Being Dead
ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLY BEING DEAD Being Dead — the Austin, TX-based duo consisting of Falcon Bitch and Shmoofy — announces its new album, EELS, out September 27th on Bayonet, lead single/video “Firefighters,” and a fall headline tour. Being Dead’s records are mosaics, technicolor incantations, each song its own self-contained little universe. And while the dreamlike EELS probes further into the depths of the duo Being Dead’s psyche, it is, most importantly, a 16-track record that is genuinely unpredictable from one track to the next. It’s a joyous and unexpected trip helmed by two true-blue freak bitch besties holed up in a lil’ house in the heart of Austin, Texas. When Horses Would Run, Being Dead’s “glorious and timeless” (Gorilla vs. Bear) debut record released in 2023, took years to release. The final product was excellent and expertly polished, at odds with the live rowdiness they’d cultivated a reputation for throughout Austin and beyond across seven years of being a band. For the next one, they knew they’d have to do things differently. They decamped to Los Angeles for two weeks to record with GRAMMY-winning producer John Congleton, writing songs for the record until days before they left. The radical shift in process was welcome – a good balance and a challenge, Congleton helping them find new ways to work and helping peel back the layers on the core of their songwriting. Being Dead has grown from a duo to a trio live, including bassist Nicole Roman-Johnston who also co-wrote and recorded bass and vocals on several album tracks. The resulting EELS is a darker record, tapped more into the devilishness within. It’s a more raucous, rougher ride sonically. There’s heartbreak, excitement, enchantment, dancing – we move through it all at a high-octane pace. Falcon Bitch and Smoofy never want to do the same thing twice on any song, and they don’t. This is never more apparent than on lead single, “Firefighters,” which might be the first of its kind told from the perspective of a Dalmatian who is overworked at their fire station. The pummeling, distorted garage rock ripper’s accompanying video by director URZULKA “came together through a group hallucination.” The band adds, “We love marbles and outdoor play and decided to get it on video for y’all. Making this was like creating an intricate handshake with all your buddies—riddled with inside jokes and giggles.” PILGRIM PARTY GIRL Abe Leonard & Hannah Eicholtz craft lo-fi experimental pop in Asheville, NC. By trading tapes using a portable Tascam, they blend warped elements with ethereal melodies. Their latest EP featuring chirping organs, warm pianos, and emotive strings, bathes the listener in a milky bath of luscious sound for night crawlers. SEISMIC SUTRA Formed and based in Asheville, NC, Seismic Sutra’s unique fusion of past and present psychedelia creates an immersive, ever- changing listening experience curated by the diverse musical and personal backgrounds of songwriters Torren Brown and Jono Cerrud. Joined by Morgan Bevis and Andrew Stevens. Seismic Sutra is a powerhouse of prog experimentation, genre fluidity, and the live experience.
Corridor
ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLY CORRIDOR You get older, you have a family, and you start to slow down—that’s how things are supposed to go, right? Not for Montreal band Corridor, who have returned on their fourth album Mimi with a sound and style that’s more widescreen and expansive than anything that’s preceded it. The follow-up to 2019’s Junior is a huge step forward for the band, as the members themselves have undergone the type of personal changes that accompany the passage of time; even as these eight songs reflect a newfound and contemplative maturity, however, Corridor are branching out more than ever with music that’s richly detailed, resulting in a record that feels like a fresh break for a band that’s already established themselves as forward-thinkers. Mimi immediately recalls the best of the best when it comes to indie rock—Deerhunter’s silvery atmospherics immediately come to mind, as well as the spiky effervescence of classic post-punk—but despite these easy comparisons, Corridor remain impossible to pin down from song to song, which makes Mimi all the more thrilling as a listen. The road to this point, as roads to greatness often are, was not without challenge; if the elastic guitar rock of Junior came together quickly—or, as guitarist and vocalist Jonathan Robert describes the process, “in a rush”—then the steady-as-they-go creative pace of Mimi marked a desire to break from the “exhausting” work ethic that previously birthed Junior. “The goal was to