Detroit singer-songwriter Shannon Barnes blends her love for future-soul and psychedelic-folk on her debut record, Psychedelic Flight Attendant. Released under the moniker of White Bee, PFA is a labor of love that took Barnes over two years to complete, and survived many peaks and valleys along the way. In fact, right before Barnes planned to start recording, she suffered a personal and band breakup, causing her to question if she’d be able to continue White Bee.
“To be honest with you it was really hard at first,” Barnes explains. “I didn’t think that White Bee could exist after all that. And then I realized, this is me, this isn’t anybody else. These are songs that I wrote and experiences that I had…the whole process of my writing comes from my learning and how I play guitar.” Barnes’ rhythmic guitar style is due in part to one of her biggest influences, Nai Palm, co-founder of Hiatus Kaiyote. She even credits Palm for inspiring her to learn the guitar in the first place.
“When I was 21 I just remember seeing a Hiatus Kaiyote video online for the first time,” Barnes says. “When I saw that, I was like, ‘that’s what I wanna fucking do.’ That was the reason why I picked up guitar.” Although Barnes’ musical journey started long before that, the last seven years have been an extremely formative time musically for the artist, who is now 27. Her appreciation for classic jazz vocalists along with more contemporary artists like Mac Demarco, Tame Impala, Lianne La Havas and Britney Howard is evident in her work.
Barnes leans heavily to syncopated rhythms on tracks like “Antihistamine” and “Beat State,” which could easily be used as historical bookmarks for the time that she first heard Nai Palm. She said that, for a moment, learning Hiatus Kaiyote guitar riffs and experimenting with songwriting was almost like a drug. “You know that feeling you get when you get excited to go on a date with someone or you get excited for going on a trip?” Barnes asks. “I feel like I had that feeling constantly – it was like all my serotonin levels were tingling all the time because I just wanted to learn more.”
That exuberance is translated into each of Psychedelic Flight Attendant’s eight tracks. The record takes the listener on Barnes’ journey through heartbreak, angst, chaos and resilience. It reminds us of the beauty that can come from loss or change, and shows us how appreciating someone else’s art can become the most important factor in producing one’s own.
Detroit-based artist Billionaire Sophia melds pop, R&B, trap and hip hop on her new EP, Ootgoat. Written, produced and mixed entirely by herself, the project is a testament to Sophia’s growth as a producer and artist. She explains that her journey with production started about eight years ago and has been almost entirely self-taught. “I started making beats and stuff in 2012, but I didn’t get my own equipment until 2014,” says Sophia. “That’s when I started doing it myself, but I didn’t start getting good ’til 2016…and it’s still gotta get better.”
Where Sophia’s at right now is already sounding real good. Following her February 2020 release, Love Not Attention, and recorded in her bedroom due to the state-wide lockdown, Ootgoat expands on Sophia’s languid, stream of consciousness style of songwriting and showcases both her flow as a rapper as well as her ethereal vocals. Sophia explains that she doesn’t practice a locked-in method for her songwriting, but follows whatever she’s feeling at the time. “If I’m listening to a beat I made… I just listen to it and see if I can feel something. Then if I can’t feel nothing I just go to my mic and start singing whatever comes out,” Sophia explains. “Eventually, maybe a hook will come out.”
Her innate melodic sensibility and knack for hook writing are evident in songs like “White Girl” and “Milan” that are almost impossible not to sing back. They’re the type of songs made for warm summer nights, cruising with your friends, maybe burning one. Sophia’s pop-leaning instincts are likely a combined influence of Detroit’s deep electronic roots and a lifetime of listening to pop trailblazers. “When I first started making beats, I was like, I’m gonna make a whole bunch of jittin’ beats, you know, Detroit style beats where you can dance,” Sophia says. “I just like pop music, I like rap, I like all types of music,” she says, citing Timbaland, Pharrel, Jay-Z, Rihanna and Justin Bieber as some of her early influences.
Merging Detroit-style beats with more Billboard-charting influences gives Sophia’s music both catchiness and a musical complexity not found in generic pop music. Her cadence on “Brown Eyes” is akin to the talk-style singing perfected by artists like Sza or Kari Faux that makes the listener feel like she’s talking solely to them – her sultry, whisper-like vocals add to that sensation as well.
While individual songs on Ootgoat act as vignettes into Sophia’s personal life and aspirations, the EP as a whole speaks to what seems to be Sophia’s vibe as an artist: nonconforming. The cover art, designed by Sophia, features the first-ever known statue of a woman, Venus of Willendorf, thought to have been created in 30,000 B.C. Sophia chose this image because of its stark difference to images of women that we generally see in the media. “She is not typical and it’s not what people think what women should be,” explains Sophia. “Really, you can be whatever you wanna be. [There’s] no rule to being a human.”
Like many women, Sophia personally relates to that sentiment, especially when it comes to who she is as an artist. “I just see that I’m a free artist, I do what I want to do, but I’m never going to be understood fully.”
Follow Billionaire Sophia on Facebook for ongoing updates.
With her last four singles, Brooklyn-based songwriter Anya Baghina (also of Soviet Girls) has uncoiled an intimate vignette into the past three years of her life. The songs encapsulate a time period characterized by grief, longing, change, and growth and are capped off with her recent video for the song “To Be Alone.” While Baghina’s music walks us through her journey with mourning and isolation, she manages to make her deeply personal experiences universally relatable, as though each story she tells can be molded to fit whatever trials the listener is currently going through.
The rest have been released via Bandcamp as stand-alone singles over the last year. Each is appropriately coupled with a photograph of her late mother, who passed away in January 2017. Baghina explains that the songs were written in the wake of her mother’s passing and evolved in meaning over time. “At the moment when I really needed to let them out, I wrote them,” says Baghina. “Then I sat on them a little bit and when I re-approached them I was able to finish them.” Although chronicling the emotional aftermath of a tragic loss is an undoubtedly painful and sometimes impossible process, Baghina says that revisiting these songs after a bit of time gave her a chance to reflect on her growth.
She remembers the day that she finished writing her latest single, “To Be Alone.” “It felt kind of special because it was almost a year after,” explains Baghina. “I remember feeling sad that I still felt this way, the lyrics were still very relevant, but I did acknowledge that there was some progress made in dealing with grief.” The song is an especially poignant portrait of wading through debilitating loss and depression.
“How are you doing, are you lonesome? / Did you forget to eat today?” Baghina asks herself in the opening lines of “To Be Alone,” devastatingly depicting a depressive internal dialogue. But while some of the questions Baghina poses in the song are hard to hear, she explains that they can be a segue into healing. “I think whenever you find yourself really alone with your thoughts, it can be a really scary thing. But it doesn’t have to be if you can start to process them,” Baghina says.
And that’s exactly what Baghina’s music does – heal. She recorded one of the songs in the basement of The Forge, an artist residency she founded in Detroit before moving to NYC, and the other three in Soviet Girls bandmate Devin Poisson’s bedroom, with just one take for each. That gave these songs a directness and honesty that almost forces the listener to look within. In fact, finishing and recording this body of work has been an integral part of Baghina’s own healing process. “Performing and working on them now comes from a very different place,” explains Baghina. “Before, I think these songs would put me back into that state of general depression and bring up feelings that I couldn’t yet handle. So yeah, when I approach them now it’s from a healing perspective.”
Part of this healing process was finding a way to stay connected to her mother in the wake of her absence. Baghina explains that the photos that accompany the songs aren’t solely an homage to her mom, but a way to tie together both of their lived experiences. “I inherited these photo albums and some of the more special ones include photographs of my mother when she was young and lived in the Soviet Union,” Baghina says. “She has a pretty powerful story about growing up in a small village and going to Moscow to study in a university and eventually moving to the US. I think during the Soviet era it was especially difficult to find your freedom and your voice and I think she represents a lot of that for me. So these photographs really belong with these songs.”
