Happy 50th Birthday to Tracy Shedd!

Tracy Shedd; photo by John Ciambriello

OUT NOW: Naïm Amor 'Stories' [12inch LP]

Like many musicians worldwide, Naïm Amor was working on the tracks for a new album when Covid hit and sent the recording and live music worlds into hibernation. And also like many, when he emerged he did with a finished record ready to be released into a music-hungry world.

For Stories, his twelfth record since the mid 2000’s, the Parisian born and raised, long time Arizona resident Amor has crafted six instrumentals and three vocal numbers. While Stories may perhaps seem like an offbeat title for a record with several instrumental tracks, it’s also indicates what’s within; it’s raison d’etre is a cinematic approach to music making, one crafted to evoke images and feelings, unlock corners of known and unknown worlds, and yes, to tell stories; with or without the narrative of a human voice. Amor says “I called it Stories because, like a lot of what I do, the tracks have a film soundtrack quality. The album has a unity of tones, instrumentation, arrangements, while each song has a ‘stand alone potential.’ He also says “I want the listener to be traveling through their imagination, I hope they will feel moved by the melodies and the textures, and would get to the end of the album and feel a bit nostalgic that it’s the end, like a really good movie.” Virtually any of the tracks on Stories could, in fact, be soundtrack material.

The songs on Stories all reflect the sophistication and gift for expansive, memorable melodies that Amor has always brought to his work, whether it’s pop, jazz, lounge, as a solo singer/songwriter, rock & roll or even rockabilly. He says “This one incarnates my desire to play with a band in a more rock & roll format.” The opener, “Amorsonic,” glides by with a sweet/salty mix of guitars that are both clean and slightly dissonant. “Abusive Chaos” wraps snaky guitars around a jazz lounge groove; “Freeway Race” has the forward motion befitting its title; and “September Escapade” sounds like it should be played while driving a fast sports car down a winding road in Monaco. “Home” is meditative and lovely, “The Last Dance” drops smoldering guitars over a cocktail lounge groove, while “The Start Over,” and “Tucson Safari” rattle with more heavy guitars. The closer “Santa Rita Park West” sends the listener off on a gently rolling cloud, as the credits roll.

On Stories, Amor is joined by three long-time collaborators from his adopted city of Tucson, AZ: rhythm guitar and string player Ben Nisbet, bass player Thøger Lund and drummer Casey Hadland. It was recorded in one marathon session by the legendary producer/engineer/studio owner Jim Waters at his Waterworks Studio in Tucson. Waters also mixed the album, with some overdubs and string arrangements added on in Amor’s own studio. The sound is clean, warm and immediate, with a live in the studio feel, and lots of room for Amor’s outstanding guitar playing to shine on every track.

Naïm Amor Stories is available now everywhere.

LISTEN TO FULL ALBUM // ORDER VINYL RECORD

OUT NOW: Tercel "Holiday" [Digital Single]

Hailing from The Cape Fear region of North Carolina, the Tercel sound carries reverence for its homeland. The lyricism of Robin and Savannah Wood pull from the beliefs of climate activism, societal collapse, and the ennui of existence in the modern world. But Tercel is fun. Tercel is joyous. These are heavy words, lightly thrown. Wall-of-noise guitars in alternate tunings, the give-and-take singing between the vocalists, Chris Vinopal’s pedal steel in all its brightness, Taylor Salvetti’s driving drum beats to accent the changes: Tercel knows the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And in this, we are all smothered in the green glow of existence. Go outside. Enjoy the light.

Recorded and produced by Jerry Kee of Duck-Kee Studios in Mebane, North Carolina (Archers of Loaf, Polvo, Superchunk), "Holiday" is the second single to be released by Tercel, and is available now on all digital music platforms.

La Cerca 'Western Tour' July - August 2024

• Sat July 20 - Denver CO -  Skylark Lounge
• Sun July 21 - Moab UT - 86 House  
• Mon July 22 - Reno NV - Lo Bar Social
• Wed July 24 - Pacifica CA - Winter’s Tavern
• Thu July 25 - Oakland CA - Golden Bull 
• Fri July 26 - Eureka CA - Siren Song
• Sat July 27 - Seattle WA -  Central Saloon
• Sun July 28 - Olympia WA -  Three Magnets, 3pm   
• Sun July 28 - Portland OR - The Twilight  
• Wed July 31 - Sacramento  CA - Cafe Colonial
• Thu August 1 - Nevada City CA - The Fern
• Fri August 2 - Carson City NV - Tap Shack
• Sat August 3 - Tucson AZ - Wooden Tooth Downtown

OUT NOW: Forest Fallows "In Light" [Digital Single]

The fourth and final single "In Light" from Forest Fallow's sophomore album Palisades is available now on all digital music platforms. Enjoy!  —— For fans of Animal Collective, Ariel Pink, Atlas Sound, The American Analog Set, Beach Boys, Broadcast, Mac DeMarco, Destroyer, Drugdealer, Ducktails, Esquivel, Goth Babe, Richard Hawley, JPW, Lauds, The Ocean Blue, Peel Dream Magazine, The Radio Dept., Radiohead, Real Estate, The Sea & Cake, Stereolab, Sugar Candy Mountain, The Sundays, Kurt Vile, Yo La Tengo, Wild Nothing, and Woods.

LISTEN NOW | PRE-ORDER VINYL LP NOW

Naïm Amor: September Escapade

[Repost from Here Comes the Flood; by Hans Werksman, July 1, 2024]

French guitarist and violinist Naïm Amor has the final single from his forthcoming new album Stories. September Escapade is like a slowly unfolding flower, showing off its colours one by one to create an aural spectacle that needs to revisited time and again to fully appreciate all the intricacies. It has a late 60s Nouvelle Vague soundtrack vibe, spiced up with a bit of noise, a dash of post-rock and Tex Mex.

Stories will be released on vinyl by Fort Lowell Records (vinyl, digital). The album is available for pre-order here. Release date: July 26th.

» naimamor.net

HCTF review of Amorsonic.

ALBUM: Blab School-Blab School

[Repost from Small Albums; June 26, 2024]

North Carolina's Blab School has one of the coolest band names in the world, and a sound to go along with it. There's a music descriptor trope that I hate, and that is the concept of "windows down on a summer day" sound. Blab School is 100% the antithesis of this sound and mindset. Play, "I Hate the Summer" and feel the bad vibes rise.

Blab School works in a certainty of heaviness without a tipping point. It stays on the shores of oceans full of red-eyed creatures and furious fangs, but who gets bit? And who just gets startled?

From the start, the darkness in the chord changes and the sickness in Ryan Seagrist's snarling delivery of lyrics, there's no room for a window to even be cracked. The smoke is staying inside. Elizabeth Killian shares lead vocal duties with a carelessness like screaming into a broken mirror and already having an answer you don't want to have to hear anyways.

The tumbling guitar lead of "Scrolls," or the absolute punishing of "Never Enough" keep a continual dirge of days that can't be differentiated from night. It's just all bleak and sounds amazing.

All the way through to the closer with the most appropriate title of this bummer-fest "(Don't Forget To) Give Up," Blab School leads in like a storm cloud and multiplies through the album into a crushing galaxy.

It's music to listen to when the sun devours space or vice versa.

Female Gaze | Interview | New Album, ‘Tender Futures’

[Repost from It's Psychedelic Baby Magazine; Klemen Breznikar, June 24, 2024]

Female Gaze releases sweet and swirling indie-rock with ‘Tender Futures.’

Finding patience in agony is like trying to dig a tunnel in the desert sand by hand. While it is almost certainly an unfathomable task, what else can you do to bide your time and preoccupy your mind? When life puts you in impossible situations, make possible decisions; keep going until you get to where you need to go. Nelene DeGuzman was forced into one such impossible situation, so she made a possible decision: Make music about it.

‘Tender Futures,’ the newest album from seasoned songwriters Female Gaze, comes from a place of increased and constant suffering, the dreadful sort that distorts the temporal and obfuscates your reality, so the soundscapes reflect this loss of space. Nelene DeGuzman (vox, guitars, piano), Kevin Conklin (bass, backing vox on ‘Severance’), and Nicky David Cobham-Morgese (percussion) combine their strengths to present just over a half hour of psychedelic shoegaze desert rock. DeGuzman has persevered through chronic health issues for most of her life thus far, but it was the most recent year where things turned overwhelming while awaiting a crucial surgery. During this prolonged difficulty, DeGuzman put pen to paper and came away with five new songs encapsulating this trying time. Thus, it’s a bit of a loose concept record, one in which you can start it from any point and loop through it just as effectively as if you started at track one and listened through. As the days and nights blurred together in real life, so too do the tracks on this record.

Starting from track one, ‘ghosts,’ we get a little taste of the meditative energy to come – whispery, willowy vocals and patient guitar passages with field recordings gently placed in the mix, effectively incorporating that sense of lost time as sunshine and moonlight coalesce. The following and longest track, ‘broadcast,’ ebbs and flows with Cobham-Morgese’s pounding percussion, driving the band wherever they want to wander. Conklin’s steady bass is a stalwart foundation for the ideas to incorporate, introducing budding branches on which DeGuzman’s effects-drenched guitars can roost. The title track embodies the idea well – futures that are tender, at mercy of the tides of life, as dissonance and harmony cascade throughout the extended jam. Track four ‘in the mezzanine’ serves as another pensive exercise for the weary of heart and soul before we reach the gentle closer ‘severance,’ my personal favorite, which feels almost triumphant before the chaotic end loops us right back around to the intro birdsong – another languid day gone by.

The journey you will take listening to this new Female Gaze release comes just in time for the approach of summer in the northern hemisphere. Its sun-battered melodies and murky rhythmic depths compliment one another like a classic summer cycle, hoping to provide relief from the heat and a compassionate blanket in the cold. Enjoy the art during these trying times, and embrace those impossible situations with possible decisions.

How did the name “Female Gaze” come about? What does it mean in relation to your art?

Nelene: The name first popped into my mind during a transitional period in my life. I was on a solo tour in 2019 which turned out to be a really transformative and meditative experience for me. In its literal sense, it is the inversion of the film concept of the male gaze. Donning the moniker felt like I was giving myself permission to be unapologetic in my identity as an artist. I was giving myself the liberty to just exist in these artistic spaces and not have to explain or justify my perspective or presence.

How long have you folks been together as a band now? What do you feel your strengths are when you work as a unit?

Nelene; Kevin (our bassist and also my husband) and I have been playing music together for over a decade, initially in our previous project, The Rifle. Nicky joined in 2020 just before we released our last LP as The Rifle. As Female Gaze, the three of us have been together since 2021. I feel like we have a natural rhythm together as a three piece and can groove in our own little language which allows us to be really improvisational live which I find really freeing. I love being surprised by things that arise naturally in the moment when we’re playing together.

For DeGuzman, what has helped you press on in defiance of your personal health struggles? How do you find the motivation to create and continue when faced with such difficulties?

Nelene: When I’m not feeling well, the only thing that seems to get me through is to put blinders on and just focus on translating pain or whatever is going on into art. Creating is how I understand myself and my experiences and sometimes when things have been bad, I won’t really understand how bad they were until I’ve expressed those experiences back to myself via something I’ve created if that makes sense.

If you could collaborate and/or perform with any current musician/group, who would it be?

Nicky: Witch!

Kevin: King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard!

Nelene: Mitski!

If you had to start over from scratch without any of your instruments or gear (minus a computer), what would you buy first?

Nicky: a synthesizer!

Kevin: a Hofner Beatle Bass!

Nelene: hmmmm maybe a sweet petite lil parlor guitar.