BAILEN
– ALL AGES- STANDING ROOM ONLYBAILEN Tired Hearts, the new album from rising indie-pop power trio, BAILEN, delivers a dazzling set of songs that navigates the space between the heart’s expectation and the head’s sober reality. New York based siblings, Daniel, David, and Julia’s second full-length album for Fantasy beats with empathy, vulnerability, and resolve. At times intricate and playful, measured and elaborate, the 12 original songs on Tired Hearts wrestle with an uncertain future where ethics and morality—both communal and personal—seem to be constantly shifting. Locating one’s compass amidst the chaos—a world-wide pandemic, toxic social media culture, economic insecurity and political turbulence—is at the LP’s core. Producer Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Waxahatchee, Snail Mail) who, along with the band, co-produced Tired Hearts, helped to expand BAILEN’s ambition beyond what they initially envisioned. “We’d played the last record live a hundred times before recording it, so we tracked a lot of it live,” Daniel explains. “With Brad, we took a collagist’s approach. It freed us up to explore and be sonically adventurous.” Cook encouraged the trio to experiment with how they sing. “We deliberately used the more vulnerable parts of our voices,” Julia says. “After not being in the studio for years, we were in vulnerable places, and this record reflects the frustration and tenderness of that time.” “We pushed ourselves lyrically, it’s the most exposed, intimate music we’ve written as a result,” David affirms. Indeed, BAILEN’s radiant harmonies, spare, synth-driven tracks, and futuristic, ear-catching arrangements usher in Tired Heart’s exhilarating avant-pop evolution. “Shadows,” affectingly captures “the moment you see someone and realize you can spend the rest of your life with them.” “Nothing Left to Give” echoes of HAIM’s sparkling pop, while “These Bones,” contains a hint of Phoebe Bridgers’ hushed intimacy. On Tired Hearts, their exquisite and thought-provoking new album, BAILEN learns how to dream in the face of life’s uncertainty and in the process, moves forward aware, resilient, and hopeful. “This album is a breakthrough for us,” Daniel says. “It’s been a rocky road, but we’re really grateful that it’s led us here.”ELIZABETH MOEN From her life to the studio, Elizabeth Moen carries with her a certain kind of street-smart wisdom: She knows when you’re on your bullshit and she is also highly sensitive to when her own actions fall short. This perceptive quality is a gift and a burden. The burden is that she is too smart, too tuned into reality to lie to herself and put on a facade that makes it easier to pass for ok. The gift is that instead of giving in, Moen channels life’s turmoil into a constant process of growth–as a songwriter, an arranger, and powerful lyricist.
Little Stranger’s Cool Kids Tour
– ALL AGES- STANDING ROOM ONLYLITTLE STRANGERBorn and raised in Philly, crash landed in Charleston, Kevin and John Shields are breaking into previously uncharted waters with their quirky indie hip-hop group, Little Stranger. Between John’s melodic singer-songwriter magnetism, Kevin’s in-your-face delivery, and an overall undeniable groove, this duo is sure to get any audience up and moving. Stylistically reminiscent of Gorillaz and Odelay-era Beck, Little Stranger delivers a fresh take on melodic hip-hop. Every track brings the uniqueness and strangeness that their name implies.For the past few years, the duo has perfected their live performance by playing over 100 shows per year prior to the coronavirus shutdown. The group also puts a big focus on creating arresting visual experiences through their music videos, their own eccentric television program (LSTV), and in-house graphics. Between their out-of-the-box creative endeavors and an ever-increasing arsenal of new tunes, Little Stranger is poised to make 2023 another slam dunk.JARVPIP THE PANSYPip the Pansy (Erin Burchfield) (fka Wrenn, 25) was born in Syracuse, New York, moving to Woodstock, Georgia when she was 10. She played flute in High School but quit the orchestra, veering to visual arts. She then quit visual arts to do theatre. She quit theatre to sing in the chorus. She attended Art School at the University of Georgia to study photography. After graduating she decided that music was her path and hasn’t looked back since.DAMN SKIPPY Alex Veazey aka Damn Skippy is a hip hop artist based out of Charleston SC. As a member of the Holy City Hip Hop Committee he spends most of his time holding it down like Gravity.