Baghina, who was born in Moscow and lived there until age ten, says that her roots have heavily influenced her simplistic and direct style of songwriting. She explains the importance of folk songs in Russian culture, songs that almost everyone she knew could sing every word of. “I think a lot of my song composition does come from that, how there’s a lot of repetition… that way that once you hear the melody you can start to sing along,” Baghina muses. She couples her infectious, folk song-inspired melodies with the romantically tragic darkness found in some of her Russian influences including authors Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and rock band Lumen to create her own brand of nostalgic melancholia.
“To Be Alone” finds Baghina in the same place as almost everybody else in the entire world right now: alone and continuously navigating the non-linear stages of grief. The video, recorded during this international quarantine, eerily mirrors the cyclical routine that many people have built around their new-found solitude – bed, outdoors, bathroom, couch, repeat. Baghina’s candidly universal lyrics and soothing voice reminds us now, more than ever, that we’re never really alone.
Follow Anya Baghina on Facebook for ongoing updates.
Musician, poet, and artist Edoheart grew up in Nigeria with music all around her. “My parents went to music shows, there were just parties around, there would be traveling musicians,” she remembers. “As a kid, I started to develop rhythm and a sense of harmonies.” When she moved to Detroit, she began listening to hip-hop and top-40 pop, which inspired her to write her own songs. She studied poetry and visual art in college and began collaborating with producers, until she realized she could do it better herself and began producing her own music.
Although she speaks in an American accent, Edoheart makes a point to sing in pidgin English as a nod to her culture of origin. “There’s a spiritual dimension that feels unlocked when I am in my accent,” she says. “The other thing I’m bringing is this sense of theater that is so, so, so Nigerian. I’m really given to telling stories and inhabiting characters, even if just lyrically.”
Her latest EP, For the Love, follows 2019 full-length Okada 8000 and features a variety of genre-defying songs that span both light and dark subjects. “Rogie (Oh No),” a love song with dynamic percussion and electronically altered vocals, begins the EP. The fun, uplifting “Seesaw” sounds like the backdrop to a summer party, with whimsical, humorous lyrics like “One foot in, one foot out / but she don’t like cucumber.” In the flirtatious “Do Me,” she sings, “You are so crazy / won’t you do me do me do me.” In “I Will Be There,” she sings a promise of friendship: “Anytime when you want me / I go come running / for the sake of the love.”
“Original Sufferhead,” the latest single off the album, is a bit darker than the rest. The title is borrowed from a Nigerian phrase for “a person who has been staked out for suffering,” she explains. “It is their job, responsibility, position — suffering is just heaped on their head. Then there’s the word ‘original’ in front of it because there’s an authenticity and a de-facto-ness to their level of suffering, kind of like it’s God-ordained.”
Edoheart wrote the song as a reflection on the seemingly endless hardships thrown into her life path, including several miscarriages and an illness in her family. “That song is about my life being so fucking hard, and I just keep going through it, keep pushing past it,” she says. She cried during her first recording of the track and tried recording it several more times, but she ultimately kept the first version because it sounded the most authentic.
“Original Sufferhead” is Edoheart’s most Shazammed song and one people tend to relate to when she plays it. “It’s a universal song,” she says. “Sometimes, we find that you’ll say the most honest, bare-bones thing about yourself, and so many people will be like, ‘Oh, my God, me fucking too.'”
The video was meant to visually represent a journey from darkness to light, as Edoheart starts off in the basement of a record store, climbs her way up to the main floor, then finds her way outside as she sings, “Let me tell you I’m a fighter / let me tell you I’m a struggler.”
All in all, she hopes the album spreads compassion and unity in a world that’s often divided. “There is so much hate, there is so much ‘how dare you have a different perspective from me?'” she says. “And yet if we hear somebody say, ‘I have to fight and struggle to stay alive because I’m sad,’ or ‘I had it rough’ or something, so many of us are like, ‘Oh, my God, me too.’ There’s this gulf between all of us having literally similar experiences, similar emotions, and yet because we belong to different political parties, because we have different skin colors, because we come from different parts of the world, we allow this rhetoric of us vs. them, this oppositional binary, white vs. black — these things are such fallacies.”
Edo, the Nigerian people Edoheart comes from and takes her name from, actually means “love,” she adds. “I hope that simply by being an Edoheart, by being somebody who loves to think about love and made an EP about love, that people are like, ‘Yeah, let’s talk about that. How do we achieve that? What does it mean to build a society that’s based upon love?”
There aren’t many bands that can cultivate a loyal and almost cult following before even releasing a full record, but Detroit psych/surf-rock outfit Double Winter is one such band. After years of playing around the city, the band finally self- released its debut LP, It’s About Our Hearts, on March 31. The record’s beachy riffs, sentimental melodies, and charming honesty is a welcome distraction from COVID-19 chaos and leaves us longing for the spring we don’t get to have.
Vittorio Vettraino (guitar/vocals) says that the decision to release the record in spite of the global health crisis was made spontaneously. The group was set to have a release party at beloved Detroit venue UFO Factory on March 26th, which was obviously canceled due to the state-wide stay at home mandate. “We decided a couple of days before, let’s just do it,” Vettraino says. “None of this was really planned… We had a record release planned but after we rescheduled that, we were like, should we still just release the album? Like, why not.”
“It’s a weird time but we were like, we have to get it out there,” adds Holly Johnson (bass/vocals). A weird time indeed. In fact, I’m talking to the band via Zoom video call, each of them quarantined in their respective homes, reminiscing about the years it took to finally get this record out to the world. “We’ve had it ready for months now, so it’s not new to us, but it’s weird that people are hearing a lot of this for the first time,” Johnson adds.
Though compiled relatively recently for the band’s debut, some of the songs on It’s About Our Hearts have been written and played live for years, giving the band time to fine-tune their sound and perfect their playing. “I could pretty much play these songs with my eyes closed now,” says Morgan McPeak (drums). The group’s rehearsal time was extended even longer than they anticipated after their first attempt at recording the record in 2018 didn’t go as planned. “We originally recorded a lot of these songs and decided to re-record them and that didn’t happen until like a year after,” says Johnson. “Some of the songs were newer on the first one and we knew we could record them better and that was a really good decision.”
So, in 2019, Double Winter took a second try at recording with engineer Ben Collins (Minihorse, Matthew Milia, Stef Chura) at an old church-turned-recording-mecca about half an hour outside of Detroit, Willis Sound. Collins, who is a friend of the band, turned out to be a much better fit for their sound, capturing the energy of a live Double Winter show. With a spacious and acoustically immaculate tracking room, Willis Sound is the type of studio that bands like Double Winter – whose chemistry is almost equally important to the chords they are playing – dream of.
“The first place we recorded, we were all so isolated that it didn’t really feel like we were playing together,” says McPeak. “I get the benefits to recording that way…but it just didn’t sound like us anymore.” The second time was a charm for the band, though, and yielded a record that showcases years of friendship, countless gigs, and a settling of genre. “I feel like with this piece, it does span across several genres but we’re getting better at sort of funneling it in,” says Johnson. “It’s just showing that we’re getting more dialed into what we play and produce well together, it’s been really fun learning that, too.”
So what, exactly is the sound that best describes Double Winter? The best way I can put it is blase-but-sincere doo-wop psych, and I know I sound like an asshole. Genre labels aside, It’s About Our Hearts is a sweet and well-crafted ode to generations of good music — from Yo La Tengo to the Shangri Las. A body of work that could only be created by artists with a non-pretentious but impressive palette. It’s about all the little things that are actually big things and make up a life – heartbreak, friendship, fucking up, realizing it a little too late. And, since we all have a little more time to reflect right now, we might as well do it to some damn good music.
Hamtramck-based DIY band Prude Boys (Caroline Thornbury, Quentin Thornbury, and Connor Dodson) recently celebrated the release of their new 7-inch record, The Reunion/Daddy. The songs – put out on the band’s own label, Grumble Records – are a preview of a full-length record the band recorded last July. C. Thornbury’s rock solid vocals are the constant between two very different songs: a fuzzy, dream state rumination on loss and a folk-driven reflection on unconscious cycles of hurtful patterns.