work differently, which is the goal we have every time we work on a new album—to build something in a new way,” Robert explains. “This time, we took our time.” And so in the summer of 2020, Corridor’s members—Robert, vocalist/bassist Dominic Berthiaume, drummer Julien Bakvis, and multi-instrumentalist Samuel Gougoux—holed away in a cottage to engage in the sort of creative experimentation that would lead to Mimi’s ultimate creation. We went there to write, and a lot of ideas came from that retreat,” Berthiaume explains. “We didn’t end up with songs as much as we did ideas, so the result is a collage of the ideas.” After that productive session together, Corridor continued to tinker with the songs’ raw parts digitally and remotely over the next few years, with co-producer Joojoo Ashworth (Dummy, Automatic) lending their own specific talents in the theoretical booth. “For a long time, we identified as a guitar-oriented band, and the goal of making this whole record was trying to get away from that,” Berthiaume states while admitting that the band encountered their own challenges as a result: “We had to figure out how to make new songs without having the chance to play together. It was complicated sometimes.” Berthiaume also describes Mimi—which, fun fact, is also named after Jonathan’s cat—as a record about “getting older” and “figuring out new parts of life”—but despite any claims of transitional growing pains from the band, Mimi is a record bursting with new energy and life, a vibrance that’s owed in no small part to Gougoux joining the band full-time after pitching in on live performances in the past. ROBBER ROBBER
Kishi Bashi
ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLY KISHI BASHI The latest full-length from Kishi Bashi, Kantos is a work of exquisite duality: a party album about the possible end of humanity as we know it, at turns deeply unsettling and sublimely joyful. In a sonic departure from the symphonic folk of his critically lauded 2019 LP Omoiyari—a career-defining body of work born from his intensive meditation on the mass incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II—the Seattle-born singer/songwriter/producer’s fifth studio album encompasses everything from Brazilian jazz and ’70s funk to orchestral rock and city pop (a Japanese genre that peaked in the mid-’80s). Informed by an equally kaleidoscopic mix of inspirations—the cult-classic sci-fi novel series Hyperion Cantos, the writings of 18th century enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant, a revelatory trip to ancient ruins on the island of Crete—Kantos ultimately serves as an unbridled exaltation of the human spirit and all its wild complexities. “At a time when so many people had begun to panic about AI and what it might mean for our future, I started working on this record as a way to explore the concept of grounding ourselves in our humanity,” says the Santa Cruz, California-based multi-instrumentalist otherwise known as Kaoru Ishibashi. “The album title is a nod to Hyperion Cantos and to Immanuel Kant, but it also refers to ‘canto’ meaning ‘I sing’ in Spanish. The idea is that even with so much technological advancement, songs are still something we very much rely on to connect with other people.” The follow-up to his bluegrass-infused 2021 EP Emigrant, Kantos marks Kishi Bashi’s first full-length since Omoiyari—an album accompanied by a feature-length documentary film and praised by such outlets as NPR, who hailed it as “another sure-footed surprise from an artist who never stops seeking new ways to engage, connect and delight.” During the earliest stages of creating songs for Kantos, Ishibashi’s main intent was to return to his highly eclectic musical roots, in part by tapping into his jazz background and by delving into the dance-rock-leaning sensibilities he previously embraced as co-founder of Brooklyn-bred indie band Jupiter One. But not too long into the songwriting process, he stumbled upon an AI-equipped website capable of composing catchy song hooks based on a prompt—a turn of events that quickly catalyzed the existential inquiry at the heart of Kantos. “On the one hand I’m very intrigued by the possibilities of AI: it’s extremely powerful, and has the potential to solve a lot of important problems,” says Ishibashi. “But there’s also a great deal of value in human innovation, and I’m worried about what happens if we lose sight of that. Because if we don’t value our humanity, what are we valuing at all?” Produced by Kishi Bashi and mixed by Tucan (Hot Chip, Jungle, Aluna), Kantos unfolds with a potent and palpable energy that has much to do with his revisiting of the dance-punk acts who infiltrated the zeitgeist back in his Jupiter One days. “Being immersed in that whole scene in New York in the 2000s was very formative for me, and a lot of this record was heavily influenced by bands like The Rapture and LCD Soundsystem,” notes Ishibashi, whose past experience also includes touring and recording as a violinist for Regina Spektor. OSHIMA BROTHERS
