Press Releases For February: Here Are The Artists

You Said Strange, FRANKIIE, MuMu, Ashlynn Malia, The New Pornographers, Iguana Death Cult, and Slow Fiction are the artists among these press releases for February.

You Said Strange – “(Song For A) Wasted Land”: A strange shoegaze with psychedelic rock echoes and new wave dissonant guitars buzzing all song long… a bit reminiscent of Pulp at times. In celebration of the announcement of their new LP, French psychedelic noise-pop quartet You Said Strange has shared the record’s first single, alongside its accompanying music video. At the end of 2022, they released a new LP entitled “Thousand Shadows Vol.1,” inspired by the band’s experiences on tour across Europe and North America that year. This new album is the impending follow-up due April 28 via EXAG / Le Cépe Records. Together, both Volumes compose the band’s sophomore LP. “A second chapter was needed to highlight the many shadows that still linger everywhere,” said the band. “The shadows that linger on the borders, hiding the violence of the fights for them. The shadows that time has on relationships and their persistence because the shadows move.” You Said Strange incants their music in which melancholy, love, and the search for plenitude meet. As the band continued: “Plato’s cave, in a modern version, would be one of the toxic relationships, antidepressants, and the acceptance of the regression of freedom and/or the vision of a dying world…” “(Song For A) Wasted Land” is a parlor, a spittoon, a real confession through which the speaker reveals his fear of seeing his world, which so cherished and protected him, become a dangerous trap closing in on him. With this track, You Said Strange takes listeners into the universe of a new opus, full of promise. The music video’s story is described as such: “Two sections of walls, and a rudimentary decoration — this is all that constitutes the decor of this studio apartment which sees Eliot (vocals) alone and sullen, telling us the story of a disaster. Facing the mirror, he stares at himself, plays the comedy, and puts the viewer in the position of the subject. He frantically puts on outfits, cigarette in mouth. Is this his mental space or a suburban lodge? Later, we discover him in another space plunged into darkness where the lyrics scroll over him in a karaoke-style to highlight this text, the main object of our story. Cigarette after cigarette. everything is consumed, everything is destroyed, but the message of despair gives way to the will to fight. Is it already too late?” As summarized by the band: “We wanted to work around the studio aesthetic that we find particularly interesting in the cinema and television series of the 90s. A simple decor like the sitcoms that created familiar spaces in the collective imagination; these settings that have seen characters evolve by partitioning us into a setting as the only point of reference.”

FRANKIIE – “Garden”: Languid surf guitars for a dreamy ballad with psyche rock flavors, soft bright vocals, and floating hooky harmonies evoking the ‘60s. This is the first single off Vancouver indie-pop outfit FRANKIIE’s forthcoming sophomore LP, “Between Dreams,” due out June 2nd via Paper Bag Records. Speaking on the track, keyboardist/vocalist Nashlyn Lloyd writes: “‘Garden’ was inspired by writing retreats to the northern Sunshine Coast of BC where we could detach from the intensity of urban life and focus on music together. We would write all afternoon in the cabin and take a break to slow down and watch the stars expand forever. The stillness I feel while listening to the ocean or being surrounded by trees is always something I am longing to reconnect with while living life in the city.” “Between Dreams” is psychedelic in the way that makes the best works of psychedelia timeless, existential, and exciting. The record’s sonic world, which weaves between reverb-soaked dream-pop, vintage classic-rock, bedroom-psych, and beachy shoegaze, presents the dreamy and the real as one continuum between which there are no borders, and where magic abounds all over. The songs were written mostly at the band’s dark, moldy jam space in east Vancouver, with extra pieces written at home or on writing retreats to rural parts of the province. Some were penned with a rotating cast of collaborators, including previous bassist Vickie Sieczka, new bassist Jody Glenham, and drummer Trevor Stöddärt, while others were written with the help of a drum machine they nicknamed ‘Chad.’ (“Chad’s so great, he always shows up on time,” quips Lloyd.) They recorded eight tracks in Vancouver with producer Jason Corbett at Jacknife Sound, and two with Connor Head at Catalogue Studio in Victoria. The sessions were full of fresh energy and vision: Glenham and Stöddärt lent new angles to the songs, while the world’s standstill meant the band could take their time to build out this audible world. (Lloyd even had to figure out how to sing while nine months pregnant). Jeremy Wallace Maclean mixed the record, lending his experience in composing for film and TV to give the record a broad, cinematic scope. For Lloyd and Carbonneau, the record marks an attainment of a sound they’ve been chasing for years. Carbonneau quotes Miles Davis: “Man, sometimes it takes a long time to sound like yourself…and this is the closest we’ve gotten so far,” she adds with a laugh.