“The Reunion” feels nostalgic, heartbroken and triumphant all at once. Not shying away from the band’s comparison to new wave trailblazers The Pretenders, Thornbury dons a short blue wig and sings alone under a disco ball for the song’s music video. Her solitude in the video reinforces the song’s core ethos – grappling with the loss of a loved one while finding a way to stand on her own two feet.
“It’s actually about my sister who passed away two years ago,” explains C. Thornbury. “I had this dream that I had to go to her high school reunion for her in her place, so the song sort of stemmed off of there and how, in the grieving process, all the real sadness and realization of loss happens later on when all those little things happen…like I would text her about this article I’m reading or send her a picture of this t-shirt I like.” The song acts as a refreshing catharsis for anyone experiencing loss, whether it’s a loved one who has passed away or one someone who’s just not in your life anymore.
The band drops the guitar solos and drums for “Daddy,” a staggering song that C. Thornbury originally wrote on acoustic guitar. Her cyclical lyrics and guitar melody reflect the heart of the song, which talks about the Sisyphean task of loving someone that keeps hurting you. “It’s about the wrongs that your family does to you without their knowledge and how you sort of carry that with you,” C. Thornbury explains. “And how you keep trying and trying with people you love even though their behavior towards you isn’t improving and they have no idea what they’re actually doing to you.”
Overall, Prude Boys deliver brutal honesty wrapped in razor-sharp instrumentation and gorgeous melodies in this pair of songs. Look out for more Burger Record releases in the future and listen to The Reunion/Daddy below.
If you haven’t boarded the Tiny Jag train yet, it’s time to hop on or forever be asleep. The Detroit-based rapper has had an explosive year since her debut EP Polly last year, and she just dropped a brand new tape, Salem, which brings her cheeky horror-rap to the next level. “This tape has a lot of different layers and themes, but right now let’s just have fun and hear the first track which is me being a zombie and eating people,” Jag said at her first show since the release at Detroit’s UFO Factory on June 1st.
Jag’s hard, matter-of-fact delivery is what drew fans to her upon her first release, and there’s much more where that came from on Salem. “I can’t keep responding to these bitches cuz that shit annoying,” Jag tells us on “Nagasaki Zombie.” Part of her appeal is her ability to say what all of us are thinking – whether you’re working and sick of playing nicey-nice on email or a burgeoning trap-pop star on the rise, sometimes, these bitches can just get annoying.
The question is, who are these bitches? To Jag, the majority of Salem attacks the patriarchy and its stronghold on feminine creativity and expression. “When I was making Salem, it was during a time when I really just needed that dump, that vomit of emotion,” says Jag. “I was in a space where I was ready to get back to raw self. I was running into recurring themes that were limiting my process… and they all had to do with the expectation of maturity and femininity.”
“Nagasaki Zombie” in particular was centered around the feelings of dissociation and loneliness that one can feel when dealing with relationship problems. “It’s like this zombie state where you feel like you’re in a foreign land and so isolated from everything when really, everybody deals with it,” says Jag. “But, in that moment, you feel like your heart’s broken. You’re having all these crazy ideas like, ‘If I see him with a girl, I’m gonna pull her out of this car.’”
Jag explains that most of the record was created in a space of rebelling against all expectations of what it means to be “ladylike” or exist inside the patriarchy. Take, “Bizarre,” an ode to the highest level of no fucks given. “I’m so bizarre bitch, what? / I don’t give a fuck / I need bread bitch yah,” is the hook, which simply and bluntly describes Jag’s current mood. These lyrics are the perfect example of saying a lot with a little: I’m me, I don’t care about societal standards, and I don’t need a man or anyone else to provide for me. It’s the independent woman’s anthem that reinforces the message Destiny’s Child has been trying to tell us for years.
As far as the title, Jag says that she’s setting out to reclaim the blame put on women that started at Adam and Eve, led to things like the Salem Witch Trials, and beyond. She figures if we’re gonna take the blame for letting all the “sin” into the world, we might as well acknowledge all the litness it brought with it. “Whether we wanna admit it or not, some of the best or worst times of our lives have been in these areas that would be considered ‘sinning,’” says Jag. “So it’s like, okay, we can blame Eve, but we’re also gonna have to give her some credit for some amazing ass moments well.”
Fair point, Jag, fair point.
Whatever you believe, the record itself is an exhilarating listening experience from front to back, especially if you, too, believe in dismantling the patriarchy. In Jag’s own words: ”It’s just a really good release and a good, therapeutic fuck you.”
We’ve all heard the cliche – “some of the best songs are written in ten minutes.” Think of the story behind pretty much any early Beatles song and you’ll land at some iteration of that. But what about the songs that unravel like a slow burn, painstakingly dragged along until they finally emerge from the ashes of rewrite after rewrite, evolving in meaning along the way? Detroit-based artist Primer (Alyssa Midcalf) took the latter path when crafting her debut album, Novelty, a heart-numbing goth-pop album that serves up heartbreak and catatonia in pink cellophane wrapping paper.
Midcalf began writing Novelty long before moving to Detroit just over a year ago. The Palm Springs, CA native made her way to Detroit by way of Grand Rapids, where she ended up by happenstance – “I fell in love,” Midcalf explains. She was playing in another electronic band in Grand Rapids, called Parts, where she honed her skills as an electronic producer. Prior to that, Midcalf had gotten by as an almost entirely self-taught musician. “I went through a lot of problems as a teenager and I think, for some reason, there was this time in my life where I was like [music] is what I’m going to spend my time doing.”
She experimented with drums, bass, and synth, but not before establishing her first musical love – singing. Midcalf’s background in musical theatre and singing competitions is clear even in Novelty’s muddled vocal production. Instead of feeling cloudy or lost, Midcalf’s subtly mixed vocals act as a pleasant surprise to the close listener drawn in by ’80s-inspired synths and captivated by Midcalf’s infallible, haunting performance.
The entire record feels like Midcalf threw a huge party in a haunted house but deliberately didn’t invite any guests. I can see it as clear as day when listening to “My House” – a ghostly woman, standing in the middle of a dark empty room, a disco ball radiating light on the walls and her face. It’s this knack for creating a mood that makes Midcalf’s songwriting particularly enchanting. There’s a uniformity throughout the record partly due to Midcalf’s main instrument of choice, a Juno GI synth, but also to the blaring emptiness that permeates throughout her lyrics.
“Lyrics are always the last thing,” says Midcalf. “So, I’ll have melodies and sometimes I’ll have songs for years that don’t have lyrics until some sort of meaning comes to it. Lyrics breathe life into something that’s otherwise a corpse.” Paired with new-wave dance beats, Midcalf’s devastating verses disguise themselves in a happy home. The dichotomy is irresistible and so is Novelty.
This week, Detroit-based producer, songwriter and DJ Tammy Lakkis released her debut single, “This is How It Goes,” a mesmerizing meditation on the cyclical nature of life. Lakkis fuses her background in more traditional songwriting and her love affair with Detroit’s electronic music scene, honing her original demo with the help of Assemble Sound resident Jonah Raduns-Silverstein (who produces his own music under the moniker Jo Rad Silver).
Lakkis’ crystal clear vocals are a welcome and surprising pair to the track’s droning bass line and punchy percussion. “This is How it Goes” has the cadence and repetition of the dance track Lakkis spins as a DJ, but her poetic lyrics provide a clear narrative that’s normally not found in most electronic music.
We spoke with Lakkis about making the track and how being in Detroit has shaped her music.
AF: Can you talk a little about your background in music? How long have you been producing? Where did you learn or did you teach yourself?
TL: I’ve been singing since I was a toddler. I picked up guitar when I was 13 and started writing songs a few years later. I was briefly in an alternative rock band called Tammy and the Enemies that formed in 2016 and that’s when my songwriting started taking most of its shape. My segue into producing was getting a drum machine and a looper pedal and making loops of my voice, guitar, and other sounds (like flicking water bottles, scratching the mic with my nails, hitting things against each other, etc.) and just exploring. That led to getting Ableton and later a sampler and that’s mainly how I make my music now. I was lucky to have friends around me I could learn from. I try to keep it fresh and use a variety of electronic and analog instruments and sounds with each new track.