Pedro The Lion
– ALL AGES- STANDING ROOM ONLYPEDRO THE LION Pedro the Lion is the band name Dave Bazan has used off and on since 1995 to release six albums and two eps of his hooky, insightful, and mournful songs. This year, his critically acclaimed and fan favorite, first and third LPs, 1998’s “It’s Hard to Find a Friend” and 2002’s “Control”, turn 25 and 21 years old, respectively. To celebrate, Dave, along with guitar player Erik Walters and drummer Terence Ankeny, will play every song from each album on tour. ERIK WALTERS Erik Walters is an American songwriter and guitarist based in Seattle, Wash. Steeped in the local music community since 2008, he has written songs for several bands and played guitar for artists such as Telekinesis!, Perfume Genius, and is a current member of Pedro The Lion. He released his eponymous solo record in 2021.
DESTROYER (solo)
– ALL AGES- STANDING ROOM ONLYDESTROYER (solo) Dan Bejar initially conceived of Have We Met as a Y2K album. He was already active during the era but not heard overhead in a cafe or salon, which is perhaps what the idea of the Y2K sound evokes nearly two decades later. Bejar assigned frequent producer and bandmate John Collins the role of layering synth and rhythm sections over demos with the period-specific Björk, Air, and Massive Attack in mind, but he soon realized the sonic template was too removed from Destroyer’s own, and the idea of a concept was silly anyway. So he abandoned it and gave Collins the most timeless instruction of all: “Make it sound cool.”Atmosphere and loose approximations of a place or feeling are what we’ve come to expect from any new Destroyer record—certainly not an easily defined and stridently adhered to theme or concept. Have We Met manages to meet somewhere between those disparate Y2K reference points and Destroyer’s own area of expertise, gliding deftly into territory that marries the old strident Destroyer with the new, aged crooning one of late.THE REDS, PINKS, AND PURPLESBefore The Reds, Pinks & Purples started getting noticed by a larger audience, the “I Should Have Helped You” 4 song EP snuck out on Swedish experimental label I Dischi Del Barone and quickly disappeared, becoming a little-heard but often whispered about piece of the RPPs discography. Recorded around the same time as the material that ended up on his breakthrough LP “Uncommon Weather,” it contains some of the best examples of Glenn Donaldson’s melancholy but wry take on indie pop. Needless to say, it’s terrific.The original 7″ is now a white whale for collectors, trading for silly prices on Discogs when it shows up at all. This music *needs* to be heard, so we’ve put together this limited reissue that adds six more tracks to make it a mini-LP length grab bag of hits. It has songs about record shopping, religion, worker’s rights, dysfunctional holidays, and of course heartbreak sung over a maze of shimmering fuzzy guitars and drum machine beats — an essential chapter of the Reds, Pinks & Purples story.
Bill Callahan
– ALL AGES- STANDING ROOM ONLYBILL CALLAHAN“And we’re coming out of dreams / And we’re coming back to dreams” is the first thing you hear Bill say as you remake your acquaintance on YTI⅃AƎЯ. Right out the gate, he’s standing in two places at once: meeting up with old friends behind the scenes and encountering them on the record, finding himself coming round the bend and then again as someone else on down the line. Like the character actor he played on Gold Record, writing stories about other people, telling jokes about everyone, and in singing them, becoming the songs. “You do what you’ve got to do / To see the picture” Bill’s got a full band sound going on this one, with him and Matt Kinsey on guitars, Emmett Kelly on bass and backing vocals, Sarah Ann Phillips on B3, piano and backing vocals and Jim White on drums. Jim and Matt sing on one song, too, and some other singers come in, too. Bill plays some synth here and there, and Carl Smith drifts in and out of the picture with his contra alto clarinet, as do Mike St. Clair and Derek Phelps on brass. Somehow in between them all, you might think you hear the distant sound of a steel guitar. And you might—but you might not, too. In this company, Bill continues his journey, tunneling underneath the weathered exterior of what seems to be and into the more nuanced life everything takes on in the dark. With Bill’s voice making the extraordinary leaps and bounds that measure the lives of the songs, the band follow him through passages that seem to invent themselves; other times playing with deeply soulful grooves and/or desperate intensity, as these moments come and go. There’s nothing they can’t do. “I wrote this song in five and forever / I’m writing it right now” Bill sings on “Natural Information”—an admission of the everyday alchemy he’s forever trafficking in. Time passes, triangulating the encounters that went into any one record with two out of any three others, all