Tag: New Orleans

Chapel Hart Build Sass and Soul into Sophomore LP The Girls Are Back in Town

Photo Courtesy of 2911 Media

Bold and unapologetic country queens Chapel Hart return with their swampy sophomore album, The Girls Are Back in Town. Equal parts sassy and heartfelt, the 12-track project finds the trio putting their most fearless foot forward, tackling topics ranging from bullying and cheaters to womanhood and independence, as told through the confident delivery and stellar three-part harmonies of Mississippi-born-and-raised sisters Danica and Devynn Hart and their cousin Trea Swindle.

The album opens with “Nearly Over You,” a breakup ballad led with a crying fiddle that matches lead singer Danica’s aching vocals and lyrics. Blue tears pour from her brown eyes as she mourns the end of a relationship, lamenting at song’s end, “Just know I’m not nearly over you.” This leads into “4 Mississippi,” a raucous ode to a hard-working single mother of four children, setting the pace for an album that stands firmly in its country roots but leans more into rock than the pop sound ubiquitous on country radio. The family band then takes the edge off with the free-spirited, “I Will Follow,” an ode to following one’s heart over their head. With soft claps and glistening harmonies, the sweet song accentuates their lighter side as they profess, “When my heart leads the way, I will follow.”

But they get back to their feisty ways on “Grown Ass Woman,” the female country anthem we’ve been waiting for. Here, they’re unabashed backwoods women who are just as equipped to run a tractor as they are willing to let their emotions, and a curse word or two, fly. “I may not be politically correct, but I can say that I did things my way/I can cry when I want to/Fight when I need to…that’s what grown ass women do,” they shout over a bluesy, edgy melody, proudly telling the world exactly who they are on one of the album’s best and most defining moments. 

The Girls Are Back in Town also proves the CMT Next Women of Country 2021 inductees to be clever and witty lyricists who embrace word play, exemplified on “Tailgate Trophy” where they blatantly disavow the misogynistic tropes in modern country. Their cheeky personalities also shine through on the single that initially grabbed the public’s attention, “You Can Have Him Jolene,” Chapel Hart’s callback to Dolly Parton’s iconic track. Instead of begging the other woman to back down, these three throw a dirty cheater to the curb after catching on to his two-timing tricks. They gladly turn him over to his new lover, but not without warning to heed some advice and learn from that fateful experience.

Meanwhile, the New Orleans and Nashville-based group shares “Jacqui’s Song,” a loving tribute to the girlfriend of their former keyboard player who was tragically killed when the tent she was under at an outdoor festival got struck by lightning. Originally released on their 2019 album, Out the Mud, “Jacqui’s Song” does their late friend proud. Calling on the tried-and-true “three chords and the truth” model, they take the invaluable lessons learned from Jacqui and turn them into lyrics that demonstrate country storytelling at its finest, singing over a honeyed melody, “When you live this little thing called life/I hope you take it by the reigns/You ain’t promised no tomorrows/And you can’t take back yesterdays.”

The singers round out the album with back-to-back-to-back rockers, calling on “Jesus & Alcohol” in a bluesy breakup anthem that features ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons on guitar, then sends their enduring harmonies as high as the Georgia pines they sing of with “That’s a Redneck Summer Night” before closing out the project with the fiery title track. Through The Girls Are Back in Town, Chapel Hart carve out a place for themselves in the modern landscape of country music. With their strong harmonies, killer hooks, and compelling lyrics, Chapel Hart lives and breathes their defining proclamation: “We’re the next women of country and it’s our town now.”

Follow Chapel Hart on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook for ongoing updates.

Pony Hunt Explores Endless Variables in a Fluid Universe with VAR! LP

California-born, Chicago-raised Jessie Antonick, a.k.a. Pony Hunt, recorded her newest album VAR! in New Orleans, but inspiration came from light years away. Its title is a reference to the scribbled note of astronomer Edwin Hubble in 1923, upon realizing that what he’d previously identified as nebulae in the Milky Way were, in fact, something else. He’d identified a variable from another galaxy, which would lead him to discover the Andromeda galaxy, expanding our knowledge of the universe.

There is a sense when listening to Pony Hunt of being immersed in a universe of Antonick’s own construction. The many layers of instrumentation, and the intermingling melodies and atmosphere demand attention. In this way, VAR! is meditative and healing, especially when inhabiting an imagined time and place provide respite from our pandemic-affected lives.

“I hope that my music transports people into a feeling or a space,” Antonick confirms. “When I’m writing songs, I feel all-consumed by what I’m doing. The goal is to create space or an environment that wraps around a listener.”

On first single “Stardust,” there’s layers of ‘60s psychedelia and harmonic doo-wop vocals, the raw, steely sound of surfy guitars, and the contained fury of drums that want to become savage but remain firmly leashed. Atop it all, Antonick’s gorgeous, soulful voice teeters on the edge of being haunting in its romantic perfection. Her formative influences in Chicago punk, pop music of the ‘90s (Nine Inch Nails, Wilco) and ‘60s R&B, soul and rock reveal themselves in the layers of sound, and the tools used during recording.  

“We used a lot of vintage equipment,” she explains. “The AMPEX 351 [Reel To Reel Tape Recorder] is from the 1950s, I think, and we used a handful of vintage microphones as well in different places on the album. We used ‘60s tube amps for the electric guitar, and there was an older organ in the studio from the ‘60s and ‘70s that we used pretty consistently as well. We also used a Rhodes, for a vibey, dreamy sound. I really love the sound of that electric piano; it’s unique, different, beautiful. I had one song with violin and cello, also.” The violin and cello show up on “Who Are You,” recorded with a friend from New Orleans – strings player and vocalist free feral.  It’s a lovely, doomed love story cushioned in a waltzing melody. 

VAR! was recorded in home studios, with a number of engineers, Antonick says. “I recorded with a couple of my bandmates, Sam Doores and Duff Thompson. They had a little studio set up in the Holy Cross neighborhood of New Orleans, so we did a lot of recording on their AMPEX 351 reel-to-reel, then I took those base recordings and added to them. I had friends in Colorado do some overdub, I recorded some in my apartment, and we pieced it together over a couple of years.”

Since releasing her debut Heart Creak in 2016, VAR! has been in varying stages of creation. In the intervening period between albums, Antonick moved from her houseboat home in Oakland, California to Louisiana, New Orleans. “When I lived in Oakland, mostly I lived on a sailboat in a marina because a friend offered me a place to stay, which happened to be his houseboat. It was a run-down marina that was also a really fantastic artists’ community, so I was surrounded by musicians and artists of all kinds and the water, of course, that was beautiful. I was working as a sail-maker, so I was sailing a lot and working in the trades, a unique trade. I think all of that conspires to inspire my music,” Antonick says, and that’s certainly true of the fluidity, movement and tidal rhythms on Heart Creak; water, the tides and physical connection to nature underlie the themes of the album. The constant movement of living on the water and the sense of being carried in any direction, at any time, are central to Pony Hunt’s nature.

On VAR!, Antonick explores a different kind of fluidity. “Gender is definitely always coursing through my investigation in life,” she says. “I grew up classified as a tomboy. In pictures of myself as a teenager, I look like a 16-year-old boy. I was lucky enough to grow up in a family where I wasn’t pushed into a gender role; I only felt that in societal and cultural systems. Those questions have gotten more complicated as I’ve gotten older and experienced the world a lot more. Society really wants to push me into being a woman, being female, having sex with a male, all these things women are supposed to have. I’m gender-fluid, or gender-queer, but it’s something where I don’t feel satisfied when I say those things. I haven’t figured that quite out yet.”

Now 36, she says, “I feel like those things weren’t on the table when I was growing up. Later in life after being called ‘she/her’ all this time, I get to be called what I want? I’ve never had that before. I sexually identify as queer, but I remember, when the only things on the table were being a lesbian or bisexual, I cringed. When ‘queer’ landed on the table, I went, ‘I am totally that!’ It gives me breathing room to be what I want to be at any moment.”

Whatever else she may be, she is undisputedly channeling the formative sounds she grew up with. Chicago’s DIY punk scene awoke in her a sense of freedom to challenge ideas of womanhood, work, and identity. “When I was a teenager, I had older siblings who were really into the punk scene in Chicago, so that’s the music I was introduced to and loved being part of. It’s loud, abrasive, energetic and just so good… that was the first music that lit me up,” she remembers.

The undeniable element of roots and country in her music was the result of a very different Chicago band. “I remember listening to Wilco – the local Chicago band that everyone loved when I was growing up, and they were my gateway to more Americana-style music. My influences on VAR! are very much 1960s rock, R&B and soul influenced. The Velvet Underground are huge for me; they’re vibey in all the right ways. Irma Thomas – when I hear her sing, she’s just the Queen of New Orleans soul for a reason.”

Steeped in the culture of a historically musical, artistic city – one that is rich with stories, blood and tears – yet addressing very modern concepts of fluid gender identity speaks to the juxtaposition between vintage and new that Pony Hunt embodies. It’s fitting that the album was the first to be released on Antonick’s new imprint, Wing And Wing, on July 23.

“I’m a co-owner; it’s myself and a woman named Lindsey Baker who runs Wolfie Vibes [PR]. Lindsey is also a wonderful musician [and plays in] Guts Club. We met through the New Orleans music scene, playing some shows together,” Antonick says. “We wanted to shine a light on queer-owned, female business, overlooked musicians. There’s a lot of really amazing queer musicians out there.”

Follow Pony Hunt on Instagram for ongoing updates.

New Orleans Piano Paragon Laura Fisher Premieres Solo Dreampop Single “Fiction”

Photo Credit: Daniela Dawson

Laura Fisher was planning a trip to Europe when everything fell apart. As a touring musician (and someone who travels for work generally) Fisher had been monitoring the oncoming pandemic since the beginning of 2020, and though it happened a bit earlier for her than for most other Americans, a panic set in that prompted her to check a few things off her creative bucket list before it was too late.

First, she compiled a bunch of her early work, spanning approximately 2008 to 2018 and recorded across New Jersey, Philly, New York, and her current hometown, New Orleans, and released them via Bandcamp as a retrospective entitled Tracing Our Veins in Spherical Time. Then, she set her sights on recording an album of short piano works inspired her rigorous neoclassical training with celebrated childhood mentor Meral Guneyman. The studio where close friend and collaborator Adam Keil worked was closing, and the beloved piano that many of the songs were written on was going back to its owner, so in the fall of last year, Keil and Fisher recorded most of what would become APOPHENIA (referring to humans’ tendency to see patterns and meaning in random information); it was released (also via Bandcamp) in February 2021.

Somewhere along the way, Fisher found time to revisit two songs she’d written some twelve years ago, and let Keil (also her bandmate in New Orleans math rock outfit Matron) give them the production she’d often imagined would bring them to life, though neither had collaborated in this way before. “He’s somebody who’s definitely influenced my taste in music – we’re just super close friends. For the last few years it’s really sort of shifted my listening habits, among other things, to more electronic pop and dreampop and a very particular sound that I’ve always loved, but it’s sort of taken over my scope,” Fisher explains. “For the most part he just kind of rolled with it. I was there for all the steps but I really just wanted somebody else to take the lead on it and I feel like the sounds of bands that we really love, like Broadcast and Warpaint and Blonde Redhead, just sort of naturally infused into these tracks in particular.” The songs will be released on 7″ via New Orleans imprint Strange Daisy Records on September 10th, with the a-side, “Fiction,” premiering today via Audiofemme. The physical 7″ will come in a variety of randomized colors; it’s the first time Fisher has ever had her music pressed to vinyl.

Those who have followed Fisher’s previous work – like Matron, or her now-dissolved grunge quartet Tranche – might be surprised by Fisher’s new approach to singing. “I’m historically more of a belter, and leaning into the power of singing,” she admits, “but I’m more interested now in a softer and dreamier approach.” That style lends itself well to the lyrical themes of “Fiction,” in which Fisher sings, “Stick around for long enough/Maybe I’ll become someone you want to love.” Imagining herself as a variety of inanimate objects, she flickers in and out of focus, all in the service of somehow making herself more desirable for a romantic partner who doesn’t seem quite as interested. Fisher calls it a “classic pining-for-somebody song,” and even her delicate vocal delivery can’t conceal her frustration that the feelings aren’t mutual.

“I don’t actually ever want to change who I am so that I can be something somebody would want, but I think we all go through that ‘What if?’ in our heads,” Fisher says (and she’s spot-on). The song is built around exploring a fantasy created in her mind, asking, “How do I make this thing that I want so badly real, and if I can’t, can it be real in a song?” Of course, when the song was written in her early twenties, she wasn’t as ambivalent about making her desires a reality.

“I’m still a very emotional person, but emotionally, I was very dramatic [then],” she remembers. “I feel things really intensely, so it’s easier for me to channel those things by turning them into visuals… just imagining all of the ways that you can sort of read through your emotional experience as a story or poem. It helps to create these places so that there’s somewhere where you can feel safe feeling them.”

Revisiting the song written so long ago, at the height of a now-fizzled infatuation, was “funny at first,” she says, adding that she did eventually get together with the person the song was written about, and though the relationship was “brutal,” they’re now friends again. “It’s been plenty of time so it didn’t really ignite any sort of emotional turmoil again or anything,” Fisher says. “It’s amazing how we can feel so intensely that we write a song about it or write in our journals about it or talk to our friends about it and then like a decade later just not feel that at all.”

“I think it’s part of human nature to want things so badly,” she adds. “So often it’s just in our heads. You know, I’m older now and I look back and I’ve sort of come around to the idea that sometimes the fantasy is enough. We can avoid not-great situations by not letting it play out and letting it live in a song.”

Keil’s sparse but urgent production gives the track a beguiling mix of sensuality and sadness, like all the best trip-hop songs of the mid-90s, from Massive Attack to Portishead to Radiohead’s more electronic-leaning cuts. Fans of Fisher’s new style will be pleased to learn that she’s working with Keil on a new solo EP in a similar vein, with a “local super group” that includes members of People Museum and Julie Odell as her backing band, built around a synth pop sound with drums. She’s hoping to re-record some of her own parts to reflect her new singing style. And Matron devotees needn’t worry, either; Fisher is halfway through recording the band’s debut (also slated for release via Strange Daisy) in a collaborative writing process put on pause during the pandemic.

“More recently is the first time I’ve kind of come full circle around to that, even though a lot of the solo stuff I’m doing is collaborative to some degree. It’s been an amazing experience just meeting people who I connect with in some way; we have different tastes but they overlap in some places,” Fisher says of working with Matron. “I feel like it’s just pushed me to be a better writer. I’ve gotten clearer on what I want, how writing as a process functions, and it’s just become more natural over time. And it’s retained its fun in that way – [songwriting is] this playground that sort of never really runs out of allure.”

Follow Laura Fisher on Instagram and Facebook for ongoing updates.

PREMIERE: People Museum Re-Introduce their Future New Orleans Sound with “Rush” Video

Photo Credit: Thomas McGovern

Hailing from a state known for a rich musical heritage, New Orleans electro-pop duo People Museum (Claire Givens and Jeremy Phipps) come from different ends of the Louisiana musical spectrum, meeting in the middle to create something new and entirely unique.

Givens is from North Louisiana, born to a classical pianist and a Baptist minister. Bred on church music and trained classically, she moved on to New Orleans seeking “less structure,” turning to jazz and punk. Phipps comes from what Givens describes as “a very talented New Orleans musical family who never got their due,” the younger brother of No Limit rapper Mac Phipps who cut his teeth playing in the jazz clubs of Frenchmen Street until he began touring with the likes of Solange, Rubblebucket and Neon Hitch. Together, they blend the rich brass sounds of jazz with elements of pop and house music to create what they call “Future New Orleans.” Today, they premiere the video for “Rush” on Audiofemme. The song is from their upcoming debut EP I Could Only See Night, out April 9.

Introduced by a mutual friend, Givens and Phipps began collaborating the day they met in 2015. Their sound was never intentional, born of intuition, but also inevitable in its homage to its hometown. “We were using what we had around us but we didn’t want to make the music that was around us,” Givens explains. “We wanted to make the music that we listened to on our headphones, but if you walk through New Orleans you’re gonna hear jazz, and all your friends are gonna play a brass instrument… we wanted to have that tradition in there but do it our own way, do it new.” The result is refreshing; Phipps’ brass tones are looped and overlaid with house beats, burbling beneath Givens’ otherworldly, layered vocals.

The video for “Rush” is shot in black and white and made to look like VHS tape. They chose the three-frame format in direct response to COVID, wanting to articulate the idea of all their friends being unable to play their instruments without featuring all their friends and exposing them to one another. You see Phipps wandering around with his instruments, unable to play, while Givens sings alone in her room, interspersed with the lone producer sitting in front of a switchboard and monitor at home. They wanted to evoke the loneliness of these musicians, lost without that central part of their identities with all the jazz clubs and venues shut down. “You see these wandering musicians; they just look so lost, because it’s so embedded into everything, and you perform so much. Who are these people now that they don’t have music?” Phipps says. “We’re all trying to figure out who we are outside being musicians, and I think part of that [comes] through in the video.” 

As for the rest of the EP, the People Museum aims for a balance between menacing and hopeful, and always danceable. Phipps says that he feels that they “tried to go a little bit harder” than on previous collaborations, saying that his trombone playing felt “a little more aggressive.” Givens says that the most notable change is “bigger production,” and that “it’s darker, but there’s always something you can dance to and there’s always something hopeful about it.”

Perhaps the oddest part of this unlikely sound is that while two of the songs were written and recorded during quarantine, the other three were made back in 2016 – yet they fit together in a cohesive unit. “They kind of came together because the songs that were written in 2016 came out of sort of a very lost time for Jeremy and I,” Givens explains. “We were trying to figure out who we were again. The writing of those songs and the writing of the quarantine songs just felt so intertwined, [it was] kind of fate that they ended up together.”

Phipps concurs, saying that in that period, “it still felt like the same feelings in my body of lostness, and all of the puzzle pieces being scattered, and trying to put it back together, and what does it look like after it’s put back together?” Ultimately, these cosmic parallels aligned somehow and it looks and sounds like I Could Only See Night.

As for what’s next, the duo are beginning to adapt to what live performance looks like in a new normal, post-vaccine New Orleans. The day of the EP release they’ll play an outdoor show, opening for Big Freedia at new outdoor venue The Broadside, and will continue to try to find creative and safe ways to perform after. All in all, they’re staying very present: “It’s funny because I feel like my plans are very short,” Phipps says. “After May? It’s so uncertain, so it’s hard to have a faraway future. We have these shows and that’s all we can depend on.” Given the smooth, hopeful lightness of their “Future New Orleans” sound, it seems it could be bright.

Follow People Museum on Instagram for ongoing updates.