AF: How does being a DJ influence your songwriting/production?
TL: I’m in the midst of a musical identity crisis because I used to primarily be a singer-songwriter but now I find myself making dance tracks on my sampler and my answer has been to fuse the two worlds together into more of a trip-hop vibe. DJing has added another dimension to music-making: now when I write songs, I consider how they speak to the body in addition to the mind and soul. Also, I’ve learned storytelling through DJing and going to DJ sets. It’s made me consider the context around individual songs and what story that context tells.
AF: Were there any artists in particular that you were listening to a lot when you wrote this track?
TL: Björk, Stereolab, and Portishead!
AF: What was your process for writing this song?
TL: One night in my garage in the spring of 2016, I laid down a basic beat on a drum machine and started making creepy loops of my guitar on a looper pedal and drank a Soft Parade and sang over the loop for hours and hours and hours. The main lyric of the song: “This is how it goes, it goes and goes and goes” kept coming back. So I spent a few weeks building around that. The final track is pretty similar in shape to what I originally came up with in my garage that summer but with less guitar, more electronic elements, and a much more refined and gritty sound. It’s mainly electronic besides the guitar, vocals, and me and Jonah’s clapping.
AF: What was the collaboration process like with Jonah?
TL: We did mostly sound design stuff and some arrangement stuff. We replaced my original recordings with analog drum machine and synth sounds and really spent time dialing in the exact sounds we were looking for. We did a complete rehab of the guitar, bass, and drums and it added so much to the complexity of the sound. We went through and honed in every sound in the track. It was a lot of work but it really paid off. I had been a little stuck before working with Jonah since I had been working on this song for so long and could no longer see it clearly and lost direction of what to do next. Jonah also mixed/engineered the track, so I learned better ways to make different sounds fit and be more accommodating of each other.
AF: How does living in Detroit influence your music / DJing?
TL: Living in Detroit is like having an endless stream of inspiration to tap into at any time. I go to shows several times a week and inevitably recycle the stuff I hear out in my music. Whether or not I’m making dance music, all the music I make is deeply inspired by dance music (primarily house music). Detroit has made me ditch my acoustic act and become an electronic artist. I am very inspired by all of the music coming out of Detroit and all the people here making sounds.
AF: What is this song about, to you?
TL: The transient nature of things. The inevitability of change and growth and moments turning into other moments turning into other moments turning into other moments, etc. I think, anyway. It may have subconsciously been a spinoff of Ruth Stone’s poem “Train Ride.”
If there’s anything 2019 has to offer so far, it’s a wealth of releases that followed in the new year. February was an especially prolific month for Detroit artists, following in the wake of January’s month-long hangover and a few spring-feeling days that turned into a polar vortex. Likely, these artists spent much of this winter hibernating in home studios, scheming their next moves. Ranging anywhere from Britney Stoney’s ephemeral R&B to angst-fueled post-punk from Paint Thinner, these releases crack the surface of the city’s diverse sonic landscape.
Britney Stoney – “Richy”
Britney Stoney’s evolution as a songwriter comes to a full blossom with “Richy.” Following her 2015 experimental indie-pop EP Native, she released ’80s inspired dance tracks”Grip” and “O.D.” “Richy” leans further into the electro-R&B sphere, with production by Jon Zott of Assemble Sound. Stoney’s smooth vocals are at the forefront of the track and deliver a simple message: “Love me before I go away.” Undulating synths and driving percussion echo the urgency of her voice. However, Stoney’s words are less a plea and more of a demand, reminding the lover in question that she’ll keep dancing no matter what the outcome.
Palaces – Palaces
Alt-disco quartet Palaces – Sean McGraw, Cat Cobra, Rachel Balanon, Dave Cliburne – released a new self-titled record bursting with synth-powered indie pop that pulls from the past’s infinite toolbox without feeling contrived. The songs are tinged with perspective, nostalgia, and even a bit of sarcasm, yet remain worthy of any retro dance party.
Mega Powers ft. Jade Lathan – “Virtual Boy” Music Video
Detroit producers Eddie Logix and Pig Pen make up Mega Powers, a slow-burning electronic project built on collaboration and experimentation. The latest visual for their song “Virtual Boy” is a prime example, as it repurposes a short film called “Flamingo” by artist Michelle Tanguay and filmmaker Andrew Miller that Mega Powers had soundtracked. Even at half of the original film’s 8-minute run-time, the clip manages to tell a story all the same via soft projected images and psychedelic lighting.
Paint Thinner – The Sea of Pulp
Post-punk outfit Paint Thinner released their debut record, Sea of Pulp, via ŌBLĒK. Recorded with Bill Skibbe (Protomartyr, The Kills, Jack White), the album is as clean sounding as a garage-punk record can/should be while exuding elements outside of what you would expect. Yes, we hear tense guitar riffs and heavy distortion (in fact, there’s a song called “Distortion”), but scattered throughout the heavy musical catharsis, there are moments of psychedelia and complex lyricism. There’s even a moment on “Soft Features” when vocalist Colin Simon channels Jonathan Richman circa Modern Lovers.
Sammy Morykwas ft. noMad, King Milo & Khalil Heron – “Into The Skies”
Detroit producer/rapper/songwriter Sammy Morykwas released the second of a long line of collaborative tracks he plans to unveil in 2019. After years of working under monikers and as a ghost producer, Morykwas is ready to take the credit that has long been due for his old-school style R&B and hip-hop production. “Into The Skies” is a contemplative track that features three artists from the underground rap scene. Morykwas is heard singing in the hook, a new role for the producer. Whether he’s behind the scenes or front and center, Morykwas has a knack for creating addictive hooks and beats that stick.
Detroit feminist punk/noise band GIRL FIGHT released their sophomore record, She’s a Killer, last week – a politically charged twenty-minutes that barks and bites. Ellen Cope and Jacob Bloom fine-tune their brazen two-piece effort with tighter riffs and rhythms and lyrical prowess that breaks down complex topics and makes them digestible. The result is an album that begs for critical conversation as much as it does headbanging.
Back in 2017, Cope – who manages a team of web engineers by day – had never even touched a drum set, let alone taken to the stage with a microphone. “I have no musical background, I had never played an instrument or sung or done anything my entire life,” says Cope. It wasn’t until they saw British punk outfit Slaves live that the duo decided they were going to start a band. “They have a song called ‘Girl Fight,’” explains Bloom. “Right after the show, I went up to Ellen and I said, ‘We’re going to start a band, you’re going to play drums, and it’s going to be called GIRL FIGHT.”
It wasn’t long before Cope had purchased a children’s drum set from Craigslist and set it up on a Home Depot bucket and milk crates. She and Bloom started experimenting by playing covers of The Cramps. “We started writing our own songs and were like, these are actually pretty good,” remembers Bloom. After getting through their first live performance where the sound engineer asked them to leave the stage (they didn’t), they picked up a bi-weekly gig at a comedy show put on by local comedian and music enthusiast, Jason Brent. The group cut their teeth there and started to see their vision come to life.
A year after they started playing music together, they had a record – Fight Back, which Bloom views more as an EP or sample of what was to come. “Fight Back was like, ‘here is who we are and what we do, and She’s a Killer is like, ‘here is us making an album that sounds good.’” Their latest album was recorded, mixed and mastered by Paul Smith of The Strains and definitely shows a more polished version of the band.
While She’s a Killer is a bucket of water to the face sonically, it is just as hard-hitting lyrically, tackling things like race, gender, privilege and economic disparity. A few songs – “She’s a Killer” and “My Own God” – address personal empowerment and feeling strong and confident within, while “Ladder” is a plea for equality. “The song is about breaking down barriers and how we all have to help each other to get there,” says Cope. “You have to redistribute the power.”
