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Talkhouse

Evocative music can be some of the best. And musician Shannon Carey, who performs under the moniker Luray, has a particular knack for doing just that. Her songs feel welcoming, yet elusive, like a long-forgotten photograph you find at the bottom of a box, a memory that gets hazier with each passing year.
&#8220;My songs tell me what’s going on with me, like my unconscious trying to get my attention,&#8221; explains Carey, who had plenty to unravel in her life leading up to the recording of her sophomore full length, Dig. &#8220;My marriage broke up while I was writing this album and the songs started to speak to me about my relationship and what I was hoping for and holding onto. What I wasn’t letting myself acknowledge. I moved to Richmond and set to finishing the songs for the record. I wrote more songs about how it felt to lose, and how it felt to be starting over.&#8221;
Although Carey has called Richmond, Virginia home for a number of years, her music has an inescapable imprint of her Wisconsin upbringing. And it&#8217;s back in Eau Claire, Wisconsin that she set about recording the album, enlisting her brother Sean Carey to produce. &#8220;The band drove out to Wisconsin and met up with Sean and engineer Brian Joseph, who had just completed building his own studio, which he called The Hive. It&#8217;s in the woods and feels very &#8216;Northern Wisconsin&#8217; — feels like a little haven from the world.&#8221; The Hive became the perfect locale to capture such a personal collection of songs. &#8220;It’s hard to explain how intimate the recording process was, but it felt very insular and almost delicate. After the end of that relationship that had been so central, I felt a little fragile and obviously in transition. Sometimes you can hear something tentative in my vocals. I had been getting my new life together for the past year, but it still felt strange.&#8221;
The eleven songs that came to form Dig provide a stolen glance at a snapshot of Shannon Carey&#8217;s life, yet invite listeners into the story to explore for themselves. It also marks the closing of one chapter and the beginning of the next.
(Photo Credit: Jake Cunningham)

Luray

Music

Spend Some Quality Time with Luray and S. Carey

Shehzaad Jiwani is a musician, producer, writer and director from Toronto. He fronts the band Greys and performs solo under the name Golden Drag. As a producer, Shehzaad has worked with bands like The Dirty Nil, Casper Skulls, and Patio. His writing has appeared in Brooklyn Vegan, Hazlitt, Metro Toronto and others. He is currently filming his first documentary.

Shehzaad Jiwani

“We’re Ready To Be In the Future Now”: a Talk with Devin McKnight and Shehzaad Jiwani

Claude Fontaine is an American girl with a French name who never felt like she fit in anywhere she happened to call home, and one particular year she was awash in a grey London fog that matched the fog and grey in her own too-recently broken heart. While living right off Portobello Road, she stumbled into the record store down the street. And in a flash of luck — or fate — that particular record store turned out to be Honest Jon’s, a long-lived spot for records collected from the furthest edges of the world. She’d never heard those old Studio One and Trojan and Treasure Isle reggae and rocksteady and dub records before — the same records that got the Clash covering “Police And Thieves,” and the Slits sharing a bill with Steel Pulse. And she’d never heard bossa nova and tropicalia and Brazil’s incandescent música popular brasileira, either. But instantly, she understood — it was exactly and perfectly everything she didn’t know she needed.
And because she loved those records so much, she decided to make a record of her own — an album singing her own love songs (with Jane Birkin-style ye-ye elan) that was itself a love song to classic reggae and Brazilian music, and an album honoring that feeling of finding a home away from home. Ferociously inspired, she demo-ed a set of songs about heartbreak and loneliness, and drafted a wish list of musicians she’d hope would help out. At the top were guitarist Tony Chin, whose playing with Althea and Donna, King Tubby, Dennis Brown and so many more very arguably defined a gigantic part of the classic reggae sound, and Airto Moreira, the Brazilian drummer whose work both solo and in collaboration — with Miles Davis, Astrud Gilberto, Chick Corea, Annette Peacock — make him an actual living legend.
But after diligent detective work — long chains of emails and voicemails, tracing between LA industry veterans and globetrotting photographers and the label that would put out her finished record, though she didn’t know that yet — she found them. Then she sent them her demos. Then they said yes.
She finished her album in two potent sessions with Chin, Moreira and a murderer’s row of their connections — bassist Ronnie McQueen of Steel Pulse and Ziggy Marley drummer Rock Deadrick, Now Again Records guitarist Fabiano Do Nascimento, Sergio Mendes percussionist Gibi Dos Santos and Flora Purim bassist Andre De Santanna. Side A is the reggae, five songs about love gone wrong that sound like they came out of Jamaica in the early 70s; side B wasn’t specifically designed to be the bossa or Brazilian side, but that’s how it worked out. All together, it’s a valentine to this special music that called out to her from the other side of the planet.