MuMu – “Honeymoon Love”: A fun pop song delivered with drum beat energy, a funky tempo, and a wild appetite for life. Whether you’re a film buff or streaming binge watcher, you’ve most likely come across the movie musical “Best Summer Ever” and may be familiar with the names MuMu and Zeno Mountain Farm. The romancer starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, and Benjamin Bratt received critical acclaim and was hailed by Forbes as “A magical musical movie milestone for disability inclusion.” Now, MuMu and Zeno Mountain Farm have joined forces again on a bright and playful music video entitled “Honeymoon Love” with a cast and crew comprised mostly of people with diverse intellectual or physical abilities. Centered around a real-life Zeno community wife and husband duo on their “wedding day,” the video is a festival of adoration. Charming couplings and endearing interactions induce ear-to-ear grinning throughout the entire 2 minutes and 37 seconds. The video reflects the joy that Zeno Mountain Farm generates for so many lives. MuMu states, “I came in contact with Zeno Mountain Farm six years ago and was immediately swept away by their creativity, humor, inclusion, and love culture. At Zeno, it’s actually kind of lame to not have a disability. And I’ve realized that it’s actually kind of lame in the real world too. My coolest and most creative friends have disabilities.” In fact, Zeno’s goal is to create life-long friendships between folks who might not meet under other circumstances. “I hope this video reminds us that diversifying our friend groups doesn’t have to happen in designated spaces like Zeno. We can reach out to our neighbors, strike up a conversation on the bus, or share a dance with someone who walks/talks/thinks differently than you.” MuMu also notes, “We shot this video in two hours, with zero dollars and infinite love.”  “Honeymoon Love” is an alternate version of MuMu’s recent single, “Honeymoon Sex” – written by MuMu and Jamie Lawrence, featuring the amazing Nigerian bassist Michael Olatuja and NYC-based guitarist Jack Broza.

Ashlynn Malia – “comfortable – voice memo”: A very emotive melody with fragile vocals over a simple guitar, creating a haunting and intimate ballad. This is the first single from Ashlynn Malia’s upcoming EP “navigating galaxies,” out March 21 via Jullian Records. The Los Angeles-based singer and songwriter, who first got noticed on TikTok, wrote: “It’s never fun to feel like your pain is the new normal in a relationship, and no matter how many times you hope it will change, or you ASK for it to change, the other person doesn’t seem to have a problem coasting over your very valid feelings. It’s like you’ve expressed yourself so many times that it no longer has an impact. That’s where this song is coming from. What I care about most when it comes to music is connection. I write about connection and I write to connect with people. I think that’s why releasing something as vulnerable as a collection of voice memos appeals to me (and also lowkey scares the shit out of me). If I’m honest about the things that I struggle with or think about, it might make someone who stumbles across my work less alone and maybe even excited that someone else shares the same thoughts they don’t always feel safe enough to talk about. The whole release strategy of this EP is taking a more personal route. Reaching out to my audience organically through TikToks that aren’t too ‘polished’ or perfect. More tearing down that wall between artist and consumer and inviting the people who give their time to listening to me into my mind and my process.” Stay tuned for more music coming soon from Ashlynn Malia.