Cope addresses her own privilege in “White Girl.”At first, she confronts white women who act as allies to minorities but end up abusing their power or turning a blind eye just the same. “White girl / think you’re so woke girl / your just a joke girl,” Cope shrieks in her cutting and powerful voice. Later, she turns the blame on herself. “I am a white girl / I am the problem / I am the oppressor.” She acknowledges that even having a platform from which to speak is a privilege. “As a white woman, being in front of a band yelling at people about stuff, I feel like it’s important to say, ‘Hey, I’m here yelling and you’re listening to me, but I’m not the only one you should be listening to.’” Both Cope and Bloom are conscious of their privilege and aim to use their platform as a way to encourage equality, power redistribution, and affecting change.
Listen to the full record and see tour dates below:
2/15 @ Bingle Mansion – Lansing, MI (w/ Rent Strike, she/her/hers, No Fun)
2/16 @ Charm School – Chicago, IL (w/ Pledge Drive, Wet Wallet, Sparkletears)
2/23 @ AIR: Artists Image Resource – Pittsburg, PA (w/ Dumplings, Princex, Jorts Season)
On its first full-length release, Detroit-based experimental group River Spirit delivers a lush collection of songs that seamlessly floats between genres and sends a clear message of renewal and reflection. Vanessa Reynolds (vocals, guitar), Dan Steadman (guitar) and Paul Wilcox (drums) strike a stunning balance by combining addicting melodic structures with unexpected chord changes and sonic textures to create a captivating sound on Me I Fall.
Reynolds says that its title track and first single set the tone for the album as a whole. “In some sense, I feel like a lot of our thoughts around it have been about transitional spaces,” says Reynolds. “‘Me I Fall’ references a fall into the well of whatever your anxieties might be… whatever comes out of that introspection to make room for the future and opening up and introducing new patterns of thought.” Reynolds’ urgent and cascading vocals mimic the feeling of losing balance and surrendering to whatever happens next. Joined by Steadman’s cyclical riffs and bassist Betsy Soukup’s vast string melodies, the song descends into a whir of confusion and possibility.
This pattern – first confusion, then resolution – seems to be a theme throughout the record. As a lyricist, Reynolds has a gift for making some of life’s toughest phenomenons – aging, uncertainty, regret – sound eloquent. But even when reflecting on darker moments, she chooses to lean on the side of optimism rather than nihilism. In “Dim The Light,” Reynold’s refuses to let other people or her own past decisions determine her future or self-worth. “I change my mind / I don’t want to go another day reflecting on how I can change the course of yesterday,” she sings in the song’s refrain. Steadman and Reynolds’ undulating guitar melodies serve as a call and response, mirroring the mind’s internal dialogue.
The record takes a break from introspection and allows for a moment of pure bliss on “You,” the album’s most R&B forward track. Reynold is both conversational and poetic on the song’s refrain: “You’re my one and only and no one can hold me but you / You can be my homie / You can come and hold me / Show me what’s inside when you open the door / And I don’t have to look anymore.” Her voice sounds like rippling water, always moving but still crystal clear.
Perhaps the strongest moment of clarity comes on “20 Years,” where Reynolds is joined by her two sisters, Juanita Reynolds and Cynthia Burton, for a gorgeous meditation on the passage of time. Ultimately, she comes to peace with the notion that we are just a combination of where we’ve been and where we’re going: “You know there’s still time and you surely aren’t the person you were then…but every day you wait on the bridge of where you are and where you’ve been.”
Reynolds says it best herself when she ties Me I Fall to a tarot card reading given by a friend on the way to band practice. “One of the cards was the death card,” says Reynolds. “I always loved the death card… it’s about transition and letting certain parts of yourself die to make room for more expansive places. I think that another thing about the death card is fate – letting yourself go to fate even if you don’t know what’s coming up next.”
Me I Fall will be available for streaming on January 25th. You can pre-save the album here, and listen to the album’s title track below.
Jake Cramer of Morris Choice Entertainment is attempting to raise awareness around suicide prevention with his first ever benefit show Scream out the Silence. All proceeds from the show – featuring local acts Honeybabe, The Idiot Kids, ZZvava and DJ Raphy – will go to Six Feet Over, a Michigan-based non-profit that is devoted to preventing and assisting in the aftermath of suicide.
“Suicide is something that no one really talks about it. If someone dies, nobody talks about it. If someone is feeling suicidal, they don’t talk about it,” says Cramer. “The whole idea was like, if we’re trying to bring awareness to people, we need to put it in people’s face. I figured the best way to do that is by booking loud bands.” Although Cramer focused on “louder” bands for this show, it isn’t simply a roster of noise-rock artists. Honeybabe self describes its fuzzy surf-rock as “psychrockjazzpunk” and is a stark comparison to The Idiot Kids melding My Chemical Romance and Metallica. Meanwhile, ZZvava sits in between the two with ’60s inspired classic rock ‘n’ roll.
Cramer’s hope is that the event will not only raise money for Six Feet Over, but also encourage conversations about mental health and suicide to aid in prevention and healing. “I lost my cousin and best friend back in 2015 to suicide. I was just crushed. When it happened, I had this huge pain in me for a long time,” says Cramer. “Since my cousin’s passing, I’ve always wanted to do something for suicide awareness and prevent people from feeling the way I felt.”
Scream Out The Silence will be held on January 19th at The Old Miami on Cass Avenue. Out-of-towners can also make a donation directly to Six Feet Over.
Experimental art-punk band saajtak takes the most enticing aspects of free improvisation, opera, electronic and jazz music and melds them to create complex sonic narratives. The Detroit-based group – made up of Alex Koi (vocals), Simon Alexander-Adams (electronic artist), Jon Taylor (drums), and Ben Willis (bass) – prove to be just as compelling live as they are in their lush recordings. All virtuoso musicians in their own right, each band member lends their distinct musical style to the collective sound of gorgeous chaos. The band demonstrates their fluid improvisation and seamless transitions in this live video of their song “Spokes.”
Koi’s undulating vocals deliver weighted metaphors, creating a call and response between her and guest saxophonist Marcus Elliot. Koi’s voice serves as a compass for listeners, guiding them between bouts of stream-of-consciousness and smooth, calculated melodies. The directional nature of the song is appropriate, considering Koi says the song is a loose metaphor for a roadmap. “From a lyrical perspective, ‘Spokes’ is about getting lost in the chaos of everyday life to the point of becoming disconnected from yourself, other people, and particularly nature,” says Koi. “It explores the process of rediscovering connection through a walk in the woods.”
Sonically, the song shapeshifts and transforms throughout its lifespan, like watching a timelapse of a tadpole reaching its full form. Its meandering nature is likely due to saajtak’s fluid songwriting method. “I think ‘Spokes’ is pretty emblematic of our writing process,” says Willis. “I seem to remember Simon coming in with the initial groove idea, and then we played and improvised with it in rehearsal and in performance for months as we discovered other sections.” The group’s creative process doesn’t end after one burst of improvisation, however, but spans over months where the song is workshopped and analyzed, especially in this case. “’Spokes’ is probably our most complex song,” says Alexander-Adams, “and being so episodic in form, definitely came together slowly in sections before it reached its current state.”
Instead of one person having autonomy over the final structure of the song, saajtak works as a completely equal unit, each member creating their own piece of the puzzle. “It’s one of the great benefits and challenges of this band,” says Taylor. “Rather than one person writing the material and directing everyone’s individual roles, we all contribute in real time, but also have to be open to compromise and deconstructing our ideas in order to serve the bigger picture.” The result leads to episodic arrangements like “Spokes,” which feels like a natural marriage of stimulating segments telling a small piece of a larger story. The song comes from a 2017 EP of the same name; you can check that out, along with the the band’s latest EP,Hectic, via their bandcamp. Lyrics for “Spokes” are below.
Eulogies of compromise, how can one say goodbye when she’s walking out alone?
Wasted devotionals, way too emotional.
Dot in a box trynna push out and resurvey itself.
I’m flying highest tie the wools around me.
Farce, c’mon and out and pull me down to warm soil.
I’m falling. (Falls, falls, falls down) When I get up the first thing I hear is, “Time Will Pass Us Just Right Not Late This Quarter”. Whipping around, who made that sound?, but no one lingers. Not a whispers. Still, I’m lulled toward the forward of the woods.
