Press Releases For October: Here Are The Artists
Liily, Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats, Aimee Mann, Kacy Hill, The Milk Carton Kids, Kate Clover, and Brandi Carlile are among these press releases for October.
Liily – ‘Anvil’: A dark guitar ballad that is unusually calm for Liily. It’s a change of pace, far less chaotic and far more shoegaze-y than their previous songs but almost more emotional. ‘Anvil’ is another single off their upcoming long-awaited debut, ‘TV or Not TV’ and the track comes with its accompanying music video, directed by guitarist Sam De La Torre. On the single, Liily said: ”Anvil’ is our attempt at a shoegaze song and ultimately my attempt at variation lyrically. I really tried to poke fun at the intensity at which a song like this could have, exemplifying that through hyperbolic statements like ‘I made my death bed’ or ‘it might be the last thing I ever wear’—just to be as outrageous as possible in the fewest words possible. This was fun for us because we grew up playing around a lot of shoegaze bands but never was one, so it was exciting/challenging to write a song in a genre that we could never imagine playing but love so much.’ Recently, the four Los Angeles musicians announced a Fall tour of headlining dates, in addition to their upcoming dates supporting Caveman.
Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats – ‘Love Don’t’: The latest track to be revealed from the band’s third studio album, ‘The Future,’ set for release on November 5 via Stax Records. The song sounds like a classic of the band, a stomping soulful and horn-filled anthem, channeling a golden era and beautifully served by Rateliff’s bombastic vocals. ‘I look at the album overall as a big question,’ notes Rateliff. ‘When I was writing the record we were in the middle of a pandemic and our future looked pretty bleak. I just continue to try to write from a place of hope. Then my own neurosis, and maybe being a libra gets in the way, and I can’t make up my mind. There is this constant back and forth battle in me personally and I am sure that comes out in my writing.’ Since its release in August, the band’s knockout single ‘Survivor’ moved quickly into the #1 slot at Triple-A and debuted Top 30 on the Alternative Chart. The song is also #2 on the Americana Singles Chart while The Future remains #1 on the Non-Comm Albums Chart for the second consecutive week. Recorded at Rateliff’s own Broken Creek Studio outside of Denver, Jenny Lewis, Jess Wolfe (Lucius), and Amelia Meath (Sylvan Esso) contributed backing vocals on ‘The Future.’
Aimee Mann – ‘Burn It Out’: It’s always a delight to listen to Aimee’s melodious voice telling us poignant dark tales of traumatism and haunting memories over strings and cello. This is the second song from her highly anticipated new album, ‘Queens of The Summer Hotel,’ set for release on November 5 via her own SuperEgo Records. ‘In this song, a character who has set herself on fire ruminates on whether she had tried to banish the ghosts of trauma though one drastic, self-destructive act,’ says Mann. The song follows the release of the album’s lead single, ‘Suicide Is Murder,’ as the collection of songs were written for a stage adaptation of ‘Girl, Interrupted,’ Susannah Kaysen’s memoir about her psychiatric hospitalization in the late 1960s, a material that Mann understood well, having had her own struggles with mental illness. ‘Queens of The Summer Hotel’ consists of a song cycle, exploring themes of self-harm, depression, and suicide, and constructed from music that Mann wrote for the show, sung by Mann and orchestrated with her longtime collaborator Paul Bryan, using strings and woodwinds in a nod to the project’s theatrical origins.
Kacy Hill – ‘Easy Going’: Delicate and vulnerable vocals over swirls of synth and light beats, the song is a light electro-pop track from Kacy Hill’s new album ‘Simple, Sweet, and Smiling’ out October 15. Made throughout quarantine mostly on her own, ‘Simple, Sweet, and Smiling’ marks an entirely new way of creating for Hill. Whereas she previously made music during scheduled sessions at studios, lockdown inspired her to build a simple recording setup at home and work when she was inspired, often recording vocals first thing in the morning after waking up. The album was made mostly with Jim-E Stack and a few close friends, notably John Carroll Kirby (Frank Ocean, Solange), and Ariel Rechtshaid (Adele, Vampire Weekend, Charli XCX). Just as Hill was beginning the writing and recording progress, her father suffered and survived a major heart attack, sending her to her hometown to visit him as much as possible. At the same time, the agoraphobic panic disorder she has struggled with since childhood made a significant recurrence. The album is a document of Hill working through her feelings of powerlessness in the face of her own mind and mortality, real-time exploration of the realities we’re all faced with as we enter adulthood, as well as a collection of love letters and thank you notes to partners, friends, and family.
