The only band capable of knocking OK Go off the top spot for music video of the year, are OK Go themselves, and that’s exactly what they’ve done with this latest mind-boggling visual feast. Following hot on the tails of ‘A Stone Only Rolls Downhill‘, with its intricate interweaving one takes, comes yet another example of the band’s boundless patience and ingenuity. Following a similarly trippy kaleidoscopic ethos, the video for ‘Love’ (the latest single from their new album And the Adjacent Possible) sees the band capture a mesmerising journey through a robotic hall of mirrors, playing with vibrant colours, psychedelic fractals, and freaky shifts in perspective, all as ever captured in one unbroken take. I’m forever awed and baffled by the sheer logistics of these projects – how does one keep that many mirrors so spotless, never mind programming all the robotic arms. One wrong move and that’s about a thousand years of bad luck! There’s something so joyous and life-affirming about OK Go’s limitless creativity, and all the teamwork and dedication that goes into fully realising all their hare-brained schemes.
Author: James Fenney
Album Review: Lucy Dacus – Forever Is A Feeling
Top Tracks: Durry – This Movie Sucks
Maybe it’s because I relate so hard to their lyrics about being a messed up kid growing up to become some dead-end loser just barely getting by, or maybe it’s because I love the band’s wry humour, endearing underdog energy, and uncanny knack for great hooks ( …let’s go with the latter!). Whatever the reason, I’ve had Durry’s debut album Suburban Legend on repeat for months now. After every spin it leaves me craving more, but now my prayers are answered, as our favourite sibling duo are back with their latest angsty anthem ‘This Movie Sucks’. The title track of their forthcoming album, out 27th June, it’s a perfect storm of ennui and nostalgia, combatting discontent for a lacklustre existence by finding joy in the little things and not taking life too seriously. The track’s delightful DIY video is Austin and Taryn at their best, delivering a flurry of low budget Be Kind Rewind style recreations of iconic blockbusters. The pair clearly had a blast bringing all these the parodies to life, and that joy just radiates from every frame. To me that’s Durry in a nutshell – a couple of screw-ups with big ideas, ten bucks, and a whole lot of heart, creating something that makes you smile – and you can be damn sure I’ll be in the front row, with popcorn ready, every time.
Album Review: Coheed and Cambria – The Father of Make Believe
Coheed and Cambria – The Father of Make Believe
Hard Rock | Progressive Rock | Emo
84%
Top Tracks: The Swell Season – People We Used To Be
We all live a number of lives during our brief time on this Earth. Different versions of the same person that we ultimately have to say goodbye to in order to grow into someone new. Old shells from a hermit crab, outgrown and left behind. Given enough time, our past selves become like strangers; but who else do we become estranged from in the process? ‘People We Used To Be’ is a song of bittersweet reunion, one that sees The Swell Season – the Oscar winning folk duo of Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová – tenderly rebuilding their partnership after many years spent moving in different directions. It’s a moment of mourning for their past selves, that fittingly wonders on where a relationship stands given the passage of time. How much of a connection formed all that time ago still remains within their current incarnations. Does a partnership need to be forged anew, are the bonds we form yet another part of our past that we need to say goodbye to, or will it be strong enough to persist throughout all change and reinvention. Though the pair’s voices may carry a little more weight, and speak with a little more wisdom, having the two of them together in a video that calls back to their performances in the beloved film Once – seeing that, it feels like not a day has passed.
Album Review: Steven Wilson – The Overview
Album Review: Black Foxxes – The Haar
Spotlight!: Fiona-Lee
Navigating that transitional period from your teenage years into adulthood comes with a lot of upheaval and uncertainty. There’s a million and one stupid mistakes we’d love to take back, painful encounters we long to forget, inner voices we’d love to silence, and moments where we felt completely lost and out of our depth. All this metamorphosis comes at a time in our lives when our emotions burn at their brightest. Loving deeper, grieving harder, our anxiety at its most paralyzing; all of it swirling around at once. With it being such a pivotal time in shaping who we are as people, emotions which are felt this fiercely deserve to be expressed with the same level of passion. All across her debut EP, Yorkshire singer/songwriter Fiona-Lee finds strength in vulnerability. The candour of her lyricism confronting insecurities out in the open to rob them of their power, her voice resonating with meaning across moments of tenderness, ferocity and everything inbetween. Continue reading
Top Tracks: Rationale – The Beginning
The foundation this site was built on is the joy of finding something new. Feeling a spark of excitement upon hearing a great song for the first time, like a door opening to a whole new world, and needing to share that sensation far and wide. Yet one of the pillars building off of that ideal draws on an experience just as potent as new discovery – the joy of re-discovering something you loved. When a great artist has been away on hiatus for a while, or their recent work has slipped your radar while you’ve been listening to other things, and suddenly you find yourself listening to them again and reliving all the past highs their music once brought you. Belwood favourite Rationale has had a fairly quiet few years since his self-titled 2017 debut, but ‘The Beginning’ feels like the perfect jumping on point for discovery and rediscovery alike. It’s awakened the place in my heart where my love for tracks like ‘Fuel To The Fire’ and ‘Prodigal Son’ has been lying dormant. Triumphant and bombastic, fusing soaring vocals, an earworm melody, and striking self-directed visuals, ‘The Beginning’ hypes you up to the level where you feel like you could take on the whole world. If this is indeed just the beginning, then consider me fully on board for whatever comes next.
Top Tracks: Eva James – Something New
The first step towards breaking out of a vicious cycle – whether that’s the burden of generational trauma, a string of toxic relationships, or even just our own self-defeating mentality – is being able to recognise it. The second, far more difficult step, is having the strength of will to make a change. These patterns repeat when left to their own devices; it’s only through finding the drive to put in the hard work, and nurturing the notion that you deserve better, that we’re able to turn things around. Combining an undeniable groove with warm and tender harmonies, in way that gives off a mountain of Maggie Rogers vibes, New England native Eva James lays out her own journey to find that confidence and inner strength with her new single ‘Something New’. This melodic musing on self-worth, showcasing her introspective and expressive songwriting style, is a promising taste of what’s to come, with her debut album Earth to Eva set to release later this year.