My ring of marcasite shines in the sun like all my freckles, speckled cartography. My lungs breathe easy here, hung upside down trees. I don’t choose a spot, the spot it chooses me to find its tilted home, homey little alcove. I will the wind, I will the wind. The breeze, to find me out – Guide me from outside in. I will the wind, I will the wind, I will the wind.
So you’re divine? You think you can stand alone forever? Refine and repeat, refine and repeat. Desperately annulled, refusing the change Refusing the nuance to clear the pathway.
My ring of marcasite shines in the sun like all my freckles, speckled cartography. My lungs breathe easy here, hung upside down trees. I don’t choose a spot, the spot it chooses me to find its tilted home, homey little alcove. I will the wind, I will the wind. The breeze, to find me out – Guide me from outside in. I will the wind, I will the wind, I will the wind.
I’m first. I can only imagine I’m first.
Surprise! It’s every moment of your life. God spoke to you in a birch tree bark.
Take all of me. Well I’m sure I am offering it to you. Take my lips I want to lose them, take my arms I’ll never use them.
Surprise! It’s every moment of your life. God spoke to you in a birch tree bark but you weren’t there.
Gabe Smith has wandered far from his small hometown of Waterford, Michigan, but hasn’t forgotten the role that his neighboring city of Detroit had in shaping him as an artist and songwriter. After moving to LA in 2014, Smith spent two-and-a-half years touring on the John Lennon Educational Tour bus, helping students write/record original music and videos. Landing back in L.A earlier this year, Smith started working at Shangri La Studios in Malibu and recording his debut LP, Tangerine, under the name Sarkis. The record is an amalgamation of Smith’s roots in the Motown sound, time spent traveling the country, and the glimmer of L.A. sunshine that seems to rub off on all ye who enter there.
While Smith says a small part of the album was written during his time on the Lennon bus, the majority was written and produced at Shangri La studios, with the help of his writing partner Tyler Bean and other friends that work at the studio. “I had a lot of guys playing on it and helping me record it and write it,” says Smith. “It was a cool collection of people from all over making music… that was kind of a whole other layer of creativity that I hadn’t had in any of my music before.”
This collaborative effort resulted in a sound that blends funk, hip-hop and soul. One of the most obvious funk elements is the presence of consistently strong bass lines throughout the record. “I played a lot of bass this year,” says Smith. “I’ve never considered myself a bass player but now I wish that I was a dope bass player – those (musicians) are the legends of funk.” Smith cites meeting Bootsy Collins last year as one of his most transformative musical experiences. “That changed my whole perspective of funk music,” Smith says. “He even listened to some of my music and that was a big moment for me – he is definitely a life-altering person to meet.”
Funky bass lines, bright vocals, and different musical textures characterize Tangerine, and keep it feeling bright and optimistic, even on “Messed Up,” a song about the disenchanting state of the world. “I always try and remain positive, so I try to put that into the music too,” says Smith. “The music itself is upbeat and trying to make people dance and feel good. Even on a song that’s saying ‘the world is messed up,’ I still want to have a positive twist on it.”
Smith also cites Stevie Wonder, Mac Miller, Ice Cube and NWA as influences on this record. He says he didn’t really start listening to West Coast hip-hop until he first moved to L.A. “The year after I moved to LA was when that movie [Straight Outta Compton] came out,” says Smith. “We saw Ice Cube at an IHOP or something and I was like, ‘oh my god.’ That was when I started listening to that music.”
Smith’s recent hip-hop influence is obvious on the record’s kick-heavy, bombastic track “Dreamland” and on “Messed Up,” when he makes his first foray into rapping. “I think I wrote that right after Mac Miller died,” says Smith. “I listened to Mac Miller in high school and he was at the studio a couple months before he passed away… I was kind of feeling sad and he was doing this fast rapping thing on one of his songs, so I tried to do it on one of mine and I was like – I guess that sounds okay?”
While Smith takes cues from the artists he lists as inspirations, his music serves more as an homage than an imitation, putting a unique twist on funk and hip-hop and making it his own. For those enduring the blistering cold this winter, Tangerine serves as a light at the end of what can feel like a never-ending tunnel. And for people residing in sunshine-y states, it’s a reminder to appreciate what you have and try not to take life so seriously. You can stream Tangerine exclusively here today, and listen to it everywhere this Friday, December 15th.
Sarkis will hold a listening party for Tangerine at The Dessert Oasis (1220 Griswald St, Detroit, MI, 48226) on Friday, December 15. The party is free and open to the public.
After releasing her entirely self-produced experimental pop album, VIVID, in 2015, Detroit-based songstress Krissy Booth has fully transitioned to the bright side of pop with her single “Lose Sleep With You.” Where VIVID is built on dark warbly bass and the pain of a bad breakup, “Lose Sleep With You” shows Booth in a completely different light, embracing the bubbly optimism of pop music.
Part of the song’s uplifting aura comes from its subject matter — a whimsical whirlwind romance built around a love for nightlife. “I had just ended an on and off again sort of relationship that was very safe,” says Booth. “I got on bumble, started talking to a guy, and we met later that week and had this wild adventure… I felt really alive after being so sad.” Booth’s reinvigorated outlook on romance is made evident through her whipping vocal line that mirrors the heart spikes induced by a new crush.
Booth’s buoyant vocals are paired with Red Jumpsuit Apparatus drummer John Espy’s booming pop production. The match-up is Booth’s first full collaboration with another artist and brings her closer to mainstream pop’s center. However, the epicenter of pop is where Booth feels most comfortable anyhow. “The music I make feels true to who I am and I’m super proud of it,” says Booth, “It’s pop, I love pop music, and I love electronic music.”
Detroit-based producer Nydge, born Nigel Van Hemmye, releases his first solo EP, Datsun Turbo, today. While Van Hemmye has spent the last year building an impressive catalog of pop anthems featuring other vocalists, this is his first foray as a solo artist. The EP is centered around Van Hemmye’s experience with severe anxiety and how it manifests itself in different aspects of his life. Although the subject matter is dense, his upbeat electric compositions could easily serve as the soundtrack to a VR race car simulation or modern-day Back to the Future remake.
Van Hymme says the opening track, “Immortal Youth,” is a nostalgic rumination on what life was like before he started having anxiety attacks. It opens with glockenspiel-like synths that recall the innocence of childhood. The lyrics follow suit, reflecting on happier times when debilitating worry didn’t exist. “Immortal youth / we have endless days / to find a happy place / it all comes in waves,” sings Van Hymme.
Datsun Turbo also touches on how anxiety can affect romantic relationships. Van Hymme says “Come Over” is about “the fear of never being able to commit or forgive myself due to my fatalistic inner narrative.” Arguably the EP’s catchiest track, the song tells the story of a yo-yo romance, where both characters keep coming back to a relationship that should be over– a theme that even people who don’t suffer from anxiety can relate to.
Van Hemmye’s also released a video along with the EP that attempts to explain his experience with anxiety further. In the short film, he details his first panic attack: “My heart was racing, and my walls of reality were melting.” The video goes on to give a chillingly accurate visual representation of what it’s like to have an anxiety or panic disorder, melding visions of clarity and beauty with unsettling disorientation. Van Hemmye explains that he started turning to long drives as a coping mechanism for his racing mind and heart. “I think driving has always soothed me because it occupies just enough of my anxious mind to not allow for excessive worrying.”
Van Hemmye says he feels a kinship to the Datsun, an economized version of an expensive European sports car. “That’s kind of how I see myself in music,” says Van Hemmye. “I’m a frugal kid from Detroit who makes accessible and honest music by crafting big pop music sounds in little DIY studios.”
We talked with Nydge about the story behind his first solo project and how dedication to a craft can be the best medication of all.
AF: I heard you were named after a race car driver – who is it and what’s the story behind that?
Nigel Van Hemmye: I was named after Nigel Mansell, who drove in Formula 1 with a thick, caterpillar mustache. After hearing one of the announcers say his name on television one Sunday afternoon, my mom decided not to name me Colin and go with Nigel. My Grandma read Colin as “colon” and that might have influenced her decision as well. Most people I meet associate me with Nigel Thornberry. Every now and then I get an XTC fan sing me, “We’re always making plans for Nigel.” I probably know more dogs named Nigel than I do people. I’m just out here trying to give Nigels a good name.
AF: Although the project definitely feels like electropop, I hear some early 2000’s rock influence — did you listen to a lot of Strokes-era music growing up?
NVH: I was in Germany for an exchange program at 16 for a month. One weekend my new German friends and I went club-hopping in Berlin. All of them were playing The Strokes! I distinctly remember everyone yelling along to the lyrics. Music like Franz Ferdinand, The Shins, and Phoenix bring me back to that moment. Growing up I listened to anything from Nine Inch Nails to Empire of the Sun to really wonderful, obnoxious techno and dubstep. I actually made really bad techno songs under the name “Nydge” in high school.
AF: I know from your film that this album was a coping mechanism for your anxiety, but a lot of the tracks sound upbeat/peppy – can you talk about that choice and how some of these songs came together?
NVF: I think about music as an escape – a place I can go where things make more sense or sometimes don’t have to. There’s an amazing notion in psychology about the concept of “Flow” or being in “The Zone” which I feel like I enter when on stage or producing or jamming. It’s a very soothing and uncomplicated feeling. Anxiety for me has always been the over-abundance of thought: racing mind, paranoia, irritability until it crashes into panic. Learning to do something so naturally that you enter that “zone” or “flow state” is the coping part. It’s the process rather than the product. My greatest hope is to either give a listener a brief escape from the negative or enhance the positive experience they are already having.
Full disclosure – I feel the best foot to put forward is one which is upbeat and peppy. It’s fun to play live, it’s easier to land on movie, TV and commercial work and there’s a huge demand for it on the radio. “Immortal Youth” was actually born out of the skeleton of a song I was writing for sync but decided to keep. “Baby, I” came from what I thought a car commercial would sound like with my voice singing about anxiety.
AF: “Come Over” and “Y U Gotta B” are about how anxiety affects a relationship. Can you talk a little more about the specific experiences/hurdles in a relationship that are a result of anxiety?
NVH: I think from the outside anxiety can present itself in a myriad of different ways. Ultimately for me it’s about stress management. Relationships can be stressful – even the positive parts. Anxiety also presents itself as my relationship with the future. “Come Over“ was the expression of worry about a future with or without someone. Stress in this way comes from some of the decisions I was refusing to make – either not allowing things to progress forward or not having difficult but important conversations about ending things.
With Kim Vi, “Y U Gotta B“ is a playful take on how confusing and frustrating it can be when you don’t know what the other person is thinking but you’re still very much invested in them. What they do or say is magnified under the lens of your adoration, and anxiety comes in and whispers in your ear: “They’re playing with you. They don’t really like you…” which really comes down to a lack of trust and communication.
AF: This is your first cohesive piece of work where you are the centerpiece – how does that feel?
NVH: It feels great! For the longest time, I felt like I was producing and performing without ever getting to know myself separate of others. I relished in the collaboration and the learning it brought me but I still somehow felt unproven or incomplete. The more I wear the “solo artist” hat, the more I understand the choices other artists make, both personally and within the industry. I’m here to constantly improve, challenge myself and others to create and try their best. On a lighter note, I had these songs, I loved them, I had a platform, and no good answer to the question: why not?
AF: Did making the explanation video for the EP put you in a vulnerable place?
NVH: Yeah, but also no. I’m very up front about my anxiety and panic disorder. I’m not really ashamed of it and I don’t think others should be [ashamed of theirs] either – although I understand why they are. I wrote the whole piece as a short story which I sent to a couple friends who said I should share it. I think I hesitated for a microsecond and then wrote up a shot list for the short film. I acknowledge wholeheartedly I am not perfect and one of the best ways of coping with anxiety is sharing the strategies I’ve garnered over the years with those who struggle as well. At the end of the day, music is my own personal worry stone, something through which I can pour in my doubts, insecurities and feelings and come back with not only something I’m proud of, but a more thoughtful version of myself. The lesson it endlessly teaches me is devotion to a craft or skill is one of the most meaningful relationships you can have with yourself and the world.
This week, Detroit-based crooner Jacob Sigman released an upbeat and earnest follow-up up to his debut EP, Episode 1. Sigman wrote and produced the entirety of Episode 2, which fuses soul, pop, and funk to create his trademark heart-on-your-sleeve sound.
As a songwriter, Sigman has an undeniable knack for composing addictive hooks and sticking them with lyrics that roll off the tongue. The most glaring proof of this lies in “Honey Woo Hoo,” the EP’s dangerously catchy lead track. Sigman’s high register, lovestruck lyrics, and easy melodies call to mind the unscathed pep of early Beatles records – if they’d had access to a Justin Timberlake record in their formative years.
Sigman throws a surprise in the mix with “Let Me Lay You Down,” which starts off sounding like a ballad and transitions to a 70’s dance track. The break in this song feels like it could be straight off an ABBA record and is a charmingly unexpected pair with Sigman’s classic-sounding vocals. He continues to bring the funk in “Reminiscing,” a song with some serious Stevie Wonder vibes that somehow makes poring over photos of your ex sound fun.
In fact, one of the most attractive parts of Sigman’s music is the way it oozes positivity. Each song feels like a ray of sunshine reaching out through the speakers to brighten your damn day. It’s genuine and adorable and just quality, good-old-fashioned pop music. Listen below and be happy.
Henry Johns and Nick Sapounas represent a new Detroit psych-rock band stepping out on the scene, Dr. Wolf. Though the two longtime friends and collaborators come from different musical backgrounds – Sapounas previously in the acoustic-folk group gray/bliss and Johns from Warehouse – they come together in an amalgamation of musical knowledge that explodes into medicine for the ears.
The duo is starting off strong with their release of two singles, “Came So Easy” and “Acceptance.” “Came So Easy” is a cascading and dark meditation that showcases the band’s ability to seamlessly combine psych guitars with warbly synths. The unexpected mix results in a trance-like reflection that takes the listener on a six-minute journey into the mind of its creators. The most intelligible lyrics, “Wasting all my time,” may be a nod to an unsuccessful love affair, shitty job, or stranger who won’t stop talking to you at the grocery store. It doesn’t really matter; by the song’s soaring guitar outro, time feels like an illusion rather than something that can be wasted at all.
“Acceptance” continues that otherworldly vibe, and shows a completely different side of the band. With aqueous synths and a deep drum-machine heartbeat, the song feels like tapping into a satellite and hearing an interstellar exchange. The implications within the song title – a certain resignation, perhaps – play out in the melody’s stoic, gradually oscillating pace. With such a divergent pair of singles, it’s hard to tell what musical direction Dr. Wolf will take as the project grows. But it’s obvious Dr. Wolf is going places.
Metro Detroit-based indie rockers Kimball are wise beyond their years. Although lead songwriters and singers Austin McCauley and Emily Barr are only 19 and 20 years-old, respectively, their music possesses an insight about the world that suggests a lifetime of hard lessons learned early. Their latest single, “Guns,” exemplifies this worldly view, and was written during a trying time in Barr’s teen years, when she found out her father was having an affair. The emotion and honesty put into this song resulted in a universally relatable anthem about betrayal, broken expectations, and recovery.
Although Barr wrote the lyrics to “Guns” about the turmoil in her personal life, she and McCauley admit that certain aspects of the song can also be interpreted to be a commentary on gun control. When I suggest that the first line of the song, “It’s fucked up / you got guns / and you still don’t feel safe at night… I’ve been thinking about biting the bullet,” could be taken in a literal sense, the pair says they urge listeners to pull whatever meaning they hear from the song. “A thing that’s so beautiful about music is that people can see a song through their own eyes,” says McCauley. “Even if it’s not necessarily about actual guns, people can take that and feel something that we didn’t even expect it to mean.”
