessly hopeful alt-pop solo project of Ohio artist Kelc Galluzzo. Galluzzo worked alongside producer and mixer John Fields (Jonas Brothers, Demi Lovato, Miley Cyrus) to fully realize a set of bedroom recordings she had mapped out in 2019. The 11 songs on Push Back document Galluzzo’s wrestle between two selves: the one on stage espousing hope and love, and the one in the van after the show crying helplessly, living with depression, anxiety, impostor syndrome, and suicidal ideations. The record tracks Galluzzo’s reckoning with these two selves, willing them to meet in a permanent ceasefire where they can coexist.
(Photo Credit: Lindsey Burns)

Jetty Bones

Three Great Things: Jetty Bones

Larry Livermore was the co-founder of Lookout Records, the editor and publisher of Lookout magazine, and a longtime columnist for Maximum Rocknroll and Punk Planet. Long before there was an East Bay pop punk explosion, Livermore fronted solar-powered punks the Lookouts and the Smiths-like acoustic pop band the Potatomen. He currently lives in Brooklyn, NY and recently published his fascinating memoir, How To Ru(i)n A Record Label.

Larry Livermore

Three Great Things: Larry Livermore of Lookout! Records

Ned Russin co-fronted Title Fight for many years before the band suspended operations and Ned became Glitterer. He initially self-released two EPs that were odd, charming, clever, eloquent, and highly proficient records, hand-made in the spartan bedroom-pop mode: some programmed drums and keyboards with an electric bass and a voice. The songs were about the trap of self-awareness and the impossible dream of self-negation; and despite their being, combined, all of about 18 minutes long, they left long-lasting impressions, stuck themselves in peoples’ heads and stayed put. Lyrically, many of the songs on Glitterer’s debut full-length Life Is Not A Lesson are short, dialectical considerations of the countless daily miniature panic attacks that attend the rigorously examined life. Life is Not a Lesson proves to be a rigorous reckoning with the life of the mind at a time when there’s not much life outside the mind.
(Photo Credit: Farrah Skeiky)

Glitterer

Three Great Things: Ned Russin of Glitterer

XIXA’s Gabriel Sullivan and Brian Lopez’s combined credits include Calexico, KT Tunstall, Orkestra Mendoza, and more as well as both being members of Giant Sand. For their new album Genesis they’ve delved even deeper into their admiration for Peruvian chicha, extracted and refined the core, and given voice to their most primal instincts. They are joined on select tracks by renowned artists from across the globe including Sergio Mendoza, Imarhan, and the Uummannaq Children’s Choir, which features youth from an orphanage in a small village in Northern Greenland. They’re also joined by drummer Winston Watson, who has done long stints with Bob Dylan, Alice Cooper, and Warren Zevon, among others.
(Photo Credit: Julius Schlosberg)

XIXA

Three Great Things: XIXA

It’s hard to survive in the music business, but Peter Bjorn and John have done that and then some. The Swedish indie-pop trio have been triumphing via their pitch-perfect alchemy of varying sounds and styles for two decades now, and their ninth album Endless Dream is proof of the unique creative chemistry that Peter Morén, Bjorn Yttling, and John Eriksson have successfully worked with for so long. Every PB&amp;J album sounds liked falling in love with music for the first time, and the deceptively light confections contained on Endless Dream continue with the trio’s latest romance, the Endless Play EP.
(Photo Credit: Johan Bergmark)

Peter Bjorn and John

Three Great Things: Peter Bjorn and John

Kate Teague claims she’s not a poet. “I’m just trying to be as real as possible,” Teague says from Oxford, Mississippi. When you’re making a name for yourself writing and performing songs in William Faulkner’s hometown, it may be a healthy distinction. It’s also not entirely true. Teague does draw from her own life and from those close to her. She mines lived experience ranging from heartbreak to misread body language to misogyny for honest, concise reflection. At 27, to quote another Southern writer, she’s made of wise blood. It runs through all these songs. “My songs are like journal entries,” Teague says of the six tracks that make up her debut self-titled EP, which was recorded at Memphis’ Delta Sonic by veteran producer Clay Jones. “And I rarely filter myself.” But, tethered to silky melodies, those sharply observed, plainspoken verses belie the daydream cadences, the lush arrangements, and Teague’s clear, graceful voice in ways that do verge on the poetic.

Kate Teague

The Way Forward: Kate Teague

Joe Wong is the Los Angeles-based, Milwaukee-raised multi-instrumentalist, podcast host (<a href="http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001wOexcE0IwUcYN0KxCmMu-kihr8RGS3Rr7hGb5xp1kdYpuD1DGWWuMypjMNud656dJjt_qeb7dTowW7N8pidjT9sgfaOVyl5kpZtwW0bBhwMzllBqC-TmHLc2nFM1k-WfmTj5XVOzeHe8Zx4dY0yd7Q==&amp;c=8qr-kN6Sx7tG9tBlUQzHv2TFXQZ5wT8Pn5FjsFLDCuQeVvC18k9dgA==&amp;ch=D8HOLN4DWuMO7JkTaIyv4jDuWu2R2NZ4anq7AOfKL72PH6lShIF1cQ==" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Trap Set</a>) and composer behind buzzworthy shows including Master of None, Russian Doll, Ugly Delicious and Awkwafina is Nora From Queens more. He recently released his Mary Timony (Ex Hex, Helium)-produced debut album Nite Creatures via Decca Records. The album includes an incredible array of guest musicians, including Mary Lattimore, Steven Drozd, Craig Wedren, and more.
(Photo Credit: Priscilla C. Scott)

Joe Wong

Three Great Things: Joe Wong

Grammy-winning artist and producer Knox Fortune has released his highly anticipated sophomore album Stock Child Wonder via Nice Work. The 11-track project features support from indie mainstays from his hometown of Chicago, including Lala Lala, Will Miller of Whitney and Resavoir, Lane Beckstrom of Resavoir, Colin Croom and Jack Dolan of Twin Peaks, Macie Stewart of Ohmme, and Elliot Skinner formerly of Third Story along with Grammy-winning producers Nate Fox and Pomo and Grammy-nominated producers Carter Lang and Pete &#8216;Scum&#8217; Nebula.  The album is a follow up to Knox Fortune&#8217;s highly lauded debut LP Paradise in which he introduced his breezy, addictive sound.

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