Patternist get real, Cross Record finds release, Lucy & La Mer work blue and more in today’s Roundup. What’s for dinner? I’m starving.
1 I don’t want to get all armchair-quarterbacky here, but I suspect that Patternist frontman Gabe Mouer might be going through a bit of an existential crisis. My evidence: The PacNorwest pop band’s Sept. 6 debut album is titled I Don’t Know What I’m Doing Here. And their latest single is titled I Don’t Feel Real. He looks real enough in the accompanying video — though the same, sadly, cannot be said of his date. SAYS THE PRESS RELEASE: “I Don’t Feel Real was the first step towards me taking more of a narrative approach to songwriting. Just after the release of Give It Up EP, I had this debilitating crisis of identity as a songwriter that spiraled into feeling like I sort of didn’t have anything to offer anybody, and really like I had no real prospect for the future. You know, stuck in this very myopic view of my life I just walked around feeling entirely empty, which is where the phrase I Don’t Feel Real, came from.” I hate to say I told you so:
2 Cross Record — aka singer-songwriter Emily Cross — will release her self-titled album this Friday. But before she releases it, she’s releasing the third single from the album, the fitting song I Release You. Check out the accompanying video below. And feel free to dance like nobody’s watching. SAYS THE PRESS RELEASE: “The song is about struggling to let go of an identity you’ve built up around yourself and trying to see a life beyond it,” says Cross. “It’s also about moving ahead with intuition, even if you have no idea what the ‘right thing to do’ is or means. I was in a state of utter confusion, but somewhere in myself I saw the path I needed to travel, and I knew that eventually when I arrived back to Earth, I and (we) would grow under the right conditions. In this video, I was seeking expression of the song through my friends, who hadn’t heard the song yet. Thanks to them, who moved beautifully to it.” Ah, sweet release:
3 La mer, of course, is French for the sea. Why L.A. singer-songwriter Lucy LaForge chose it as the name of her band is anybody’s guess — especially in light of Lucy and La Mer’s latest single and video Blue Dress, an Americana tribute to bisexual visibility. SAYS THE PRESS RELEASE: “The story is about discovering one’s bisexuality and the “lightbulb” crush that begins bisexual exploration in a positive, fun aesthetic. Lucy & La Mer fuse folk, pop and Americana styles together for a unique sound in Blue Dress.” See for yourself:
4 We all need people in our lives. But popsmith J.R. might need them just a little more. The Welland singer-songwriter — you might know her as Julianna Riolino — introduced herself in these pages this spring with the track Be My Man. Now she’s back with the sweetly jangling Pal. Do you see a trend emerging here? SAYS THE PRESS RELEASE: “This song was inspired by the feeling of youth and naive invincibility. The emotions experienced when you are young and feeling misunderstood. Stagnant and searching for a reason to keep feeling like the past wont catch up to you. Pal is a rollercoaster of thoughts, trying to make sense of multiple personalities and your own insanity. This song always brings me back to multiple places and experiences throughout my youth/young adulthood. Falling in and out of love. The transition of realizing my parents are flawed people just like you. Driving down a beautiful tree-lined road with my friends, looking for something fun to do and searching for a way to sustain that feeling of invincibility.” But what about the Starman?
5+6 Clearly, one creative project at a time is not enough for Avey Tare. And not just because the Animal Collective singer-guitarist released his latest solo album Cows on Hourglass Pond this spring. Mere months later, he’s back with not one but two new videos: A trippy animated video for the album track K.C. Yours — also available on a new EP of the same name — and a live video for the track Remember Mayan. Enjoy them collectively. SAYS THE PRESS RELEASE: “The K.C. Yours video is by Black Dice’s Aaron Warren, using clips filmed by Abigail Portner and Garret Curtis. Alongside, Avey Tare is sharing a live video of Remember Mayan, captured during a sold out show at The Echo in Los Angeles from the North American spring 2019 tour. The video was filmed by Garret and edited by Abigail.” Double your pleasure:
7 If you were trying to come up with a shitty bandname, it would be hard to do worse than Captain Cheesebeard. But as is the way of these things, the music of the 10-member Brussels outfit happens to be far more appealing than their handle. Check out the former Frank Zappa tribute outfit’s lyric video for the ’70s-style moustache-rock anthem Tash & A Guitar, featuring former FZ horn player Bobby Martin. It comes from their 2015 debut album Symphony for Auto​-Horns, which is being reissued Aug. 23 in advance of a new studio EP later this year. SAYS THE PRESS RELEASE: “Informed by the stylistic direction inherent in their previous project, the cosmik fruits of Captain Cheesebeard’s collective labour arrived in 2015 with the self-release of their debut album, Symphony for Auto​-​Horns. Taking it upon themselves to contribute to the global music family their impressive cache of songs portrayed the kind offree-form jazz improvisation, progressive rock, sound experimentation and lampooning of Western culture that one hopes would have made Frank smile.” Whip it out:
