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Talkhouse

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

Music

“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)

Danny Schmidt

We Need A Better Word Than “Miscarriage”

Johnathan Rice signed his first record deal at 19, the same year he made his film debut as Roy Orbison alongside Joaquin Phoenix&rsquo;s Johnny Cash in Walk The Line; he released three solo records that earned tour dates with artists as varied as R.E.M., Ray LaMontagne, Pavement, and Phoenix; he wrote and produced for a slew of well-known artists and collaborated with everyone from Elvis Costello to Jonathan Wilson; and he even published an acclaimed book of poetry. But Rice&rsquo;s latest album, The Long Game, demonstrates a new kind of range and depth, stripping his songs back to their most elemental selves in order to reveal naked reflections on loss, pain, acceptance, and growth.
The Long Game is out May 2019 via Mano Walker Records.

Johnathan Rice

A Guide to Johnathan Rice’s The Long Game

When Bambi and Cole Browning started writing the songs that would be become Reptaliens’ 2017 debut LP, FM-2030, they had no intention of starting a band. Focusing at first on creating music and art on a purely personal level, the project soon took off when the duo brought on Julian Kowalski (guitar) and Tyler Verigin (drums) to form a live band. The four-piece swiftly delved into songwriting inspired by sci-fi art and literature, cult mentalities, and deep connections. The result was the band’s self-defined genre of “dreamwave,” which connected musical influences ranging from Gary Wilson-inspired jazzy lounge music, the warmth of Broadcast’s recording production, to Todd Rundgren’s outer space synth sounds.
After touring throughout most of 2017 and 2018 with STRFKR, Cults, and Of Montreal, the band returned home and went straight into renowned Portland studio Jackpot to record their sophomore LP, VALIS. Titled after the 1981 Philip K. Dick novel, VALIS was released via Captured Tracks in April 2019.
(Photo Credit: Eirrin Gragson)

Reptaliens

First Entry

Bellows is the bedroom recording project of songwriter and producer Oliver Kalb.

Bellows

Introducing: Bellows’ “Rosebush”

Harmony Tividad is a song writer from Los Angeles, CA. She plays in the band Girlpool and finds her spare time spent deconstructing God through the lens of a person who loves stuffed animals and crystals, but from a &#8220;practical&#8221; standpoint. When not writing in third person, she finds herself usually talking in first person about the myth and the lie. Much of her life has been spent deifying her acquaintances.
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Harmony Tividad

In the Groupchat with Harmony Tividad and Duster

How do you best describe Angel Olsen? From the lo-fi, sparse folk-melancholy of her 2010 EP, Strange Cacti, to the electrified, polished rock ‘n’ roll bursting from 2016’s beloved and acclaimed My Woman, Olsen has refused to succumb to a single genre, expectation, or vision. Impossible to pin down, Olsen navigates the world with her remarkable, symphonic voice and a propensity for narrative, her music growing into whatever shape best fits to tell the story.
(Photo Credit: Taylor Boylston)
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