The New Pornographers – “Angelcover”: A layered track with a driving restless beat, fuzzy vocal harmonies, and distinct synth lines sometimes detaching from the mix. This is a new track from The New Pornographers’ forthcoming album “Continue as a Guest,” their first for Merge Records, due March 31. “I pictured this one as a weird little George Saunders-esque sketch, a snapshot,” explains frontperson A.C. Newman. “I found myself a lot more concerned with performance and/or delivery, changing melody and phrasing to get a better performance, less concerned, less precious about the original melody or lyric that I wrote. With that in mind, I had the idea of angels visiting me in the night with the message that ‘melody ain’t got nothing on delivery.’ Kind of a fever dream, where feelings take on their own personality and shape.” The band previously shared the record’s first single, “Really Really Light,” alongside a Christian Cerezo-directed video. Newman began work on “Continue as a Guest” at his Woodstock, New York home over the course of a year after the band had just finished touring behind 2019’s “In The Morse Code Of Brake Lights.” During the writing and recording process, he discovered new lyrical, artistic, and sonic approaches experimenting with his own vocal register. The 10-track record is produced by Newman and features compatriots Neko Case, Kathryn Calder, John Collins, Todd Fancey, and Joe Seiders as well as contributions from saxophonist Zach Djanikian and co-writes from Dan Bejar (Destroyer) and Sadie Dupuis (Speedy Ortiz, Sad13). The album tackles themes of isolation and collapse, following the ambivalence of day-to-day life during the pandemic and the endless pitfalls of living online. But Newman says that Continue as a Guest’s title track also addresses the continually rolling concerns that come with being in a band for so long. “The idea of continuing as a guest felt very apropos to the times,” he explains. “Feeling out of place in culture, in society—not feeling like a part of any zeitgeist, but happy to be separate and living your simple life, your long fade-out.  Find your own little nowhere, find some space to fall apart, and continue as a guest.”

Iguana Death Cult – “Sensory Overload”: A high-energy, chaotic, almost maniac or Devo-esque number with wild saxophone solos and an abrupt delivery, channeling New Wave legends. European rock band Iguana Death Cult have announced their return with a forthcoming LP, “Echo Palace,” due 5/12 via Innovative Leisure, kicking off with this first single, alongside an accompanying music video. Speaking on the new track, the band wrote: “Scrolling up and down my feed, I literally feel like I’m traveling back and forth through space and time sometimes: since down is up and up is down and reality is starting to feel like a joke – which is making me very, very anxious. We wrote quite the jittery tune to compliment the manic lyrics which are more or less heavily distorted flutters of consciousness. To emphasize this, we asked saxophone legend Benjamin Herman to channel his inner James Chance and blow this song to pieces.” After the pandemic hit, and the people of the world suddenly grew wary and suspicious of one another, Iguana Death Cult, one of Europe’s most exciting rock exports, became more than just a band to its members—it became therapy. “I think for the first ten times we went to jam,” says guitarist/vocalist Tobias Opschoor, speaking about the process of making the new album “Echo Palace,” “we just drank wine and talked about it, and just kept on talking for hours—and then were like, ‘OK, I have to go because I have to work tomorrow.’” Taking place at frontman Jeroen Reek’s apartment in the Dutch city of Rotterdam, these gatherings slowly shifted from talking about this surreal chapter of their lives — the days of quiet streets and cramped buildings — to making music about it. “I was living in a really crappy, leaky, ready-for-demolition apartment,” explains Reek, “with just one heat source—like a really old-school, gas stove kind of thing.” Working on cold nights, they had to gather around that heater together— a cozy approach that ultimately got their creative flow going, fast. Armed with the talents of Justin Boer on bass and Arjen van Opstal on drums, and tapping the keys work Jimmy de Kok for the first time on the album, the band took their trademark melodic garage-rock style and expanded it out to make it vibier and looser, with each member contributing ideas to develop the sound palette in full. “We all get into this sort of blender and then everybody gives a little bit of a flavor to it,” says Opschoor. The sounds they started to make tapped into the band’s acerbic bite established on their first two LPs, 2017’s “The First Stirrings of Hideous Insect Life” and 2019’s “Nude Casino” — albums that sometimes felt like Parquet Courts colliding with Super Furry Animals. Their explosive performances of these records turned them into a cult live act among psych fans, who have thrashed to the band everywhere from Amsterdam to Austin. But working on this new album, huddled together as the world split apart, everything began to flutter like Remain in Light. “Echo Palace” may be the Iguana Death Cult music that’s most overtly about the strange cause and effect of groupthink, but the theme has been lurking there since the very beginning when the band was first formed by childhood friends Reek and Opschoor over ten years ago. The name of Iguana Death Cult is a partial nod to Reek’s fascination with cults in general — and the “Iguana” part is a nod to Iggy Pop, whose first band was the Iguanas. Watching the pandemic paranoia and conspiracy theories steeping across their country, Reek wrote lyrics reflecting the scene in front of him: “Purple, veiny soccer mommies,” he sings in a deep, foreboding voice on the song “Echo Palace,” “Sharpening their guillotines.” It’s a cut so infectious that it betrays the density of its lyrics, which were adapted from a poem Reek wrote about the repercussions of “shutting yourself off from everyone outside of your own ideology.” When it came time to record the full set, the band headed to PAF Studio in Rotterdam, and then had the self-produced album subsequently mixed by Joo-Joo Ashworth (Sasami, Dummy) at Studio 22 in Los Angeles and mastered by Dave Cooley (Tame Impala, Yves Tumor). As the instruments swirl and trade solos on “I Just a Want House,” a funky millennial nihilist anthem, you can practically hear the growth of a group that’s been pushing itself further and further with every tour and every Belgian-stove fuelled jam session. The album is a big swing, stretching Iguana Death Cult beyond its garage rock origins and taking them to a new realm. It’s the type of project that warranted having legendary Dutch saxophonist Benjamin Herman stop by to add to the squall on tracks like “Oh No” and “Sensory Overload,” heady thrashers that morph into calculated freakouts; that warranted Reek and Opschoor knowing when screaming their guts out on tracks like “Pushermen,” and Boer and van Opstal knowing when to bring the rhythm section to a jazzy simmer on tracks like “Paper Straws.” The end result of “Echo Palace” is an appropriately worldly album from a group breaking past the confines of its home country. That’s not to say that Iguana Death Cult aren’t proudly Dutch; the group takes from the trademark hard work ethic of their Rotterdam base and applies it to their approach to music. But it’s 2022, and we’re less defined by our borders than ever before. “When we play in other countries, for me that gives the same amount of pleasure — or even more — than when we play in the Netherlands,” says Opschoor.  “We’re not just little countries anymore, everything is global,” adds Reek, speaking about society at large — but he might as well be speaking about Iguana Death Cult itself. “We’re turning into a global thing.”

