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Lakes – Pine Barrens
What began as drummer Matt Shaw’s acoustic demos back in 2017 quickly developed into a six-piece band, bonding over a love of artists like American Football, Minus The Bear, and The Appleseed Cast. The group has taken influence from mid-western emo, math-rock, and alternative indie and combined those with Fleetwood Mac style dual-vocal pop melodies and twinkling glockenspiel to create their trademark “Glock-Rock” sound.
Earning their stripes in pubs and clubs of the Watford music scene, Lakes have been emboldened with a DIY attitude that was born from the frustration of life on the peripheries of a capital city. The group’s fiercely independent attitude has led them to record all their own music, produce their own music videos, and with families of their own – organize child-friendly matinee gigs in their hometown.
After self-releasing their first two EPs, Lakes joined The LP Cafe in the UK and Friend of Mine Records in Japan to release their debut full-length album in August 2019 entitled “The Constance LP”.
This led Washed Up Emo to label them “your new favorite band” and Punktastic to include them on their list of the most important bands of the next decade stating “it’s hard to look past their potential as future frontrunners of the UK emo scene.
With nods to midwestern emo giants in American Football and Braid, Lakes create a truly unique take on the genre interlacing shimmering glockenspiels, beautiful harmonies, and pop sensibilities in everything they do.”
The album was recorded entirely by drummer Matt Shaw in a spare room using a couple of mics and a PC over the space of a year. With no timing or financial restraints that would come from a proper studio, the band took their time crafting the songs and discovering their sound. This has resulted in a truly unique album, one that is completely holistic in its presentation with band members also taking control of photography, graphic design, web design and accompanying music videos.
Lakes’ ‘This World Of Ours, It Came Apart,’ was released in July 2020 via Know Hope Records in North America and The LP Cafe in the UK.
LINKS:
https://www.ourbandlakes.com
https://www.facebook.com/ourbandlakes
https://www.instagram.com/ourbandlakes
https://twitter.com/ourbandlakes -
AM Clouds – Rainmaker
Oregon-based AM Clouds craft adventurous rootsy indie rock that traverses both the internal and external landscapes of human experience. Their hometown of Bend offers extreme climate changes and expansive beauty, prompting them to coin the term ‘high desert rock.’ Even their name, AM Clouds, was derived from a phrase that was constantly broadcast across the Oregon weather forecast.
Meshing classic and alternative, the band connects the dots between several eras of rock music, from angular indie to psychedelic noise jams, equal parts Neil Young and Meat Puppets, Tom Petty and Uncle Tupelo. Their debut EP, War of Love, was released in 2017 and was welcomed with open arms by the local press, picking up heavy rotation on KPOV and KRFM. “We’re located in a rugged, remote place, where culture has a tendency to be overshadowed by nature,” Moon relates. “I think people really connect to hearing their majestic surroundings captured musically with a bit of cinematic flair.”
Made up of Bruce Troy Moon (lead vocals, lead guitar), Graham Boostrom (rhythm guitar, vocals), Pete Ficht (bass, keys, vocals), and Dan Paggi (drums, vocals), the band is both immediate and relatable, comprised of musicians committed to their individual tone but more invested in serving the overall sound. Since their inception, they’ve played across Central Oregon, sharing the stage with veteran roots rockers the Mother Hips and Portland’s psych-rock pioneers King Black Acid.
Their album, Rainmaker, was tracked at the Firing Room in Bend, Oregon with engineer Dayne Wood and mixed by Portland producer Jeff Stuart Saltzman (The Black Keys, Death Cab for Cutie).
Featured image by Amanda Marquez.
LINKS:
http://www.am-clouds.com
https://www.facebook.com/amclouds
https://twitter.com/amcloudsband
https://amclouds.bandcamp.com
https://www.instagram.com/am.clouds -
Crooked Ghost – Sleepwalker
Dreamy post-punk rockers Crooked Ghost have announced that their new album ‘Skeleton House’ will be released on CD on November 23, followed by a limited edition 12″ vinyl release in February 2019. Ahead of this, the Asheville, NC outfit presents their ‘Sleepwalker’ single, accompanied by a video, directed by Rome Widenhouse.