The Milk Carton Kids – ‘Michigan’: A song off The Milk Carton Kids’ special 10th Anniversary box set reissue of their critically acclaimed debut album ‘Prologue.’ ‘Michigan’ is an example of their perfect harmonies, tasteful arrangements, and melancholic country-folk introspection. The three-LP box set includes the remastered original album alongside a selection of early demos and live performances, as well as a disc that traces the evolution of ‘Michigan’ and ‘New York,’ two of the group’s most popular songs. The box set also comes with redesigned artwork and metallic ink on a clamshell box, plus a 32-page booklet featuring archival photos and a retrospective essay by author Kim Ruehl. Band members Joey Ryan and Kenneth Pattengale note, ‘We wanted to commemorate this milestone for anyone who has loved ‘Prologue,’ of course, but also for ourselves. Those early days were such a blur, but we kept so much of it in iPhone recordings, posters, ticket stubs, tour laminates. Putting it all together got pretty emotional. This was the album that changed our lives.’ The band is also planning East Coast tour dates for Spring 2022 including stops at New York’s Bowery Ballroom and the Capital Turnaround in Washington, DC.
Kate Clover – ‘Crimewave’: A killer track executed with swagger, fuzzed-out guitars, and a frenetic tempo à la Oh Sees. The video that accompanies the track is as retro bizarro LA as you can get, a sincere revival of a gritty and vintage sound with plenty of pop hooks and garage punk rock esthetics. I saw Kate on stage not so long ago – she was opening for the Black Lips – and she is as unapologetic and good as this video looks. The new single, which features Brandon Welchez (Crocodiles) and AJ + Johnny of Davila 666, sees Kate sing: ‘It doesn’t matter what you say to me / It doesn’t matter ’cause I wanna be me.’ Combined, its brash instrumentation and fuck-all attitude make it the perfect sort of track for ramming into your fellow audience members in the middle of a mosh pit, and it’s just what everyone wants to hear after this long period of isolation. After independently releasing her first single in 2020, Clover released ‘Channel Zero’ by Carlos de la Garza (Cherry Glazerr, Bleached, Paramore, Wolf Alice), but look out for her debut LP in early 2022.
Brandi Carlile – ‘Right on Time’: An emotive and remarkable song with bombast and sweeping orchestration and Brandi Carlile’s stratospheric vocals. This is a song off her new album ‘In These Silent Days,’ her highly anticipated album out on Low Country Sound/Elektra Records. Inspired by the mining of her own history while writing this year’s #1 New York Times Best Selling memoir, Broken Horses (Crown), ‘In These Silent Days’ was conceived of while Carlile was quarantined at home with longtime collaborators and bandmates Tim and Phil Hanseroth. The ten songs chronicle acceptance, faith, loss, and love and channel icons like David Bowie, Freddie Mercury, Elton John, and Joni Mitchell—the latter two who, by some sort of cosmic alignment of the stars, have turned out to be close friends in addition to being her biggest heroes and inspirations. Reflecting on the album, Carlile shares, ‘Never before have the twins and I’ve written an album during a time of such uncertainty and quiet solitude. I never imagined that I’d feel so exposed and weird as an artist without the armor of a costume, the thrill of applause, and the platform of the sacred stage. Despite all this, the songs flowed through—pure and unperformed, loud and proud, joyful and mournful. Written in my barn during a time of deep and personal reckoning. There’s plenty of reflection…but mostly it’s a celebration. This album is what drama mixed with joy sounds like. It’s resistance and gratitude, righteous anger and radical forgiveness. It’s the sound of these silent days.’