Claude Fontaine

Reggae Royalty: a Conversation with Tony Chin and Ronnie McQueen

The genre-defying Mekons formed in Leeds, England in 1977, born form the emerging British punk scene. They progressed from socialist art students with no musical skills to the prolific, raucous progeny of Hank Williams. This current classic line-up has remained intact since the mid-1980s. Theirs is an improbable history — a surprising and influential embrace of folk and country music; with occasional forays into the art world. Throughout their history, they have worked collaboratively and collectively with everything credited to the band, never to individuals. Their mind-boggling output consistently blurs the lines between high art and low and has included exhibitions in the UK and US, a deranged musical recorded and staged with Kathy Acker, an art performance with Vito Acconci, and several books including the unique art catalog/unfinished novel Mekons United. The Mekons continue to make bold, unpredictable music while staying true to the punk ethos. Their mind-boggling output consistently blurs the lines between high art and low and they remain one of the truly great live bands.
Mekons are subjects of the fantastic 2014 documentary <a href="http://www.mekonsmovie.com/Revenge_of_the_Mekons/HOME.html">Reve</a><a href="http://www.mekonsmovie.com/Revenge_of_the_Mekons/HOME.html">nge</a><a href="http://www.mekonsmovie.com/Revenge_of_the_Mekons/HOME.html"> of</a><a href="http://www.mekonsmovie.com/Revenge_of_the_Mekons/HOME.html"> the</a><a href="http://www.mekonsmovie.com/Revenge_of_the_Mekons/HOME.html"> M</a><a href="http://www.mekonsmovie.com/Revenge_of_the_Mekons/HOME.html">ekons</a>, which you can watch on Netflix, iTunes, and Amazon.
(Photo Credit: Paul Beaty)

Mekons

A Guide to Mekons’ Deserted

With his unique electronic twist on pop music, Los Angeles-based DJ and producer Fluencee has burst onto the contemporary crossover scene with a groundbreaking sound and a story to tell. After being bullied throughout his childhood due to a lifelong stutter, Fluencee finally chose to own it by speaking fluently through his music. You can stream his music <a href="https://open.spotify.com/artist/7tpNSl4pmI5rBxvWOMfk6j?si=lVyOZLzRQ1m_-MV4Fi1brg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.

Fluencee

A Stutter Slowed Fluencee Down, But Never Stopped Him

Most people know Aaron Lee Tasjan as one of the wittiest, most offbeat, brilliant, weedsmokin’ &amp; LSD microdosin’ Americana troubadours writing and singing songs today. But steel yourselves, folk fans, because he’s about to follow his restless muse straight out from under the weight of everyone’s expectations into the kind of glammy, jingle-jangle 
power-pop- and- psych-tinged sounds he hasn’t dabbled in since his younger days playing lead guitar for a late-period incarnation of The New York Dolls.
Really, the roots of Tasjan’s new record, Karma for Cheap, stretch even deeper, drinking up the sounds of a Southern California childhood spent listening to The Beatles while riding around with his mom at the wheel of their navy blue Volvo station wagon — back to the very first pre-teen year he picked up a six-string and started figuring out all the pretty little chords in those Lennon-McCartney tunes. Back to the pure, blissful unfiltered innocence of falling in love with music for the first time.
Karma for Cheap is Tasjan’s third LP and second for his label New West Records, based in his current hometown of Nashville. The record was co-produced by ALT and his friends Jeff Trott (Stevie Nicks, Liz Phair, Meiko, Joshua Radin) and Gregory Lattimer (Albert Hammond Jr.) and features Aaron Lee’s road band — guitarist Brian Wright, 
bassist Tommy Scifres and drummer Seth Earnest — with whom he’s been touring heavily for the last two years.
While the stylistic shift from Tasjan’s palpably stoned ‘70s-country-channeling 2015 debut, In the Blazes, to his more sophisticated, introspective and lushly produced 2016 follow-up, Silver Tears, was relatively incremental, Karma’s rocked-up Brit-pop-influenced Beatles-Bowie-Badfinger vibes underscore a significant departure. The album boldly reimagines these vintage sounds, pushing the boundary of what can be considered Americana. With Karma, Tasjan establishes himself as an artist who not only evolves over time, but isn’t afraid to risk reinventing himself completely from one record to the next.
(Photo Credit: Curtis Wayne Millard)