of it made flesh, new constitution, in our stereo speakers. If every album is its own life, it stands to reason that they’re invariably passing in the night. Cascading images flowing from the stream of consciousness. Turning like pages from the journal, unspeakably personal, then suddenly become tall tales, like a book pulled off the shelf, completely unbound. Headlines flow through. Mirror images, mirthful ones. Bill’s lyrics strain at the lines on the page, not content to separate the printing of the fact from the myth or be confined to ink on paper. They want to fly free. And they do. “I realize now that dreams are real” On YTI⅃AƎЯ’s inner sleeve, alongside his lyrics, Bill celebrates the “exhilaration and dread” of cover artist Paul Ryan’s paintings. Paul’s another one met up with again down the road, his indelible cover imagery on Apocalypse and Dream River now an axis of meaning in the Callahanian world—and in the bright colors found in these new images, a parallel to Bill’s recognitions here. “A breath of exquisite air as we come up from drowning”, sounds like the desired hope for those hearing the songs of YTI⅃AƎЯ.Pascal Kerong’A
Avey Tare: 7s Tour
– ALL AGES- STANDING ROOM ONLYAVEY TAREYou remember how it was, don’t you, back in the Spring of 2020? Knowing so little about what any of us should do, so many of us crawled inside our quarters to find new obsessions or indulge the familiar ones, unencumbered by anything else we could do. At home in the woods on the eastern edge of Asheville, N.C., Avey Tare took the latter path, sequestering himself in his small home studio to sort the songs he’d written and recorded with friends in the instantly distant before times — Animal Collective’s Time Skiffs, of course, their astonishing document of communal creativity a quarter-century into the enterprise. He often worked there for 12 hours a day, tweaking mixes alone, save the birds and bears and his girlfriend, Madelyn. By Fall, though, it was done, so what next? How else should Avey now occupy himself in his cozy little room? The answer became 7s, his fourth solo album (and first in four years), an enchanting romp through the playground of his head. He wasn’t, however, going to do it alone.During the first week of January 2021, Avey began making regular drives to his friend Adam McDaniel’s Drop of Sun Studios to give guts and flesh and color to the skeletal demos he’d made at home. They turned first to “Hey Bog,” a tune Avey had been tinkering with since he wrote it to have new material for a rare live performance years earlier. The inquisitive electronic meditation — all tiny percussive pops and surrealist textures at first — slowly morphs into a gem about surrendering cynicism and accepting the world a bit more readily, the call buttressed by trunk-rattling bass and spectral guitar. It feels like a lifetime map for new possibilities, encapsulated in nine absorbing minutes. The plot for 7s, then, was set: trusting, intuitive, exploratory collaboration among friends, after a Winter without it. These songs are like overstuffed jelly jars, cracking so that the sweetness oozes out into unexpected shapes. Still, the sweetness — that is, Avey’s compulsory hooks — remains at the center, the joy inside these Rorschach blots.If Animal Collective has forever been defined by its charming inscrutability, Avey surrenders to a new intimacy and candor with 7s. Take “The Musical,” a bouncing ball of rubbery synths and wah-wah guitars that contemplates what draws someone to sound and how turning that calling into a profession can alter the source. “I can hear the mountains singing,” he counters with an audible smile wiped across his face, painting a postcard of his home amid one of the United States’ folk hubs, “and I do believe they could do that forever.” Obligations aside, this is a self-renewing love, he realizes, the source as captivating as it was the first time. “Have you ever felt a thing and known that’s how you felt about it all along?” he ends this guileless love song for everything.SHAMsongs of Shane Justice McCord expanded in collaboration with Mikey Powers, other friends & magnetic tape
Vancouver Sleep Clinic
– ALL AGES- STANDING ROOM ONLYVANCOUVER SLEEP CLINIC Vancouver Sleep Clinic is the lustful, ambient guise of 26-year-old singer-songwriter and producer Tim Bettinson. Across his catalogue, elements of anthemic indie rock, intimate R&B, and sophisticated folk provide a sweeping film soundtrack for Bettinson’s gentle vocal and expansive storytelling. Emerging from his native Brisbane, Australia on the strength of a series of singles including “Someone To Stay,” “Middle of Nowhere,” “The Wire,” and the bedroom-produced viral cover of “As It Was,” Vancouver Sleep Clinic is poised to shift from under the radar success story to 2023 global headline mainstay.GHOSTLY KISSESMusic has always been around Margaux Sauvé, born in Quebec to a family of musicians; she picked up the violin at the