La Luz
ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLY LA LUZ “I was in a dream, but now I can see that change is the only law.” With a credo adapted from science fiction author Octavia E. Butler, an album title from a collection of metaphysical poetry, and an expansion in consciousness brought on by personal crisis, guitarist and songwriter Shana Cleveland learns to embrace a changing world with unconditional love on News of the Universe, the new full-length from California rock band La Luz. News of the Universe is a record born of calamity, a work of dark, beautiful psychedelia reflecting Cleveland’s experience of having her world blown apart by a breast cancer diagnosis just two years after the birth of her son. It’s also a portrait of a band in flux, marking the first appearance for drummer Audrey Johnson and the final ones from longtime members bassist Lena Simon and keyboardist Alice Sandahl, whose contributions add a bittersweet edge to a record that is both elegy for an old world and cosmic road map to a strange new one. But is there any band in the world more suited to capturing the chaos of change in all its messy beauty than La Luz? Formed by Cleveland in 2012, La Luz is beloved for their ability to balance bedlam and bliss, each new record another fine-tuning of the band’s mix of swaggering riffs with angelic vocals borrowed from doo-wop and folk; a band so reliably great that it makes the huge step forward in confidence and sheer musicality that is News of the Universe all the more formidable. Cleveland, also a writer and painter, has developed into a truly original songwriter with her own canon of haunted psychedelia that, in recent years, has drawn upon the changing landscape around her rural California home for inspiration, notably on last year’s critically acclaimed solo release, Manzanita, a magical realist documentation of her pregnancy and early motherhood that appeared on many year-end lists. Sonically, the record is all urgency. Songs trip over themselves as if trying to outrun the apocalypse: the breathless pitter-pattering of toms on “Strange World,” the title track’s finger-tangling opening riff drenched in murky distortion. An atmosphere of doom hovers hazily over the Sgt. Pepper-esque baroque pop song “Poppies,” on which Cleveland sings of a wavering orange idyll about to be set ablaze by the late summer sun. On the similarly kaleidoscopic “Dandelions,” she figures the yellow flowers for unsuspecting “little suns” soon to be “turning into moons” as the season marches on. COLOR GREEN For the California-based quartet Color Green, playing music together is all about stepping into the unknown. “When we play live, I don’t really know what’s going to happen,” says Noah Kohll, one of the band’s two guitarists and four vocalists.
The Mystery Lights + Levitation Room
ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLY THE MYSTERY LIGHTS The Mystery Lights story begins in 2004 in the small town of Salinas, California when friends Michael Brandon and Luis Alfonso — whose shared fondness for groups like The Mc5, Velvet Underground, Dead Moon, and The Fall (to name a few) — joined forces to craft their own brand of unhinged rock and roll. From there they spent the better part of 10 years touring relentlessly before migrating to Queens, New York in 2014.With a live show known for its visceral energy and relentless assault — leaving little to no stoppage between songs — they barreled through countless NYC haunts and DIY venues, quickly amassing a fervent local following. The buzz soon caught the attention of Daptone Records execs who were in the beginning stages of launching a new rock-centric imprint, Wick Records. Impressed by the groups’ groove, endless supply of energy, and understanding of musical history, The Mystery Lights were quickly signed to Wick. Though a rock band at heart, the parallels to what Daptone Records had traditionally looked for in their soul artists was undeniable. LEVITATION ROOM In Los Angeles, where the weight and pressure of the city’s fast paced culture can make your legs feel like pillars, emerges psychedelic quartet, Levitation Room, to break the bonds of gravity with their cosmic wall of sound and thought provoking lyrics. “Just as their name suggests, Levitation Room’s music instills the listeners ears with a light feeling of floating. The dreamy guitar and Lo-Fi projections of psychedelic rock and garage are reminiscent of a deep 1960’s era, but still grounded in an alternative dreamgaze flavor that permeates modern indie music today.” – OC Weekly. Their decidedly hallucinogenic songs whisper and hum the same gentle refrain of their summer of love influences, conjuring up the cognitive imagery of sunny days at the park, spent with friends in a euphoric haze along with lyrical and sonic meditations on life, love, society and self-awareness. In tradition, and much like the bands and musical troubadours that inspired them, Levitation Room started out with late night jam sessions in a dimly lit garage between fellow musicians and long time friends, Julian Porte and Gabriel Fernandez. Julian, a dedicated street musician who felt he needed a broader platform, found chemistry with Gabriel, who he knew as a guitar player in various teenage punk and garage bands around town. Coming together in 2012, they bonded over a shared love of British Invasion groups (The Beatles, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones) and 1960’s psychedelic outfits like The Grateful Dead, Electric Prunes, The Pretty Things and began drafting their earliest tunes. DESIGNER With their own distinct spice that is ever so potent, Designer successfully summons the holy Grail of punk rawk. On the surface, Designer is a perfect equation — with sexy guitar riffs, pounding drums, driving bass, and witchy goddess female vocals — Designer is a frickin baked rockin’ cake! – Devyn Marzuola, Asheville FM
Joywave
ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLY JOYWAVE Joywave are at an exciting point in their career. Not only have the act survived the pressures of their major-label debut and the dreaded sophomore slump, they’ve established themselves as the kind of band that you’re as likely to hear at a hip record store as you are at the grocery store. That said, there’s a difference between ubiquity and evolution and with their fifth full-length Permanent Pleasure, Joywave—vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Daniel Armbruster, guitarist Joseph Morinelli and drummer Paul Brenner—lean into guitar and string sections without sacrificing the signature sound that’s endeared the band to countless fans, whether they know it or not, over the past eleven years. Rochester, New York, isn’t necessarily known for its bustling entertainment industry, but it is rich in culture and creativity. The trio’s hometown is integral not only to the theme of Permanent Pleasure (audio samples from 1984 historical compilation release, The Rochester Sesquicentennial, bookend the album), but also to Joywave’s overall identity. Despite international acclaim and major-label success, the band maintain a DIY work ethic that keeps them grounded in the present moment while always reaching toward the future. We go to our studio and make a record with total creative freedom and we turn it in and the label tells us we did a great job,” Armbruster explains. This arrangement is a rarity in the music industry these days—but like all things Joywave, somehow it works out in a way that makes perfect sense for them. Once again produced by Armbruster at the band’s own Rochester-based studio, The Joycave, Permanent Pleasure is an unfiltered vision of the band’s creativity that sees them stepping outside of their sonic comfort zone. “I think this is probably our least keyboard [heavy] record,” Armbruster explains, adding that in some ways Permanent Pleasure was a reaction to the more cohesive and linear construction of 2022’s Cleanse. “On Permanent Pleasure we blew everything apart again: We’re switching out drum components and everything we can between songs and freeing ourselves again from the box of ‘it has to be super cohesive’ because I always want to rage against what we did last time. But five records in, we’re a lot better at writing and recording, so it’s bringing back a little bit of the all-over vibe of the first record, but on the other side of the experience. We’ve gone through a wormhole.” That feeling of artistic liberation is the unifying sonic characteristic of the album, from the futuristic downtempo groove of “Sleepytime Fantasy” to the hypnotic dancefloor vibe of “Brain Damage.” Permanent Pleasure also sees the band expanding their own musical conventions, the most obvious being the fact that they enlisted an actual orchestra to play on these songs instead of relying solely on software as they have in the past. “We’ve always done virtual instruments before but we wanted to have it real this time around, so we had the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra play on five of these songs,” Morinelli, who wrote out the sheet music for them, explains. That amalgamation of electronic and organic instrumentation is evident on songs like “He’s Back,” which is political, personal, petrifying and playful, seemingly all at once. LITTLE IMAGE
Evening Elephants + The Get Right Band
ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLY EVENING ELEPHANTS Emerging out of an illegal backyard party in Los Angeles, the duo of Sam Boggs, a disgraced LA skit actor, and Brandon Leslie, a tarot card-reading hip-hop producer, bonded over the love of two things – music and cigarettes. With the sunrise approaching and cigarette butts piled up, a three-day bender had just started to take its toll on Sam, when he and Brandon (aka B) recognized one another as kindred spirits. They plotted a jam session within weeks of meeting, adopted the name Evening Elephants (inspired by Naruto), and began disrupting the norm around L.A. Evening Elephants started throwing showcases in the same backyard they met in, bringing in over 150 RSVPs in 48 hours for their first show. Evening Elephants performed a series of now “legendary” backyard shows, cutting their teeth in front of a fervent audience. OnesToWatch chronicled one of those gigs and emerged as an ardent early supporter. INKED also raved, “With a lust for life and passion for bringing people together, Evening Elephants’ infectious grooves aren’t stopping anytime soon,” while The Luna Collective hailed their “on-brand brutal honesty.” Since their fateful encounter in 2021, the pair went on to quietly generate over 10 million streams and build an audience one fan at a time with a fluid and fiery sound anchored by B’s production with live drums, and peppering sunny melodies with the kind of truths typically reserved for diaries.Evening Elephants gained momentum with Evening Demos EP in 2022 followed by the signature single “Life Is Swell” in 2023 and the standout “Snow On The Bluff,” produced by PJ Bianco (Imagine Dragons, Jonas Brothers) which garnered over 5 million Spotify streams. During their inaugural year as a band, Evening Elephants captivated audiences across the US with performances at legendary venues such as Baby’s All Right, Teragram Ballroom, The Moroccan Lounge, Larimer Lounge, and Lost Lake including sold-out performances in New York City and Denver. The band caught the attention of coveted brands early on such as JuneShine, who sponsored the backyard shows on top of performances at the JuneShine brewery in San Diego. Given the palpable buzz and the level of cult adoration surrounding the band, the Evening Elephants signed to Republic Records and are set to release their debut and much more in 2025. THE GET RIGHT BAND The Get Right Band is a psychedelic indie rock power trio committed to relentlessly following their muses to honest self-expression, to whatever excites them and pushes them into unexplored territory, to capturing some version of truth. American Songwriter writes that the Asheville, NC based group, “filters 60’s/70’s psychedelia and 90’s alternative rock through a modern lens–as if Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and Nirvana co-wrote an album produced by Danger Mouse and Dan Auerbach.”
Free Throw: Those Days Are Gone 10 Year Anniversary Tour
ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLY FREE THROW FREE THROW’s debut album, THOSE DAYS ARE GONE, took the underground by storm when it was released in September 2014, with Brooklyn Vegan hailing lead single “Tongue Tied” for its ability to “successfully bring together Tell All Your Friends dual vocals with American Football’s shimmering guitars.” The sepia-toned emotional resonance of songs like the 6/8 “Two Beers In,” loud/soft dynamism of “Hey Ken, Someone Methodically Mushed the Donuts” and riff-ready “Pallet Town” painted a portrait of the uncertainty and growing pains of life in your 20s: a Groundhog Day of bad luck, bad love, and bad habits, set atop inventive rhythms, Midwestern-inspired guitars and tightly wound catharsis. It’s this unfiltered honesty that helped the Nashville-based quintet immediately connect with a new generation of listeners, spawning tens of millions of streams and tours with the likes of New Found Glory and The Wonder Years. To celebrate the 10-year anniversary of Those Days Are Gone, Free Throw will embark on a U.S. tour in early 2025, performing the record in full alongside fan favorites from their five-album catalog – melding these timeless songs with their reputation for raucous live sing-alongs. “We didn’t quite know Those Days Are Gone was going to be as special as a lot of people consider it today, but we thought that we had something really good,” singer/guitarist Cory Castro says. “ There’s been so much that’s happened since then, but in some ways, it still feels like yesterday.” ## BEN QUAD Although the old adage of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ is something that Oklahoma four-piece Ben Quad knew before they began making their new EP, Ephemera, they decided to wholeheartedly ignore it. Since forming in 2018, the band—Sam Wegrzynski (lead vocals/rhythm guitar), Henry Shields (backing vocals/bass), Edgar Viveros (lead guitar) and Isaac Young (drums)—have released three split EPs and their 2022 debut album, I’m Scared That’s All There Is. Those records, alongside tours with Hot Mulligan, Arm’s Length and Forests have helped establish Ben Quad as one of the emo/indie/punk bands around—a hybrid all those scenes and sounds that works incredibly well, both live and on record. HARRISON GORDON
of Montreal: The Sunlandic Twins 20th Anniversary Tour
ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLY of Montreal On of Montreal’s seminal album The Sunlandic Twins, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Kevin Barnes followed up their 2004 Polyvinyl debut, Satanic Panic in the Attic, with what became the band’s most commercially successful album to date. Originally released in April 2005, The Sunlandic Twins marked a significant turning point for of Montreal, showcasing Barnes’ evolving songwriting and a shift towards a more electronic and dance-oriented sound. The album’s vibrant blend of synth-pop and psych rock helped cement its status as a fan favorite and a defining moment in the band’s career. Iconic tracks like “Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games” and “The Party’s Crashing Us” became some of the most beloved songs in the band’s extensive catalog. WAGGING Wagging is Alison, Mark & Emily: three friends making harmony-driven, primitive pop in Asheville, NC
The Weather Station: Humanhood Tour
ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLY THE WEATHER STATION It takes only 10 seconds for Tamara Lindeman to pull us to the floor on Humanhood, the seventh and most arresting album she has ever made as The Weather Station. “I’ve gotten used to feeling like I’m crazy—or just lazy,” she sings at the start of “Neon Signs,” her voice at once a soft whisper to a confidant and a full-throated confession to a crowd. “Why can’t I get off this floor? Think straight anymore?” If you don’t know this feeling, consider yourself blessed, because it seems these days like our true modern malaise, that unbound sense of not knowing how or what it is we’re supposed to contribute to this fractious world, or if we even have the energy or will to try. That disoriented sense is the emotional throughline of Humanhood, written during one of the most difficult periods of Lindeman’s life and rendered with a rock band with improvisational chops just as she began to recover by reckoning with a complicated truth: Sometimes, life simply tries to dismantle us, and we must accept that in order to survive. From the outside, 2022 likely appeared a banner year for Lindeman. Her 2021 album Ignorance—a deeply personal but widely resonant reflection on climate change, or how we’ve learned to live alongside our own existential undoing—was one of that year’s most celebrated records. 2022, then, was a time of touring, travel, and activism alongside the release of Ignorance’s more austere companion, the beautiful How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars. But at an ostensible new professional peak, she was also going through a mental health crisis she mostly kept hidden. As Lindeman has done for at least 15 years, she turned to songwriting, combining pain, confusion, and flickers of distant hope with ideas about advertising, capitalism, and how we’re meant to feel very specific ways into pages and pages of lyrics. In the past, Lindeman mostly wrote about her past, turning backwards to gain perspective. But for Humanhood, she worked with the present as she tried to endure it. Humanhood, then, radiates with new urgency—and emerges as a sort of tether, offered up here for any of us else feeling disconnected from the vertiginous reality of right now. SISTER RAY Born and raised in the Alberta prairies of Sturgeon County, and now based in Toronto, the 25-year-old artist earned widespread attention with their acclaimed debut effort, Communion and follow up EP, Teeth. If Communion was fueled with an intentional sense of urgency, for their songwriting to serve as a vehicle for excavating revelations in motion, Sister Ray’s new album Believer yearns in a different direction. It rings with the certainty that self-assurance is cultivated through the cracks of discomfort.