Aaron Lee Tasjan

“What Haven’t I Said?” A Conversation with Aaron Lee Tasjan and Drivin N Cryin’s Kevn Kinney

Cold Showers, a band formed in Highland Park, CA in 2010, fuses the brash power of their shoegaze pedigree with the smoky compulsions of their pop, dark wave, and post-punk ancestors.
After releasing singles on Mexican Summer and Art Fag Records, Cold Showers signed with Dais Records and released their debut LP Love and Regret in the summer of 2012. They now return with their most expressive and decisive record yet. Motionless, released May 24, is the band’s ode to their pop forbearers, their goth-like precedent enhanced with ambient narratives, acoustic overlays and compelling female vocals. Enlisting long-time collaborator Tony Bevilacqua (The Distillers) to co-write the album, Cold Showers expand their boundaries and let their creative mastery come to the forefront. The result is a warmly melodic, experimental and evocative pop record.
(Photo Credit: Shannon Cornett)

Jonathan Weil

Faith for the Faithless

Under the stage name Solvent, Toronto-based musician and producer Jason Amm has released eight albums. Most recently, he co-produced Electronic Voyager with Fantinatto about the life and work of legendary synth pioneer Bob Moog.

Jason Amm

Electronic Voyager: Retracing Bob Moog’s Sonic Journey

Ren Aldridge is the frontwoman of the feminist hardcore punk band Petrol Girls.
(Photo Credit: Martyna Wisniewska)

Ren Aldridge

Sounds, Scenes, and Sexism

Richard Reed Parry is a core member of Arcade Fire, in which he plays a variety of instruments. As a solo artist, he recently released Quiet River of Dust Vol. 2, the second half of a pair of albums released via Secret City Records.
(Photo Credit: Zachary Hertzman)

Richard Reed Parry

On Leonard Cohen’s Supernova of a Life

We Fall, Josephine Wiggs&#8216; third album was released digitally and on vinyl on May 17, 2019 by Sound of Sinners.
Wiggs grew up in an unconventional family north of London. Returning home from a summer holiday with a donkey riding in the back of the family’s 1927 Rolls Royce was not considered at all bizarre. Wiggs studied cello as a child, segued from college in London to undertake a master’s degree in Philosophy, and then in a move few would have predicted joined a rock band.
After making three albums with The Perfect Disaster (1987-1990), Wiggs left to join Kim Deal (Pixies), Tanya Donelly (Throwing Muses), and Britt Walford (Slint) in forming The Breeders. With the release of Pod (1990) the foursome were instantaneously dubbed an indie supergroup. Following a shift in line-up — with Kelley Deal on guitar and new drummer Jim Macpherson — The Breeders released Last Splash in 1993 with its hit singles “Cannonball” and “Divine Hammer” and became alternative rock superstars.
During the same period, Wiggs released two lower-key albums: Nude Nudes (1992) with Jon Mattock (Spacemen3, Spiritualized) working under the name Honey Tongue and Bon Bon Lifestyle (1996) using the moniker The Josephine Wiggs Experience.
In 2013, following the 20th anniversary of Last Splash, the classic lineup of The Breeders reunited for a world tour. Five years later in 2018 they released All Nerve, with Wiggs co-writing two songs and singing lead on the standout track “Metagoth.”
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Josephine Wiggs

Josephine Wiggs’ Day Off

Austin, TX-based singer/songwriter Danny Schmidt has amassed a cult following for his poetic, poignant lyrics. Performing solo almost exclusively, armed with just his voice, his acoustic guitar, and his acute commentary, Schmidt’s an authentic timeless troubadour, one man sharing his truth in the form of songs, unadorned and intimate. Schmidt has released three albums on Red House Records, including the critically acclaimed debut Instead The Forest Rose To Sing in 2009, the spare and intimate Man Of Many Moons in 2011, and culminating with the amorous duo album For Keeps with his partner, Carrie Elkin, in 2014. Schmidt returned to self-releasing his own music in 2016 with the album Owls, a mystical collection of ethereal allegories. Standard Deviation will be Schmidt’s ninth solo record.
(Photo Credit: Chris Carson)

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