“Skeleton House’ is the band’s sophomore long-play – a dark and hazy dreamscape of lush and angular melody, with a stark lyrical rawness touching upon such subjects as addiction, trauma, loss, superstition, and everything that gets left behind after a catastrophic event. The album consists of eight tracks, ranging from dreamy and playful to anguished and harrowing. Billowing vocal patterns weave intricate stories between shimmering guitar crescendos, cascading synths, and mathematical percussion.
This album follows up their debut LP ‘Strange Burial Rituals’, released in March 2017. This new offering has two distinct halves: the first is lighter, the second darker. The whole thing plays out like a story, or rather, two opposite stories that are intertwined.
“The song ‘Sleepwalker’ was one of the first written for the new album, and everything about it just worked. The song itself is in reference to addiction and a dissolution of one’s sense of self; self-medicating and numbness. I wanted to bring light to something dark, yet still tell an honest story. Something about this song has always stood out for us, says frontman Ray Clark.
“The music video was shot by Rome Widenhouse over a period of several weeks and includes shots of that eclipse everyone was so excited about. The video is a bit surreal and has a sort of Twin Peaks meets the X-Files vibe. It was a lot of fun to shoot, even the traipsing barefoot through the woods in nothing but a bedsheet and getting poison ivy part. At one point our director took a tumble down a cliffside and we thought he was done for!”
Formed in Seattle in 2013 as an acoustic side project by Ray Clark, Crooked Ghost was initially a channel for leftover songs that didn’t seem to fit in any of the other bands Clark was involved in, but quickly became the focal point of Ray’s creative energy. Ray soon fled the musically-saturated Seattle scene to find himself in the intensely creative heart of Asheville, North Carolina.
With a guitar case full of lyrics of songs never intended to be heard by anyone, somehow, something had begun to spark again. Intimidated by the idea of a solo project, Ray joined with Chris Saldin, who would play bass, and bought an electric guitar, set on bringing Crooked Ghost to life. Together with drummer Jon Wyatt, the songs came to life. A few months later, they entered the studio to record their debut album.
They were eventually joined by Charles Reed on guitar and Alex Cannon on keyboards before recording the heavily emotive and dreamily lush ‘Skeleton House’. With the power-pop punch of Catch Fire, the dark-disco punk breakdown of Roadkill, to the angular yet dreamy swoon of Sleepwalker, Skeleton House will impress and even haunt you.
“These songs were inspired by the loss of someone I loved to a fire. The idea that something like a fire could destroy so much, but still leave something behind was so enticing to me. I wanted these songs to represent resilience and strength, and to be able to process loss in a healthy way. I wanted to find a way to bring light to the darker things I was experiencing, and to arrange the pieces into something beautiful,” says Ray Clark.
“We recorded this album up in Black Mountain, NC in the dead of winter. The snowy and icy landscape definitely added to the album’s atmosphere. This is also our first release on vinyl, making it very special for all of us. As kaleidoscopic as it sounds, I feel we very much achieved the piece of art we were wanting to make.”
As of November 23, ‘Skeleton House’ will be available on CD. It can already be ordered via Bandcamp and is also available across music stores and streaming platforms such as iTunes and Spotify.
LINKS:
https://www.facebook.com/CrookedGhost
https://crookedghost.bandcamp.com
https://www.instagram.com/crookedghost
https://twitter.com/thecrookedghost
https://soundcloud.com/crookedghost
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIgVwlr638HsQbVuTZGH6EQ
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/skeleton-house/1394361906
https://open.spotify.com/artist/1dQla5TZY6h1hmDyAIDtrF?si=5Qufr3YuSmGi_5FdwECCPA
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