Slow Fiction – “Jericho”: Vigorous drums, heavy-hitting guitars for a garage rock track, sometimes echoing the ‘90s, going crescendo with the help of Julia Vasallo’s empowering vocals, transforming the song into a cathartic and anthemic declaration. Slow Fiction is finally sharing a full-length project, their debut self-titled EP, “Slow Fiction,” out now. As vocalist Julia Vasallo wrote of their new release: “These songs are a culmination of the past two years of our group’s coalescence. We’ve felt a need to explain ourselves in a larger context, and this is our first chance to do it. There are characters throughout the EP that every person has either related to, loved, or hated at some point in their lives. I’ve always loved the quote that ‘good art should make you laugh and cry’ but what about the feeling when you’re crying and laughing at the same time?” Brooklyn’s Slow Fiction have gradually gained acclaim and local notoriety after releasing a slew of stellar singles in 2022 (including as double A-side, “The Cut” / “Niagara,” and standalone tracks, “Nameless Harm” and “International Cherry”). In turn, the band has been found on bills all over the city, performing alongside acts such as Sports Team, Girl Skin (with whom they toured last spring), Native Sun, The Wants (mem. Bodega), Thus Love, Dead Tooth, and more, in addition to making an appearance at last year’s New Colossus Festival (view the Paste live session). Jonathan Schenke (Parquet Courts, The Drums, Snail Mail, Mannequin Pussy) mixed and mastered the project, helping the band carve out a sound that calls upon the garage rock greatness of the early aughts. Leading up to the full drop, Slow Fiction shared two singles, “Top 10 Movie Scenes” and “In the distance, where it doesn’t matter.” Now, as the full EP is released, the band shines a spotlight on the EP’s focus track, “Jericho.” “This track is fueled by tension and a persona that is utterly heinous and toxic,” Vasallo wrote. “The character we hear throughout the song could be your own conscience, your worst enemy, or both. The battle of Jericho is the struggle of determining how to tell the truth without the walls crumbling down.” Slow Fiction is additionally returning for this year’s New Colossus Festival and will be playing a showcase alongside The Vices, Ghum, Blushing, English Teacher, O Wake, and Naya Ali at Mercury Lounge on March 10.