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New Zealand's Arjuna Oakes and Serebii, a.k.a. Callum Mower, previously announced their Final Days EP, out October 14, with the first single "Tired Faces". The duo returns with "Flavour", a soulful tune grounded by an infectious piano melody and vocals by Oakes.
Listening to Tim Hill’s new album, Giant—a rugged, tasteful batch of cowboy tunes and Americana ballads that feel forged out of the embers of a desert campfire—you might assume that he’s been working on a ranch his whole life. You’d be half right: Hill is indeed a rancher, working in the Orange County, California, area of Silverado, but he’s actually a relative novice when it comes to tasks like tending to horses and driving a tractor. He only just got the job since the pandemic started, inspired on something of a whim: “I always kind of thought I could work on a ranch,” Hill says. “So I just looked around for some jobs and they had an opening.”
Hill is based in Whittier, California, where he was born and raised, and music has always been his guiding force. The son of a music teacher, Hill grew up playing various instruments in a formal manner, but eventually carved a niche for himself in local punk bands, before finding himself as an in-demand touring musician for artists like Nick Waterhouse and the Allah-Las. When the Las—one of Los Angeles’s most beloved psych-rock bands—decided to start Calico Discos, their record label, they knew just the guy for its inaugural release: Hill’s solo debut, a 7-inch for the 2018 song “Paris, Texas,” introduced him as an alt-country act to be reckoned with—and his full-length debut, 2019’s Payador, was an underground hit, with copies of the sold-out first run having gone for as much as $100 on Discogs.
Payador was “a simple and honest attempt at a first record,” according to Hill, which was done entirely at home on a four-track. When the project was finished, the fact was made quite cosmically clear: “It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds after the last take, the last overdub, the last cassette, that smoke began to billow from behind the four-track recorder,” Hill explains. So for his sophomore album, he decided that maybe it was time to upgrade the approach a little bit. Taking a drive down the 605 to Long Beach, Hill set up shop at Jonny Bell’s Jazzcats Studio, where he played all of the instruments himself, with the exception of two outside players—one for pedal steel and one for violin.
The result is a record steeped in affection for artists like Randy Newman, Warren Zevon, and Neil Young, but reimagined through the lens of the modern cultural melting pot that Hill lives in. (“I feel like I'm always trying to just rewrite [Young’s] “Out on the Weekend” in some way or another,” says Hill, “just because I like that feel so much.”) The choice of covers on the album speaks multitudes: Giant features a heartbreaking take on Townes Van Zandt’s “No Place to Fall,” a festive, authentic take on José López Alavez’s “Canción Mixteca” (which was notably covered by Ry Cooder and Harry Dean Stanton in Paris, Texas), and two impressive takes on part of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “French Suites,” referred to by Hill as “French Sweet,” naturally. “My dad only listened to classical growing up,” Hill explains, “so it didn’t really mean anything to me then. But now I love it. I can listen to, like, Glenn Gould all day.”
But Hill’s original songs are the sturdy pickup-truck engine of Giant—songs like “Calico,” a dreamy ride into the center of the sun, and the opener, “The Clock’s Never Wrong,” a waltz that would get even the drunkest person at the bar to stand up and start dancing along: “I miss the good ole time when girls used to ask what car you drive,” Hill croons in that latter song, “and leave you with a hole in your heart.” On “Candlestick,” he takes his graceful chords and melody and applies them to a poem written by his friend, the artist Ry Welch. “It was just one of those things where I didn’t have to move any word around,” Hill notes. “I didn’t have to cut anything out. It just fit perfectly in that music.”
Of course, there’s also Giant’s title track, an operatic piano piece that presents a brief, episodic tale of the culture clash that occurs in so many forms in the U.S. these days. The song was inspired by the 1956 George Stevens film of the same name (itself adapted from Edna Ferber’s 1952 novel); Hill was enamored by the movie, and by James Dean’s performance in particular, in which he plays a ranch hand in Texas in the 1920s. “I really identify with that character now,” Hill explains.
Giant was the last movie Dean filmed before he died, and Hill has inherited a fitting ethos for what he’s trying to do with his album named after it—and with his whole career: “Like the string quartet on the deck of the Titanic,” he says, “I’d like to play something beautiful before the ship goes down.”
Giant is out on February 10th, 2023 through Innovative Leisure/Calico Discos. Pre-order a copy here.
Hiroshima-born, Montreal-based singer-songwriter Jonah Yano announces his forthcoming second album portrait of a dog on January 27th, 2023. Following a highly acclaimed 2020 which included the release of the debut LP souvenir, and collaborations with BADBADNOTGOOD, Yano quietly released a cover of Jessica Pratt’s "This Time Around" and took some time away from releasing music to write and record his forthcoming album. Yano was recently announced as the opening act for the critically acclaimed singer-songwriter Clairo for the last leg of her North American and the entirety of her European tour dates.
Along with the announcement, Yano is also sharing the first offering from the new album in the form of a double single. The first, "always," features simple songwriting, a solid groove, and an excellent piano solo, and "the speed of sound!," a personal favorite of Yano’s, is at the confluence of his love of folk and jazz music. The visual for "always" is a study of the wide-ranging tides in Five Islands, Nova Scotia, where Yano wanders The Bay of Fundy to reveal a sprawling bed of red clay at low tide. Speaking on the song and video, Yano says:
“'always' is a song that appeals to one-half of my sensibilities in music. All the piano on the record was played by my friend Felix Fox. I wrote this song for my younger brother Azusa who, at the time and just like myself, was going through some matters of the heart. Directed by Nik Arthur & David May, the video is essentially 6.5 hours of me walking in super slow motion so it looks like I’m walking regular speed while the environment changes around me.”
portrait of a dog is a 12-track exploration of themes present throughout most of Yano’s catalog – identity as a part of the Japanese-Canadian diaspora, contemplation of different family dynamics, and the intricacies of interpersonal relationships. It’s a clear departure from Yano’s previous recordings – having established a clear sonic identity throughout the album’s 12 tracks to tell a clear and succinct collection of stories guided by clear and intentional instrumentals. The LP is produced entirely in collaboration with BADBADNOTGOOD and features guest work from Slauson Malone, Sea Oleena, with string arrangements by Eliza Niemi, Leland Whitty, and Yano himself.
Arjuna Oakes & Serebii release "Tired Faces," the first single off the forthcoming Final Days EP due out on October 14, 2022
Oakes and Serebii, a.k.a. Callum Mower, met while playing sold out shows together, but they knew then that it was just the beginning of something bigger. They were serving as hired guns in a popular surf rock band, touring their native Aotearoa New Zealand in mid-size venues, tearing it up, helping others realize their musical vision. That was great, but the friendship forged between the two of them in the process was the real bounty: “We got on like a house on fire,” says Mower. “And we’d end up sticking together through festivals or hanging out at parties.”
"Gleefully discordant properties of early Scritti Politti" – Uncut
"Willfully obtuse, yet intrinsically irresistible. Extraordinary" 9/10 – Classic Rock
"Hypnotic post-punk pulse exists in a continuum with bands like Wire and Omni— tight bass groove, melting guitar leads, and all" – Stereogum
"Slashing and contemplative" – Brooklyn Vegan
"Sprawling slacker jam" – FLOOD
"Spindly, propulsive post-punk that doesn't shy away from a bit of brawny catharsis" – Post-Trash
Chicago-based five-piece, Dendrons have today released their much-anticipated second album, 5-3-8. The band has found widespread acclaim for this new album from Uncut, Classic Rock, Stereogum, FLOOD, Brooklyn Vegan, Post Trash, CBC Radio, Under the Radar, KCRW and more.
The release of the new album arrives in tandem with a video for "High In The Circle K", a standout track to be lifted from the new album. The song features bombastic grooves, and wiry, spindly guitar lines delivered over a bed of often monotone vocal delivery, segueing into a cathartic, 2-minute climax of hypnotic guitar work. Speaking about the track, Dane Jarvie of the band says: "The album's namesake comes from one of the repeated lines/mantras in this song: “Fifths, thirds, octaves only” — almost as an appeal for a sort of utopian ideal. A dumb simplification. A desirable reduction."
5-3-8 – titled as a reference to the lyrical refrain that appears at a few points of the album of “fifths, thirds, octaves only” – was recorded at Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, Texas and Highland Recording Studio in Phoenix, Arizona; it was produced by Tony Brant and Sonny Di Perri (Protomartyr, DIIV, Nine Inch Nails, Animal Collective, Emma Ruth Rundle, Dirty Projectors) before being mastered at Elysian Sound by Dave Cooley.
Dendrons hit the road before they even knew exactly where they were headed. On New Year’s Day 2018, Dane Jarvie and Zak Sprenger first convened in Chicago to start a new project, recording a demo at home by the seat of their pants, and almost immediately after, began to play shows. “I would just email as many people as possible,” says Jarvie. “I’m like, ‘Can we open this?’ It didn’t matter if it was in Dallas or New Orleans or Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It was like, let’s go.”
With a band name chosen by flipping through books in the library (“Dendron” is Greek for “tree”) and a sound and lineup in healthy evolution as they bounced around North America, Dendrons were finding who they were in front of a live audience. Over the course of 2018 and 2019, they were developing a propulsive, acerbic rock style both reminiscent of midwestern peers like Deeper and Dehd and reaching beyond to develop an unmistakable aura all their own. They put out their debut, 2020’s Dendrons, and were packing their bags for a full European tour before it had to be abruptly canceled when borders closed and venues shut down around the world. Suddenly, a band that cut their teeth on the road had to get comfortable staying at home.
“It was out of necessity,” says Jarvie, who started brainstorming ideas for a new album back at his family’s home in Phoenix, Arizona, just after the pandemic took hold. When he returned to Chicago a few months later, the full band of Jarvie (vocals/guitar/synth), Sprenger (synth/guitar), Matt Kase (bass/synth/vocals), John MacEachen (guitar/samples), Nick Togliatti (drums), and Stef Roti (drums) formed a bubble to get together and work out what would prove to be their highly ambitious and meticulously crafted second album, 5-3-8. “It was just like, well, we can’t tour, we can’t do anything,” Jarvie remembers. “So we might as well just stick together and really create something.”
Meeting three or four times a week, and ultimately rehearsing almost 40 song ideas, Dendrons began to methodically whittle down the batch to a set of songs that weaved through one another intricately, with lyrical and musical motifs dancing around a swirling rock arrangement. Taken on their own, tracks like “Vain Repeating” and “Octaves Only” tap into the manic energy and wit of bands like Wire and Stereolab—but in the context of the album’s full vision, they come together to paint an album informed by the post-truth spectacle, and a desire for optimism in the face of isolation.
The lyrics paint those emotions with subtlety, having been put together partially through a cut-up method, grabbing words and phrases from places such as CNN and CSPAN. “That was a real intention with this record was to try different techniques in terms of how words are coming together—stringing together sentences through collage,” Jarvie explains. On “New Outlook 1,” he sings in his direct, almost Stephen Malkmus-like style: “Soon we’ll be stooped over laughing / Watching ourselves high on a vision.”
“You’re always gonna leave a record feeling like there is something more to be said,” Jarvie says. “I don’t believe in a magnum opus. Art is contextual and exists for the specific time and circumstance it was created in. Every record is a conversation with the last.”
Purchase/stream Dendrons "5-3-8" here.