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Talkhouse

Teenanger — the Toronto DIY scene innovators, who count among their members the founders and operators of the increasingly influential record label Telephone Explosion — released their sprawling, diverse and pseudo-self-titled album Teenager in 2017.
Their latest album, Good Time, is Teenanger boiled down to its very essence. A lean and muscular eight-song album that is the sound of a band who simultaneously has everything and nothing to prove. It’s what happens when seasoned songwriters flex their chops in an environment that fosters boundless creativity.  It is also Teenanger’s most fun album. Choruses soar to previously unattained heights, descending to a rhythmically fertile ground to pull earworms that will stick inside listeners’ heads for days. If its songs were citizens, they would reside in a diplomatically neutral city-state, melting pots of art rock, pop, dub, post-punk and new wave. 
The music of Good Time certainly elicits pleasure, but lyrically things are more weighty. The band does not shy away from its commentary on contemporary issues. There are calls to reject societal norms, ruminations on humanity’s obsession with technology and warnings about our impact on the environment. Teenanger never gets too earnest, delivering everything with an irreverence that has been there since day one.
Mixed by Sandro Perri, Good Time is out now via Telephone Explosion.

Teenanger

Music

Talkin’ Tim Hortons with Teenanger and Holy Fuck

The seeds of Girl Friday were first planted when guitarist Vera Ellen walked into a friend&#8217;s house at UCLA and saw Libby Hsieh playing bass on the couch. Drawn by her unique playing style, Ellen introduced herself, and the two musicians immediately bonded. After a year of playing together, they decided to grow their collaboration into a full band. Drummer Virginia Pettis and guitarist Sierra Scott caught wind of the project from friends of friends, and quickly jumped on board. The fledgling group&#8217;s chemistry was undeniable; writing and playing together felt generative and thrilling.
Burning deep in Girl Friday&#8217;s music is an unquenchable will to survive. The band doesn&#8217;t blunt the impact of the themes they work through in their ferocious, knotty rock songs, but they don&#8217;t let the more harrowing aspects of being alive and young in the 21st century daunt them, either. Taking full advantage of the dystopian shades of post-punk and noise rock palettes on their arresting debut LP, Androgynous Mary, Girl Friday nevertheless suffuse their music with abundant optimism. The world is a hellscape, but the four of them are in it together.
(Photo Credit: Al Kalyk)

Girl Friday

Liz Stokes (The Beths) and Vera Ellen (Girl Friday) on Promoting Records During the Pandemic

The inception of Wax Chattels occurred rather rapidly. Several years after completing jazz school together, Peter Ruddell and Amanda Cheng reconnected at a Preoccupations show in 2016 at Auckland’s legendary Kings Arms Tavern. The pair quickly decided that they wanted to create some noise together, and wrote a few demos before enlisting drummer Tom Leggett. It wasn’t long before Wax Chattels were up and positively running, becoming a fixture at local haunts and dive bars with their punishingly abrasive, yet polished, live set.
The band were a week shy of embarking on their 2017 DIY tour of Japan, China and Taiwan when they played a set at Auckland’s independent festival The Others Way. Captured Tracks founder, Mike Sniper, happened to be in the room for just two songs of Wax Chattels’ set, before he had to rush off to another venue. As it turns out, those two songs were proof enough for Mike Sniper and Ben Howe to co-sign Wax Chattels to Captured Tracks and Flying Nun Records on the spot. The band played an unscheduled set at an industry showcase the following night, which allowed Mike to fully comprehend what he’d got himself into. As the band have since said, “We want to play shows that make people feel uncomfortable. The goal is to leave the audience feeling slightly altered, like they have experienced — not just heard or seen — something.”
It is universally agreed that Wax Chattels are a must-see live act and their eponymous debut album captured this perfectly. Their hypnotically sinister debut was released in May 2018 and was supported by six months of relentless touring: a NZ tour, two tours of Australia, a stint in the UK and two major North American tours. The album reached #7 on the Official New Zealand Album Charts, and album release week saw the title feature as #1 in Rough Trade’s ‘Top 20 New Releases’ and AV Club’s “most anticipated album”. The album’s success at home and abroad led to the well-deserved nomination of Best Alternative Artist at the 2018 New Zealand Music Awards, as well as the band’s inclusion in the coveted shortlist of finalists for the Taite Music Prize and Auckland Live Best Independent Debut Award. After a knock-out debut, the anticipation that surrounds their sophomore album, Clot, is immense.

Wax Chattels

The Way Forward: Wax Chattels

It’s been said that it takes a village to raise a child, so why not let everyone in to help raise Okey Dokey? Their third studio album Once Upon One Time does just that by allowing anyone to send in audio that is featured throughout the record, using submitted videos as promo, adding a third member (Jeremy Clark) and for the first time ever allowing other bands to decide the overall sound of the new album by having six different mixers from six different bands. Once Upon Once Time features behind-the-boards contributions from Dave Harrington (Darkside), Grizzly Bear‘s Chris Taylor, and members of My Morning Jacket and the Shins. The new album finds Johny Fisher and Aaron Martin expanding their swinging rock music to encapsulate cosmic orchestral pop, squishy funk, swelling folk rock, and everything in between — shattering any boundaries they’d previously set for themselves.