Barr nods at the flexible nature of song meanings throughout time and embraces the fact that the lyrics to “Guns” could be taken in a more literal sense. “I think the first line does speak to the point that we build these walls up around ourselves. And there’s so much fear in our country right now, there’s so much fear of the unknown,” says Barr. “Really, the answer isn’t building up walls, it isn’t arming ourselves with guns, it’s going out and talking to people and getting to know people and understanding our differences”
The band released their debut EP, North Wilson, on June 2nd and will celebrate with a release show at The Loving Touch in Ferndale, Michigan on June 8th. Listen to the full EP below.
Born from a chance meeting in 2016, Virginia Violet and The Rays is the brainchild of musicians Virginia Nastase and Joe Myers. When the two met two years ago, the musical chemistry was incendiary. “We started cranking out songs like it was our last day on earth,” says Myers. Since then, the duo has grown to a nine-piece band, boasting a full horn section and some of the most soulful players in town. They’ve just released their first full-length LP, On the Fringe.
The record is an ode to the indelible sounds of Motown, tinged with a darker twist than you’ll find on most ‘60s soul records. Unlike some of the band’s totems of inspiration – Erma Franklin’s “Gotta Find Me a Lover” and Lou Pride’s “I’m Coming Home in the Morning” – VV and The Rays depart from the traditional topics of love and heartbreak covered in most soul music and offer portraits of tragedy, danger, and sass. From “Chompin’ at the Bit,” which tackles economic disparity in the America, to “Terminal,” a song exploring the relationship between a child and their dying mother, these are certainly not your run of the mill “shoo-bee-doo-bop I wanna love you” tunes.
“I have always found it easier to write about darker topics because that’s when I write the most for therapy,” says Nastase. “Happiness is an experience that is easy to enjoy but tragedy needs to be interpreted and sorted through for me. I think that process allows me to write about those things.” But Nastase isn’t on an island when it comes to songwriting. The pair says they find a balance in their complementary writing styles; Nastase keeps things even keel while Myers prefers the brain dump method.
Although some of their songs lean towards the dark side thematically, the blustering band keeps spirits up with their bouncy, soul-infused arrangements. The four-piece horn section, filled out by Garrett Gaina (baritone saxophone), Adam Dib (alto saxophone), Chris Kendall (trombone), and Dave Vessella (trumpet), adds a layer of brightness that can make even singing about death seem less dim. The brass blowers even go above and beyond on “Muscle Milk,” adding call-and-response background vocals to Nastase’s strong and cheeky delivery.
Recorded in only a few live sessions, On the Fringe feels like stepping into the hottest Motown bar of the 1960s with the angst and unrest that screams 2018. The stellar musicianship is nearly on par with session players from the Muscle Shoals and Motown eras and adds a warmth and authenticity to the record that’s hard to find on any albums recorded post-ProTools. Just as the record would suggest, VV and The Rays’ live performances are even more flooring than the record itself. Though the band doesn’t have any national dates on the book yet, they’re plotting for a tour in the near future and can be seen and heard at scattered shows in the Detroit area.
Listen to On the Fringe and watch their video for “Where I Belong” below.
Detroit-based singer-songwriter Silence Is The Noise (Jewell Bell) has returned after a three-year hiatus with “Nappy,” a striking “love song for black women.” The song is a positive, empowering ode dedicated to uplifting black women and celebrating physical characteristics that have “historically been derided by white supremacy and make black women who they uniquely are.” Bell uses her soulful voice – which can hold a candle to the greats like Nina Simone, Beyonce, and Jill Scott – to embolden black women around the world.
“I am all too aware of the invisibility and marginalization of black women,” says Bell. “In writing ‘Nappy,’ I felt like it was something that I would not only want to listen to and feel strengthened by, but also for the women whom I love as well as black women globally. That affirmation of our beauty, strength, humanity, and visibility has always been a driving force in my life.”
“Nappy,” which was written and arranged entirely by Bell, touches on both the physical and intangible characteristics of black women. In the chorus, Bell sings, “I’m happy to be nappy/Thicker lips, thighs, and ass cheeks/Got soul that has carried me this far.” The message is simple: no matter what society or anyone else has told you, you’re perfect the way you are. Bell’s soul is evidenced in her gorgeously gritty voice, brushed with the wisdom of the world and personal experiences that have only made it stronger.
After making time for grieving and self-care following some personal losses these past three years, Bell is back stronger than ever and ready to share her voice with the world. She says the time off helped her grow as an artist and plans to follow up “Nappy” with an EP later this year. Listen to the single below.
When you think about music festivals, it’s easy to picture giant stages, overcrowded drink lines, and teenagers in various species of headwear. Whateverfest – an all-genre, all-ages DIY festival based in Detroit – is pretty much the opposite of that. Born from a “what if” conversation between friends in 2011, Whateverfest has grown from a few bands occupying every apartment in the Hyesta building to over 40 bands, spanning nearly every genre, playing at the Tangent Gallery. This Saturday, May 12th, the fest is returning for its eighth year and is set to go from 12 pm to 6 am the next day.
The fest’s lineup includes a vast array of Michigan bands as well as acts from Toronto (Rooftop Love Club), Chicago (Aathee Records), and Indianapolis (Gwendolyn Dot). One of the original festival organizers, Soph Sapounas, says that the event’s musical diversity comes from the laissez-faire ethos indicated by its moniker. “Whoever wants to play plays,” says Sapounas. “We’re all just trying to have a good time – it’s whatever. That [word] starts getting thrown around a little too much on the day of but it’s okay.”
Though the organizers strive to be as inclusive as possible, the festival’s popularity attracts a slew of submissions every year, which the team reviews in a democratic fashion. They host listening parties and make sure that the roster of artists performing represents the city as a whole. “We want to be a platform for artists and musicians in Detroit in general. Not just for rock, not just for techno – we want to include all of it,” says Sapounas. “That’s one of the things that keeps recurring, is people telling me that they think it’s really cool to see all the different scenes here and everyone having a good time together and not having that cool kid standoff.”
With groups like Spaceband (a nine-piece experimental funk collective), Ex American (new age electronic), and a handful of techno artists holding down the late-night sessions, the festival undoubtedly reps staple genres Detroit is known for and everything in between. If you’re in or around Detroit, this fest is more than worth checking out. If not, check out some of the amazing under-the-radar artists below – I’m betting they’re more eclectic than your Discover Weekly playlist.
Detroit shred-pop band Tart meet us at the end of cuffing season with the release of their sexually-charged single, “Like Lovers Do,” a lo-fi, lusty track about the electric feeling that comes with a new crush. The trio, comprised of Zee Bricker (vocals), Adam Michael Lee Padden (guitar), and Donny Blum (drums), achieve their gritty sound by layering Padden’s rollicking guitars and slightly distorting Bricker’s sweet and snarly vocals. The combination of the two result in a genre-bending sound that lies somewhere between New Wave, surf-rock, and power glam-pop.
Bricker says the song’s angsty vibe sprouted from a typical band-practice spat. “Donny was being a perfect angel – it was really Adam and me fighting about something dumb at practice,” says Bricker. “We occasionally butt heads creatively. Donny started playing this awesome beat and Adam was super frustrated, so he started hitting chords really angrily and dramatically. And, for whatever reason, this all made perfect sense to me so I told them not to stop.”
The band’s heated jam sesh translated well into a fiery infatuation anthem, at times almost mocking conventional courtship rituals. “We could shake hands like lovers do / Make plans like lovers do / Take it slow like lovers do,” Bricker sings with an eye roll that can be heard through the speakers. After a face-melting solo from Padden, the song breaks down into a sickly sweet Bricker singing, “I could be gentle / I could be calm / I could be cool for you,” as her vocals slowly work back into a blustery fever dream, guided by Blum’s rousing drum beat.
Ending on a single note from Padden’s warbly guitar, the song leaves us breathing heavily and wanting more, almost as if we’ve got the hots for a new flame. In Bricker’s own words, “The song’s about desire, but in the least melancholic way possible. It’s less about longing and pining, and more about feeling desire as a bubbly, exciting heat in your body. It’s not about love, it’s about crushes.”
Ticket Giveaways
Each week Audiofemme gives away a set of tickets to our featured shows in NYC! Scroll down to enter for the following shindigs.