tender age of five. Moving on to the Conservatoire in Quebec, she quit due to“missing the fun part of it” but still loved music so started to play violin in local bands. Singing came a bit later as she thought that “to be a singer you had to have a powerful voice and be loud”, something that doesn’t come naturally to her as a quiet, thoughtful person. Alongside this, the pop music on the radio whilst growing up in Quebec wasn’t connecting with her, so it wasn’t until she started to write music whilst studying psychology at University that the creativity and desire to express revealed itself: “it just opened a completely new path for me”. Writing music as Ghostly Kisses arrived at a moment where Margaux was in “a living situation I was not able to get out of. A toxic relationship where I had a hard time understanding what was happening.” With this knowledge, it is understandable that most of her early music has a sorrowful but exploratory mood; knowing there were things she needed to express, but not understanding quite how instinctively she was writing until years later it became apparent what she was singing about. And now, with ‘Heaven, Wait’, her mesmeric debut album ready for release, her songwriting has developed to the point that this is the first time she has written and felt like she was part of the conversation. Able to view herself with an external eye, the album reflects transitions and rebirth – still talking about difficult situations, but with the ability to cast someone else in the lead role, giving the music a deeply personal yet starkly universal appeal. One which Margaux feels has come from “a more mature, adult way of looking at it.”Identifying key themes of the album, Margaux frames the album artwork within the context of the songs as being “from water towards the air, there’s a lot of dark around me and I’m just going through to the light.” And that feels like the crux of the album, that nothing is perfect – there are always difficult situations, but it is about trusting the process and working hard towards something positive.
DURRY
– w/ PINK BEDS- ALL AGES- STANDING ROOM ONLYDURRYFormed in 2020 in the depths of the pandemic, quarantined siblings Austin and Taryn Durry joined forces to make music together for the very first time. In 2021 their careers were launched by their tiktok viral track Who’s Laughing Now. Quickly gaining notoriety on social media and beyond, Durry is poised and ready to take on the music scene with their unique brand of Nostalgic Indie-Rock.PINK BEDS Pink Beds is a cerebral indie pop band formed in 2020 at the cusp of the initial lockdowns. Composed of four friends from Asheville, NC, they’ve cultivated a strong bond through a shared passion for lush soundscapes, artfully crafted tunes, and rhythms you can’t help but be moved by. The mélange of dream pop, new wave, lounge, and disco aims to create an ethereal listening experience with a combination of low-end groove, velvety guitar, silky keys, gritty synth, and catchy melodies. Making good use of isolation, the group combined their songwriting abilities and production chops to manifest a lush, warm, and evocative sonic environment with their December 2020 debut LP, All I Have. From tracking and production to mixing and mastering, each stage of the process was kept entirely within the group. The essence of Pink Beds, like its namesake, should be enjoyed with your own senses and a group of good friends. Along with two singles in 2021, the band released a live album in 2022, Live From Echo Mountain, from the fabled Echo Mountain Recording in Asheville, NC. After a productive 2022 securing a foothold in southeast markets, becoming a FloydFest On-the-Rise artist, and a Relix Magazine Sonic Showdown Finalist, the band is releasing a new album in the Spring of 2023. Pink Beds comprises Aaron Aiken (Vocals & Guitar), Jackson Van Horn (Keys & Guitar), Ryan Sargent (Drums & Percussion), and Logan Hall (Bass). “What started out as a casual jam to entertain a keg party has morphed itself into one of the most intriguing new musical acts in Western North Carolina.” Aiken, a Brevard native, now fronts an Asheville group that stands at the intersection of indie rock, psychedelic folk and cerebral pop. It’s a seamless blend, more so a vibrant flow, that harkens back to the sounds of early 2000s indie icons The Strokes and Keane, with a thick thread leading to the melodic camps of Tame Impala and Snow Patrol.” — Garret K. Woodward, Rolling Stone Contributing Writer
Skegss
