Ada Lea goes wild, Jitensha has it under control, Sick Sad World rope it in and more in today’s Roundup. And so begins another week: Good luck and try to pace yourself.
1 Montreal singer-songwriter and visual artist Ada Lea went public with her debut breakup album What We Say In Private last Friday. You can read my review HERE. And if you need more incentive to check it out, she just relases a fittingly artsy claymation video for the track Wild Heart. SAYS THE PRESS RELEASE: “With the brightness of love, strength, and hope contrasted with the darkness of loss, suffering, isolation, and abandonment, the Ada Lea album what we say in private is a varied and vivid record that constantly seems to shift in the light, bringing together all the intricate influences she’s collected over the years.” You’ll be putty in her hands:
2 How often do you hear a song about dirty laundry, gossip and keeping it all under control? Well, today’s your lucky day — because that’s what you get from international duo Jitensha’s single and video Under Control. SAYS THE PRESS RELEASE: “Jitensha is an indie music duo based in Montréal. The project consists of Canadian musician David Martinez and U.S.-born performer Erin Rose Hubbard. The song showcases their upbeat, insightful, songs with a highly emotional concept, combining catchy melodies and indie aesthetics with understated song writing skills.” Get under way:
3 Give some people enough rope and they’ll hang themselves. Give French post-metal Sick Sad World enough and they’ll give you a cinematically trippy video for their new single The Rope, from their latest album Imago Clipeata. SAYS THE PRESS RELEASE: “Sick Sad World have always enjoyed combining genres to provide a personalised musical style in which atmospheric post-rock blends with the intensity of Post-hardcore and where sludge breeds gently with black-metal.” Tie one on:
4 Nashville duo Striking Matches hit the couch in the lyric video for their latest single Boring — the first preview of their Nov. 15 EP Noon. I get what they’re trying to do here, but even so, they might be embodying that title just a little too much here. SAYS THE PRESS RELEASE: “We live in an amazing time right now where you don’t have to fit in a box… you don’t necessarily have to play by everyone else’s rules or follow anyone else’s script. We really wanted to write a song about that, and our own experience with pushing our own limits and breaking our own walls down in our music, and how awesome it is to just be who you are and do your own thing… So sure they can call us a lot of different things – they can call us misfits, they can call us different, but what they’ll never call us is boring.” Sofa, so good:
https://youtu.be/6TqjU4Ww_nc
5 For the world at large, nothing is as constant as change. For experimental harpist Sarah Pagé, not so much — if the former Barr Brothers member’s latest solo single and video for Stasis is anything to go by. SAYS THE PRESS RELEASE: “Directed by filmmaker Kyoka Tsukamoto, the “ravishing” video features Pagé using a slide to counter the exactitude of the harp and find more ambiguous pitches and articulations. Part live performance and part abstract watery swirls, the visuals provide the perfect vessel for a track Pagé describes as being about “finding a gentle way to settle in to immobility when you have no other choice.” Your move:
6 If you need me to explain the appeal of a new Mark Lanegan song, you’re probably in the wrong place. So I’ll just tell you that the pitch-black singer-songwriter — who will be sitting in with Seth Meyers’ band all this week, BTW — has shared the song Letter Never Sent from his Oct. 18 release Somebody’s Knocking. And you can listen to it right now. SAYS THE PRESS RELEASE: “I feel like I write lyrics instinctively. I let the melody come first and then it tells me what the words are going to be and I write whatever feels appropriate. That said, I’m also influenced by everything I’m into. I don’t usually like to talk about what a song means to me; I prefer that the people who connect with a song do so with their own interpretation.” Knock, knock:
7 All is not lost. Unless you’re talking about All is Lost, the new album from psychedelic Chicagoans Dead Feathers. But here’s a find: Their decidedly, deliciously dark single Horse and Sands. SAYS THE PRESS RELEASE: “Fusing a heavy, early 70s Fairports-via-Affinity vibe with a Dead Meadow and Black Mountainesque appreciation for big riffs, their live shows are filled with a thunderous energy on stage that puts concert goers under their spell. Combining soulful and emotional songwriting with obscene levels of fuzz and reverb, overflowing bass lines and booming drums, Dead Feathers craft a mood with deft levels of artistry and showmanship.” Saddle up:
8 We all like good stuff. We all want good stuff. We all appreciate good stuff. Trouble is, one man’s good stuff is another man’s bad stuff. Unless you’re talking about Good Stuff, the latest single from veteran bluesman Bobby Rush’s Aug. 16 album Sitting on Top of the Blues. It is what it is — in the best way possible. SAYS THE PRESS RELEASE: “Good Stuff is the latest offering from Sitting on Top of the Blues, Rush’s first release since his Grammy-winning 2016 LP Porcupine Meat. The song, a mid-tempo country blues number that features Rush’s signature harmonica playing, is a meditation on lust and sensuality. As Rush says of the song, “I’m talking about a lady walking down the street.” Good to go:
