Month: September 2014

The Coathangers release new album and announce tour dates!

“this time around, the band are firing on all cylinders” – Pitchfork

“their punk rock beats have been the perfect soundtrack to our weekend shenanigans for the past seven years.”  NYLON

“tightly controlled sense of menace and impending chaos” – Paste

“Top 5 Most Overlooked Albums of 2014” – SPIN 

 

If you’re familiar with The Coathangers then you probably know the Atlanta group’s premise. The story goes that four young women decided to start a band for the sole purpose of being able to hang out and play parties. They weren’t going to let the fact that none of them knew how to play any instruments get in the way of their having a good time.  The backstory certainly added to the charm of early songs like “Nestle In My Boobies” and “Stop Stomp Stompin’”–songs that resided somewhere between no-wave’s caustic stabs of dissonance and garage rock’s primal minimalism.  In the seven years since their formation, The Coathangers have released a slew of records and toured across North America and Europe countless times. The persistence of such a casual endeavor is a testament to the infectious quality of their songs and the electric nature of their unruly live show.

Suck My Shirt is the The Coathangers’ fourth full-length.  The title refers to an incident involving the salvaging of spilled tequila during the recording session for the album.  While the title implies that little has changed with regards to the band’s celebratory mission statement, even just a cursory listen of their latest album demonstrates that there have indeed been changes in The Coathangers’ camp.  First off, the quartet was reduced to a trio for the latest record, with keyboardist Bebe Coathanger (Candice Jones) stepping down from her duties. But the absence of keyboards isn’t nearly as noticeable of a difference as the band’s refined songwriting approach.  Refinement is an attribute we expect to see in any group that has a career spanning more than a couple of years, but the extent to which The Coathangers have honed their trade with each successive album dwarfs most bands’ maturation.  This isn’t to say that The Coathangers have polished their sound; the group once again worked with Ed Rawls and Justin McNeight at The Living Room to attain the same production values of their Larceny & Old Lace album and their recent slew of split 7”s. Rather, the refinement can be heard in the quality of the songs themselves. While the band retains the alluring spontaneity and happy accidents of their early releases, the trio’s current work sounds far more deliberate and locked-in than anything they have done in the past.

“It’s a balance between overthinking and just going for it,” guitarist Crook Kid Coathanger (Julia Kugel) says of their songwriting strategy.  It’s a duality immediately apparent with the album opener “Follow Me”.  It’s a classic Coathangers tune with the raspy vocals of Rusty Coathanger (Stephanie Luke) belted out over the signature grimy rock laid down by Crook Kid and bassist Minnie Coathanger (Meredith Franco).  But the chorus opens into one of the most accessible hooks in the band’s canon, just before segueing into the next verse with a squall of violent dissonant guitar.  From there the band launches into “Shut Up”, a title that harkens back to the brash sass of their first record. The song still has its spikey guitar riffs and shouted chorus, but here The Coathangers sound less like a jubilant version of Huggy Bear and more like the art-pop of late-era Minutemen.  Dedicated Coathangers fans will recognize the re-worked versions of “Merry Go Round”, “Smother”, “Adderall”, and “Derek’s Song” from their run of limited edition split 7”s, and hearing them in the context of the album shows that these tracks weren’t merely isolated examples of the band’s more sophisticated side, but were actually demonstrative of the group’s increasing capacity for nestling solid melodic hooks and rock heft into their repertoire.  By the time the band wraps up the album with the humble pop perfection of “Drive”, it’s hard to believe this was the band that garnered their reputation with raucous bombasts like “Don’t Touch My Shit”.

“Ultimately, every album is a snapshot of who we were at the time,” says Crook Kid.  And while that might mean that The Coathangers in 2014 don’t feel compelled to chronicle the youthful piss and vinegar that yielded the Teenage Jesus & The Jerks-esque spasms of their debut album, it’s exciting to hear the output of the band as they explore the range of their temperaments with a broader musical palette at their disposal.

Suck My Shirt will be released in the UK on 3rd November 2014 via Suicide Squeeze Records.  The band will be touring Europe in November.

 

UK dates:
12th November, Leeds – Wharf Chambers
13th November, Glasgow – Broadcast
14th November, Birmingham – Temple (with The Growlers)
15th November, London – Shacklewell Arms
16th November, Brighton – Prince Albert

Carnivores to release debut album and announce tour dates

Described by the NME as sounding like “Weezer being beaten up by The Dillinger Escape Plan”, Carnivores draw influence from Fugazi, At The Drive-In, Idlewild, Helmet, Elvis Costello and Nirvana.Carnivores are a three-piece rock band based in Paisley, Scotland.  Formed by college friends, Kenny Leckie and Grant MacCall – Carnivores got to work the old fashioned way, touring every venue imaginable in Scotland in their battered estate car, building a fans show by show.  They have gained a reputation as one of the hardest working and incendiary live bands in Scotland – taking on guerilla gigs in abandoned buildings, countless house parties and most impressively 450ft up in the Glasgow Science Centre Tower, the tallest fully rotating structure in the world.

After hitting their stride with a series of self-released EP’s and singles, Carnivores went on to play T in the Park, headline Glasgow’s King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut and playing Glasgow Barrowland at a sell-out show supporting Twin Atlantic.  In 2013, the band replaced David with new drummer Martin Johnston and got down to making their debut album, Let’s Get Metaphysical.  Recorded live in just six days with producer, Bruce Rintoul (Twin Atlantic/Fatherson), the album captures the raw intensity of the band’s live show matched with a more melodic, introspective aspect to Carnivores sound.

A strong theme on Let’s Get Metaphysical is about looking at the world that we’ve inherited from previous generations and seeing how irresponsible those generations have been with it – Kenny explains “We’ve all been brought up in working classing households and the people that our parents and grand-parents put trust in have sold out the working classes in a big way.  In a song like ‘Lion Tamer’ we’re singing about our home towns but it could be anywhere in the UK, the same with ‘The Second Wave of Yuppie Scum’, it’s about someone specific to us turning out to be a class traitor – I think that’s a feeling that everyone can relate to.”  Leckie continues, “Most rock music you hear these days is very polished and homogenised. We wanted to go the opposite way and make something that was musically and emotionally very raw and real. It’s just three guys in a room playing loud rock music. Lyrically, it’s like an open wound, for better or worse it’s practically a diary of the last six months of my life”.

Scotland is a nation in a state of flux, with many important decisions for its inhabitants ahead. Let’s Get Metaphyscial provides a state of the nation address from young men in touch with their history and a strong sense of what lies ahead.  But just how ‘metaphysical’ is this record?  “I’m an armchair metaphysicist” admits Kenny, “I’m not ashamed to admit that all my knowledge on philosophy comes from Wikipedia.  We had a Soren Kiekergaard quote on our first EP, I only know him because he was mentioned in Wayne’s World.  Where’s my honorary doctorate at?”

Carnivores debut album, Let’s Get Metaphysical will be released on 27th October on Smalltown America.

TOUR DATES
18/9: Glasgow, Bar Bloc
25/9: Edinburgh, Opium
26/9: Stewarton, Stewarton Arms
27/9: Inverness, Mad Hatters
02/10: Ayr, UWS Union
13/10: Aberdeen, Downstairs
15/10: Sheffield, South Sea
16/10: Cheltenham, The Frog & Fiddle
17/10: London, Camden Barfly
18/10: Derby, The Victoria Inn
24/10: Paisley, Bungalow Bar
25/10: Glasgow, 13th Note Cafe

Die! Die! Die! release new album entitled SWIM

Dunedin’s punk sons of the modern age, Die! Die! Die! will be releasing their fifth album SWIM on 6th October and have shared a slice of things to come with the unveiling of the video for ‘Get Hit’.  The concept for the pugilism-themed clip came straight from the mind of frontman, Andrew Wilson and has been interpreted for the screen by director Ryan Harte of Slow Pulse Studios.  Ultimately the track speaks to fighting your demons which has been illustrated by a boxer fending off an invisible opponent, and while he catches a few blows to the face he is ultimately left standing.

SWIM is an 11-track opus formed from the wall-sweat of Europe’s best clubs, scratched off the tour van floor and from down the back of the couch-surfed accommodation.  Produced by the band and Chris Townend  (Portishead, D12, Violent Femmes) from The Lab in Auckland to Lightship 95 in London, SWIM’s sparse geographical consummation is as expansive as their definition of punk and pop music.

As an internet acronym for ‘someone who isn’t me’, SWIM’s title suggests that Wilson is stepping out of his own comfort zone lyrically and bringing new themes and broader strokes to the mighty crash and boom of Die! Die! Die!’s sound.