– ALL AGES- STANDING ROOM ONLYSKEGSS In the six years since their inception, Skegss (singer/guitarist Ben Reed, bassist/guitarist/vocalist Toby Cregan, and drummer Jonny Lani) emerged from their laid-back, Australian small town roots as unlikely anti-heroes of the country’s vibrant rock scene.They’ve even topped the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) singles charts numerous times and, more recently, their debut LP My Own Mess reached number two on the album charts and earned an ARIA Award nomination for ‘Best Rock Album.’ Australia’s coastal sensation never lost their underdog flair despite their achievements, and it’s that same spirit that defines their second studio album, Rehearsal—a 13-track thrill ride through modern disillusioned youth. Released late March 2021 via Loma Vista Recordings Rehearsal debuted at #1 on Australia’s ARIA Album and Vinyl sales chart with first week sales and was the triple j feature record. In addition- Rehearsal earned the trio of Toby, Ben Reed (vocals, guitar), and Jonny Lani (drums) their first cover story at NME Australia, while its singles collectively earned early praise and support from Consequence, DIY, Rolling Stone Australia (‘Song You Need to Know’) and had 2 tracks place in the triple j Hottest 100 voted singles of the year. (‘Under the Thunder’ (#27) and ‘Fantasising’ (#66)) Rehearsal was recorded at The Grove Studios with Grammy-award winning producer Catherine Marks (Foals, Wolf Alice), who added a veteran’s finesse and expanded upon the rustic charm of demos the band tracked at The Music Farm using vintage gear from the ‘60s and ‘70s. From Reed’s self-made lyrical philosophies inspired by his favorite stand-up comedians to Toby Cregan’s reflections on life and his dog, Rehearsal is the most candid and electrifying snapshot we’ve seen of Skegss yet.ADAM NEWLING Raised in Cronulla born to first-generation Greek mother and Aussie father, Adam Newling is an alternative artist who utilises country sensibilities and eclectic knowledge of sound in his music to unprecedented effect. With big dreams of one day performing in the heart of Nashville, he has arrived to light up our hearts, guitar in hand.FLYING MACHINE
Ceremony
– ALL AGES- STANDING ROOM ONLYCEREMONY Ceremony’s lead guitarist Anthony Anzaldo doesn’t want to talk about the fact that his band has been around for over ten years. Or that they’ve drifted away from the hardcore genre that made them, or that they jumped ship from their long-time label, Matador Records, to join Relapse Records instead. Or that their sixth album will mark four years since the iconic punk band has released any new material. These things aren’t really important. What matters is that In the Spirit World Now is Ceremony’s most driving, intelligent collection of songs to date. “We knew this had to be the best thing we have ever done,” admits Anzaldo. “We couldn’t come back after four years with a record that only had a few good songs.” Produced by Will Yip (Title Fight, Circa Survive, Turnover) and mixed by engineer Ben Greenberg (The Men, Pharmakon, Hank Wood And The Hammerheads), In the Spirit World Now grows with each listen, balancing Yip’s pop sensibilities with Greenberg’s noise-punk influence through dramatic, shining synthesizer hooks and a mature vocal strategy. Drummer Jake Casarotti and bassist Justin Davis power through the 11-tracks as a strong yet sparse backbone that interlocks with guitarists Andy Nelson and Anzaldo to create a pop-centric, post-punk canvas for frontman Ross Farrar to expel the most vulnerable parts of himself. (And, thankfully, there are many.) Farrar, who has been studying and teaching at the Syracuse University MFA Poetry Program for the past three years, has found himself as a vocalist on Spirit World, not only sounding more confident and in the pocket than he ever has before, but exploring amorphous lyrical territory about arrested development, botched relationships, and the never-ending hamster wheel of self-destruction so many creatives fall into. “I’ve been very interested in will, as in a person’s faculty of consciousness and how we navigate actions and self-control,” Farrar says. “I’ve been worried for a long time that my lack of self-control will inevitably destroy me, so any paranoia on that matter is focused on this record.” Spirit World is a carefully composed punk record by a band who is so in tune with one another as players that their physical separation didn’t affect the music when it came time to get together and work. Despite living in opposite ends of the country, they met up, rehearsed the new material, and demoed it out in Anaheim at a friend’s studio. After two weeks, the tracks were loose with Farrar only mumbling melody ideas on top of the band. A few months later, they linked up with producer Will Yip and he flushed out the demos, helping develop the structure as the songs took shape in the studio. To add some grit to their slew of polished post-punk hits, Anzaldo called on Greenberg to help develop melodies and interject synthesizers and keyboards into the songs before he mixed the record. “We really took it song by song on this album,” says Anzaldo. “We pushed ourselves more than any other record. We didn’t have a lot of time together, so the time we did have was precious, and we were hyper-focused on making the best songs possible.”support bands:GELSRSQTONGUES OF FIRE