Okey Dokey

Chris Taylor (Grizzly Bear) Talks With Okey Dokey About Not Exactly Producing Their New Music

Kath Bloom is a Connecticut-based folk songwriter. Her latest album, Bye Bye These Are The Days, is out now via Dear Life Records.

Kath Bloom

Kath Bloom and Josephine Foster on Playing Music on Their Own Terms

Cults were deep into recording their new album, Host, when singer/multi-instrumentalist Madeline Follin let a secret slip.
“In the past, I’d never brought my own music to the table because I was just too shy,” says Follin, “but at some point during the sessions, I mentioned that I’d been writing some songs on the side, and our producer, Shane Stoneback, asked me to share them.”
“When Shane and I heard what Madeline had written, we couldn’t believe it,” says multi-instrumentalist Brian Oblivion. “The music just floored us.”
What followed was a reimagining of their sound and dynamic. Written collaboratively and recorded with live instruments, the collection marks the start of a bold new chapter. The songs are deceptively charming, with lush, airy arrangements that belie their dark, weighty lyrics, with rich multifaceted production to match, blending retro &amp; futuristic palettes into a spellbinding swirl of high-def indie rock &amp; lo-fi bedroom pop.
Host is an exploration of the sinister dynamics at play in a parasitic relationship and charting a cathartic journey towards freedom and self-reliance, reveling in the power that comes from standing your ground and declaring independence in the face of exploitation and manipulation.
“Each song on this album feels like it represents a different step in the process of breaking free from whatever’s draining you,” says Follin. “Only once you’ve done that are you really in a position to accept something new and healthy into your life.
(Photo Credit: Maxwell Kamins)

Cults

The Way Forward: Cults

Barry Johnson is the lead vocalist and guitarist of Joyce Manor.
(Photo Credit: Allie Hanlon)

Barry Johnson

Barry Johnson (Joyce Manor) and Katy Davidson (Dear Nora) Talk Music, Quarantine, and Long Beach

Blissfulness is at the core of Wiseacre, the strikingly purifying sophomore record from Eric Slick. Wiseacre is a location, literally. It’s the place he married the light in his life, Natalie Prass, and titling the record after it is an attempt at bottling the euphoria of his wedding day. The record isn’t just about the joy that comes from a loving existence blossoming out of a new relationship, it’s also about the hard work that it takes to get to that place. The majority of his time has been behind a drum set, spending the last decade rounding out the industrious outfit Dr. Dog, and as of late, touring as a newlywed alongside his wife.
(Photo credit: Shervin Lainez)

Eric Slick

The Way Forward: Eric Slick

Dream Nails are a punk force to be reckoned with. The hotly-tipped band was founded by feminist activists in 2015, mixing unapologetically political content with pop punk joy. The female fourpiece have built a reputation across the UK, Europe and Scandinavia for their riotously feel good live shows.

Dream Nails

Punk Rock’s Gonna Be Fine

Hannah Georgas began creating the album All That Emotion about a year after the release of her celebrated 2016 album For Evelyn — starting with an intensive process of writing and demoing songs in her Toronto apartment, and finishing with a month long retreat in Los Angeles. She began the record making process in the middle of 2018 when she traveled to Long Pond, the upstate New York studio &amp; home of producer Aaron Dessner of The National.
The writing of the album found Hannah creating her most personal album to date. “All That Emotion’s album cover is an old family photo,” says Hannah. “I love the image because it captures this calm confidence. It looks like people are watching a performance and it seems like he’s diving in without a second thought. Similarly, I find that it parallels the approach needed within art. The calm confidence of expressing yourself without the thought of consequence, regardless of anyone watching.&#8221;
On the album, you’ll hear about bad habits and prayerful families — right and wrong love — mistakes and moving on — casual cruelty and most of all, change. Plotting the boundaries of where to place this music it’s emotionally fraught but warm &amp; fuzzy. “An indie-minded avant-pop artist” was the Boston Globe’s formulation for her charms. Think of Fleetwood Mac meets The National; Kate Bush-sized passion with the earthiness of Cat Power or Aimee Mann. The album grows inside you and sticks to your insides. The songs are big tent anthems, rough at the edges but relatable.
(Photo Credit: Vanessa Heins)

Hannah Georgas

Catching Up with Hannah Georgas and This Is the Kit

Loren DiBlasi is a writer and musician from New York. She is the bassist of post-punk band <a href="https://patio-bandcamp.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://patio-bandcamp.bandcamp.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1558011684779000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFJ9loT6K1Ygxmofcf9l1xKipQRiQ">Patio</a>. Her writing has appeared in MTV News, Vulture, and NPR Music.

Loren DiBlasi

Knot Hasn’t Figured Out What Knot Is Yet

Meredith Hobbs Coons (she/her) is a writer, musician, and trained speech therapist who makes her home on the Central Coast of California. She writes and performs companionate, lyrical folk songs as Lamb&#8217;s Ear and in blue ghosts ⏤ her website is <a href="http://www.meredithhobbscoons.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.meredithhobbscoons.com&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1598538090383000&amp;usg=AFQjCNG35tFoj84uERZCZphIPwCdVHiH3w">here</a>.

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