Weyes Blood is announcing international tour dates for 2020 in support of Titanic Rising, her massively acclaimed album recently named one of the “Best Albums” of the 2010s and 2019.
Her “A Lot Has Changed Tour,” which includes new shows in the U.S., U.K., Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, spans February 23rd in Perth, AU as part of Perth Festival and runs through August 14th in Nashville, TN at The Basement East.
A special fan presale for U.S. headlining dates begins Thursday, January 23rd at 10 am (local), with tickets on sale to the general public (all territories) this Friday, January 24th at 10 am (local). Please visit WeyesBlood.com for more info.
A Lot Has Changed Tour Australia/New Zealand 2020 / Winter Feb. 23 - Perth, AU - Perth Festival Feb. 25 - Brisbane, AU - The Zoo Feb. 26 - Melbourne, AU - Melbourne Recital Hall Feb. 28 - Melbourne, AU - Melbourne Zoo Twilights ** Feb. 29 - Wollongong, AU - Farmer & The Owl Festival Mar. 03 - Sydney, AU - The Factory Theatre Mar. 04 - Hobart, AU - Odeon Theatre Mar. 05 - Adelaide, AU - Adelaide Festival Mar. 07 - Castlemaine, AU - Theatre Royal Mar. 08 - Victoria, AU - Golden Plains Festival Mar. 13 - Wellington, NZ - New Zealand Festival of the Arts / Michael Fowler Centre * Mar. 14 - Auckland, NZ - Auckland Town Hall * Mar. 15 - Christchurch, NZ - Christchurch Town Hall * * w/ Aldous Harding ** w/ Julia Jacklin
US 2020 / Spring Apr. 11 - Indio, CA - Coachella Apr. 18 - Indio, CA - Coachella May 01 - Felton, CA - Felton Music Hall May 02 - San Francisco, CA - Regency Ballroom May 04 - Salt Lake City, UT - Urban Lounge May 05 - Denver, CO - Bluebird Theater May 08 - Dallas, TX - Trees May 10 - Austin, TX - Scoot Inn May 11 - Houston, TX - White Oak Music Hall (Downstairs) May 12 - San Antonio, TX - Paper Tiger May 14 - Albuquerque, NM - Launchpad
Europe 2020 / Spring Jun. 03-07 - Barcelona, ES - Primavera Sound Jun. 08 - Tourcoing, FR - Le Grand Mix Jun. 10 - London, UK - O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire Jun. 14 - Hilvarenbeek, NL - Best Kept Secret Festival Jun. 16 - Cork, IE - Cork Midsummer Festival Jun. 17 - Dublin, IE - Vicar Street Jun. 19 - Istanbul, TU - Zorlu PAC Jazz Festival
US 2020 / Summer Jul. 31 - Louisville, KY - Headliners Music Hall Aug. 01 - Milwaukee, WI - Pabst Theater Aug. 04 - Columbus, OH - Skully’s Music Diner Aug. 05 - Philadelphia, PA - Theatre of The Living Arts Aug. 07 - Washington, DC - 9:30 Club Aug. 08 - Carrboro, NC - Cat’s Cradle Aug. 10 - Charlotte, NC - The Underground Aug. 12 - Asheville, NC - The Orange Peel Aug. 13 - Atlanta, GA - Variety Playhouse Aug. 14 - Nashville, TN - The Basement East
Weyes Blood’sTitanic Risingappeared on over 100 “Best of 2019” lists and readers polls, earning “Album of the Year” honors from Brooklyn Vegan, FLOOD, Magic (France), PASTE, and Uncut, and additional placement from outlets including The AV Club, BBC News, Consequence of Sound, Dazed,Double J (Australia), Exclaim, GAFFA (Sweden), Genius, God is in the TV, Gorilla vs. Bear, GQ (France), The Guardian, Idolator, The Independent, Les Inrocks (France), The Line of Best Fit, Loud & Quiet, Magnet, MOJO, Musikexpress (Germany), The Needle Drop, NME, Northern Transmissions, No Ripcord, NPR Music, Passion of the Weiss, Pitchfork, Q, Record Collector, Rolling Stone (Germany), Rough Trade, The Skinny, Slant, Stereogum, The Independent, The Observer, The Sunday Times Culture, The Times, Thrillist, Treble Zine, Under the Radar, Uproxx, and Vice. Titanic Rising also spent 4 weeks atop the NACC 200 College Chart.
Titanic Rising was also named one of the “Best of the Decade” from the likes of All Music, Aquarium Drunkard, The AV Club, Brooklyn Vegan, Pitchfork, PASTE, Treble Zine, and Uproxx.
Weyes Blood’s Titanic Rising, which features the highlights “Movies,” “Everyday,” “Andromeda,” “Something to Believe” and “Wild Time,” is available everywhere from Sub Pop.
Supports Sudan Archives March 3rd-13th, 2020 (select dates)
South Indian rap group Cartel Madras have just announced their first-ever U.S. shows in support of the Age of the Goonda EP, their Sub Pop debut, available now on all DSPs. The duo will support Stones Throw recording artist Sudan Archives beginning March 3rd in Minneapolis at 7th Street Entry and ending March 13th in Philadelphia at Johnny Brenda’s (select dates). Preceding the tour Cartel Madras will also headline Barboza in Seattle on January 16th. For updated information on tickets and live performances, please visit subpop.com/artists/cartel_madras/tours.
Jan. 16 - Seattle, WA - Barboza Mar. 03 - Minneapolis, MN - 7th St. Entry * Mar. 04 - Chicago, IL - Sleeping Village * Mar. 05 - Detroit, MI - Deluxx Fluxx * Mar. 06 - Toronto, ON - Longboat Hall * Mar. 07 - Montreal, QC - Bar Le Ritz Mar. 09 - Allston, MA - Great Scott * Mar. 11 - Washington, DC - Union Stage * Mar. 12 - New York, NY - Bowery Ballroom * Mar. 13 - Philadelphia, PA - Johnny Brenda’s *
* w/ Sudan Archives
Cartel Madras’ Age of the Goonda EP, featuring the singles “Goonda Gold” and “Lil’ Pump Type Beat,” is available now worldwide through all DSPs from Sub Pop (with the exception of Canada through Royal Mountain Records).
What people are saying about Cartel Madras’ Age of the Goonda: “They’ve got an absolutely wicked flow — think M.I.A. meets Cardi B. Hints of traditional Tamil music are sprinkled throughout.” [“Goonda Gold”] - Stereogum
“Age of the Goonda is an invigorating five-track blast…More, please.” - The Wire
“At its core, Age of the Goonda is trap music: it’s brash, it’s rowdy and it’s fun. But laced throughout are nods to South Asian culture, Hinduism, race and queer identity that speak specifically to people who see themselves in one or more of those spaces.” - Exclaim!
“Comprised of six tracks, the EP possesses layered bass lines pumped with adrenaline, a range of Indian classical instruments weaved in and hooks that stay in your brain for days.” [Age of the Goonda] - NME
“Age of the Goonda provides an electrifying burst of the duo’s live show energy in concentrated form.” - Loud & Quiet
“There’s a lot more to come from the duo, with Eboshi and Contra firing together trap and their South Indian heritage with an almost punk-like relish for DIY. New EP Age Of The Goonda..is an explosion that should resonate in all corners of the globe. The EP is led by fiery new hymn ‘Goonda Gold’ and it emphasizes their pan-continent mosaic of sound - ‘goonda’ means thug, a word used across India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.” [“Goonda Gold”] - CLASH
“In pop analogy, this hip-hop duo comprising Calgary-bred, Chennai-born siblings Bhagya and Priya Ramesh is somewhat like a Tamil Pulp Fiction-meets-MIA. With a carousel of bad-ass, no-fucks-given, brown girl anthems, Cartel Madras is brought to life by two sisters who don’t shy of braggadocio (you can’t miss their stack of gold jewelry) as they spout songs about feminism, empowerment and inclusivity.” [“12 New Musicians Set to Breakthrough in 2020”] - Vogue India
Moaning, the musical effort from vocalist/guitarist Sean Solomon, bassist/keyboardist Pascal Stevenson and drummer Andrew MacKelvie, will follow-up their 2018 self-titled debut with Uneasy Laughter on Sub Pop Records this March 20th, 2020. What happens when an abrasive rock trio trades guitars for synths, cranks up the beats and leans into the everyday anxieties of simply being a functioning human in the 21st century? The answer is Uneasy Laughter, the sensational second Sub Pop release from Los Angeles-based Moaning. Pre-order Uneasy LaughterHERE.
Uneasy Laughter is a collaborative breakthrough which significantly brightens Moaning’s once claustrophobic sound, again abetted by producer/engineer Alex Newport (At The Drive-In, Bloc Party, Melvins). The trio points to first single “Ego,” released today, which features a costume-heavy video directed by Ambar Navarro (Soccer Mommy, Oberhoffer, Anna Burch), as an embodiment of this evolution.
“The lyrics are about letting go of your own bullshit to help other people. Wanting to love yourself to love others. The ego can make you feel like you’re the greatest person in the world or the worst.” stated vocalist Sean Solomon. It makes you think your problems are abnormally different which is isolating and rarely true. The song is a reminder that listening to other perspectives is important and beneficial to both parties involved.”
“Musically, the song was started by repurposing a drum beat made for a different demo and putting it on top of a new synth loop. It was a digital collage where we passed Ableton files back and forth,” added bassist/keyboardist Pascal Stevenson. “We purposely avoided the impulse to add guitars to everything, letting the melodies of the synth and vocals be the focus. We wanted to embrace the songs ability to slip between genre lines.”
Solomon, Stevenson and MacKelvie have been friends and co-conspirators amid the fertile L.A. DIY scene for more than a decade. They are also immersed in other mediums and creative pursuits — Solomon is a noted illustrator , art director and animator, while Stevenson and MacKelvie have played or worked behind the boards with acts such as Cherry Glazerr, Sasami and Surf Curse. On Uneasy Laughter, they’ve tackled challenges both personal and universal the only way they know how: by talking about how they’re feeling and channeling those emotions directly into their music.
“We’ve known each other forever and we’re really comfortable trying to express where we’re at. A lot of bands aren’t so close,” says MacKelvie. Adds Solomon, who celebrated a year of sobriety during the Uneasy Laughter sessions, “Men are conditioned not to be vulnerable or admit they’re wrong. But I wanted to talk openly about my feelings and mistakes I’ve made.”
Stevenson’s initial demo was slower and in what he calls “a strange time signature,” which stymied Solomon’s attempts to write vocal melodies. Borrowing a MacKelvie drumbeat from the demo of a different song, Stevenson found that it fit perfectly. The track was fleshed out further in practices and through passing demos back and forth, with the result “perfectly capturing every idea we wanted to play with,” says MacKelvie.
“I don’t think we would have been able to approach writing a song that way before,” adds Stevenson.
Several of the songs originated on acoustic guitar, and guitar can be heard in at least some form on nearly every album track. But the willingness to experiment with synths and loops greatly expanded Moaning’s sonic palette, particularly on the guitar-less album closer “Say Something.”
Recalls Solomon, “I wrote it as a folk song. When I brought it in, I told the guys, ‘I kind of hate this, but I like the melody and lyrics, so how do we turn it into a Moaning song?’” The answer turned out to be by stripping out guitar entirely and turning it into “a complete digital creation. It’s super weird and clubby. Now we just need to figure out how to play it live,” he says with a laugh. “When you hear Nirvana cover the Vaselines, it’s still the same song but it sounds completely different. Song structure can transcend style and genre. I wanted to write things I felt confident were good songs, regardless of whether it was on acoustic guitar or synths.”
“Guitars always sound like guitars, whereas with keyboards you have the ability to thin them out or thicken them up more dramatically, and then mold them to fit into whatever spot you need them to fit into,” says Stevenson. Flecked by patterns of neon synths and a rush of guitar, “Fall in Love” is both metronomic and completely human. “I would never play a bass line on an actual bass that’s so on the grid,” Stevenson offers. “But it does something major for the feel of the song.”
Elsewhere, distortion reverberates atop the pounding drums and earworm melody of “Make It Stop,” while “Saving Face” contrasts Solomon’s gauzy vocals with an undulating synth bass line, creating an off-kilter bliss. The restrained atmospherics and synth loops on “Connect the Dots” belie a tense revelation responsible for the new album’s title. “A lot of these songs wouldn’t have been this different and awesome without Pascal’s expertise with synths,” MacKelvie enthuses.
Solomon admits Uneasy Laughter could have gone in quite another direction had he not gotten sober and educated himself on such core subjects as gender and mental health. “I did a lot of reading in the tour van — ‘All About Love’ and ‘Ain’t I A Woman’ by bell hooks, ‘Capitalist Realism’ by Mark Fisher and ‘How Proust Can Change Your Life’ by Alain de Botton. I don’t want to be the guy who influences young people to go get high and become cliched tragic artists,” he says. “What I’d rather convey to people is that they’re not alone in what they think and how they feel.”
“We want to be part of a community,” he adds. “I wrote online about being sober for a year, and I had kids from all over writing and asking for advice. One of them said, ‘For the first time I can remember, I didn’t drink last night.’ I thought, for once, maybe we did something besides sell a record. That’s a win. That’s incredibly exciting.”
The Big Exercise, which features the singles “I Celebrate My Fantasy,” the aforementioned “Male Bonding,” “Kaïn,” and the title track, was produced by The Homesick at Schenk Studio in Amsterdam, mixed by Casper van der Lans, and mastered by Mikey Young (Total Control, Eddy Current Suppression Ring).
The Big Exercise is available for preorder on CD/LP/DL from Sub Pop. Preorders of the album through megamart.subpop.com and select independent retailers in North America will receive the limited Loser edition on bright yellow vinyl (while supplies last). Meanwhile, preorders in the UK and Europe from select independent retailers will receive the limited Loser edition on opaque yellow vinyl (while supplies last).
The Homesick’s international tour schedule in support of The Big Exercise resumes February 21st, 2020 at Groningen at Vera and ends March 7th, 2020 in Utecht at Ekko. Additional live dates to be announced soon.
Feb. 21 - Groningen, NL - Vera Feb. 28 - Nijmegen, NL - Merleyn Mar. 05 - Amsterdam, NL - Paradiso Mar. 06 - Rotterdam, NL - WORM Mar. 07 - Utrecht, NL - EKKO
About The Homesick’s The Big Exercise: If their debut Youth Hunt marked The Homesick’s tryst with faith and pastoral life, the band’s upcoming second album The Big Exercise brings them to more grounded, tangible pastures. With its title ripped from a passage in the Scott Walker-biography Deep Shade Of Blue, the record is a concentrated effort by Jaap van der Velde, Erik Woudwijk and Elias Elgersma to explore the physicality of their music in fresh ways (read more at Sub Pop).
You can now listen to The Shins and Shannon Lay’s contributions to the Sub Pop Singles Club, which are available now for the first time at all DSPs.
The Shins release features remastered versions of three early recordings: “When I Goose-Step,” “The Gloating Sun” and the original version of “New Slang,” which was previously titled “When You Notice the Stripes.” All 3 songs were first available on a tour-only CD EP in 1999. Omnibus Records released “When I Goose-Step” b/w “The Gloating Sun” on a long out-of-print 7”, also in 1999. Listen here.
Meanwhile, “New Slang (When You Notice the Stripes)” was released by Sub Pop in February 2001 on a now out-of-print 7” single before the release of Oh, Inverted World, The Shins acclaimed label debut album, which recently just surpassed 1 million copies sold.
Shannon Lay’s “Blue” and “We Mend” were recorded during the sessions for August, her Sub Pop debut released earlier this year. Listen here.
“We Mend” is a song for healing. In those moments where everything seems broken, it can be hard to have perspective, but whether we know it or not everything will be ok. “Blue” is about the struggle of loving someone who is gone a lot. A gentle reassurance to one another that even if you’re not physically together, the love remains strong. “Blue” is also a reference to, as Shannon puts it, “the color of Marge Simpson’s hair. I’ve always admired her devotion and understanding.”
Guy Garvey, frontman of the UK band Elbow, premiered “Blue” earlier this week via his Sunday BBC6 radio show, and today revealed that August, Shannon’s Sub Pop debut, is his album of the year.
The Shins and Shannon Lay’s 7”’s are the December 2019 installments of the Sub Pop Singles Club, subscriptions to which are completely sold-out. However, you still have a chance to sign up for the Volume 5/2020-21 edition of the club, with an entirely new set of artists (subscribe here please).
Follow sea creatures on a journey through the circle of life in The Homesick’s psychedelic new visual for “Kaïn,” directed by Melissa Tvetan & Carver Maneese of production house CPJMLT LTD. The song is from The Big Exercise, the group’s label debut, available worldwide February 7th, 2020.
The Big Exercise features the singles “I Celebrate My Fantasy,” the aforementioned “Kaïn,” “Male Bonding,” and the title track, and was produced by The Homesick at Schenk Studio in Amsterdam, mixed by Casper van der Lans, and mastered by Mikey Young (Total Control, Eddy Current Suppression Ring).
The Big Exercise is available for preorder on CD/LP/DL from Sub Pop. Preorders of the album through megamart.subpop.com and select independent retailers in North America will receive the limited Loser edition on bright yellow vinyl (while supplies last). Meanwhile, preorders in the UK and Europe from select independent retailers will receive the limited Loser edition on opaque yellow vinyl (while supplies last).
The Homesick’s current international tour schedule for 2019 continues tonight, December 4th with a show at Villa Wuller in Trier, Germany. The band will resume touring in 2020 with a headlining club trek of the Netherlands which spans February 21st at Groningen at Vera and ends March 7th in Utecht at Ekko.
December 2019 Dec. 04 - Trier, DE - VillaWuller
February-March 2020 Feb. 21 - Groningen, NL - Vera Feb. 28 - Nijmegen, NL - Merleyn Mar. 05 - Amsterdam, NL - Paradiso Mar. 06 - Rotterdam, NL - WORM Mar. 07 - Utrecht, NL - EKKO
[Photo Credit: Sarah Cass]
About The Homesick’s The Big Exercise: If their debut Youth Hunt marked The Homesick’s tryst with faith and pastoral life, the band’s upcoming second album The Big Exercise brings them to more grounded, tangible pastures. With its title ripped from a passage in the Scott Walker-biography Deep Shade Of Blue, the record is a concentrated effort by Jaap van der Velde, Erik Woudwijk and Elias Elgersma to explore the physicality of their music in fresh ways (read more at Sub Pop).