Esther Rose Dances Away the Heartbreak on Third LP How Many Times

Photo Credit: Akasha Rabut

Taking shape over the course of two years, New Orleans-based singer-songwriter Esther Rose offers a different outlook to romantic losses and hardships – unique from the wallowing cries of the average love song – on her third album How Many Times, out March 26 via Father/Daughter Records/Full Time Hobby. Carefully acknowledging viewpoints from both parties, Rose’s personal anecdotes are meant to move audiences both physically and emotionally.

Rose’s sweet alt-country, folk pop twangs and two stepping rhythms originate back to her experience as a fresh New Orleans local. Roaming the noisy streets filled with traditional jazz bands, the singer-songwriter found her niche in NOLA’s own eclectic country music scene. Seeing the parties of joyful folks gathered around lively country music shindigs, Rose joined in on the fun and felt particularly at home.

Other than the two-step dance accompaniment, it was the soft weeping tones of the pedal steel guitar and frantic bowing of the fiddle that particularly piqued her interest, reminding her of a beloved legend Hank Williams. Drawn to his “lonesome voice and three-chord [compositions] on the guitar” Rose felt personally connected to not only these foot-tapping rhythms, but also the warmth and intimacy of songwriting itself. Album single “Songs Remain”reminisces on Williams withthe singer’s intimate vocals accompanied with the slow strums of the guitar.

How Many Times is ignited by the spark of lyrical compositions stemming from little moments in Rose’s life – an exchange of words in arguments, overheard conversations and catchphrases born out of heart-to-heart chats. Representative of significant experiences in her life, her songwriting process served as a means of introspection and self-discovery. “I would say that our experiences as humans really shape us,” she describes. “So I use songwriting to examine my life, experiences and relationships.” 

Her affinity for looking outward at life’s circumstances causes her to analyze its meaning and her own perspective carefully and thoughtfully. She crafts her lyrical phrases with the intention of looking at the bigger picture, processing each moment with the proper care it deserves. “It’s a universal experience,” she describes. “Whatever it is that sets up the song is being present in the world and paying attention.” Listeners are given a peek into the intimacy of these referenced conversations in tracks like “Good Time,” where Rose sings “It’s a real good time for bad timing” with conspiratorial inflection, the sort of wink and nudge one might give a close friend during a night on the town.

The idiosyncratic outlook at relationship pain Rose expresses in her songs seems to be more than solely grieving and throwing blame or anger on the other party. Allowing herself to feel the torment of heartbreak, the musician simultaneously expresses her acceptance of the hurt she’s feeling while poking fun at her own negative reaction on “My Bad Mood.” She sings candidly, “You got your new blue jeans and the girl of your dreams/I guess I should go and do the same/Oh, I’m getting pretty tired of me and my bad mood.”

Rather than focusing on blue tones of the average love song, the musician has an interesting way of shaking up the vibes of the gloom through her change in tempo. On the album’s title track Rose keeps listeners engaged with a sudden change in time signature in the middle of the song. Soothed by the sustained wails of the fiddle in the beginning of “How Many Times,” the listener will find themselves tapping out a faster tempo by its end, concluding with a light-hearted touch. Other tracks, like “Mountaintop,” “Without You,” and “Keeps Me Running” carry on as the fast-paced instrumentation allows listeners to forget about emotional turmoil.

Rose’s says her affinity for upbeat tempos helps “iron out [her] nerves,” rather than giving into the emotions of bluesy, dismal sounds as a bandaid for hardship. How Many Times may have the same effect on fans, who can experience her music as the artist herself would, turning painful emotions into songs worthy of dancing to. “What I’m trying to do sonically as a songwriter [is to] explore emotions in a way that by the time I’m done writing it, it has changed the emotion into something that we can all dance to and have fun with,” she says.

With an ever-changing state of mind, Esther Rose is currently working on new music touching on themes of future fear, family, health, and the planet. “I’ve never played it out with my band,” she says of the new material. “So the songs feel really exploratory and kind of goth with a lot of different tangents.”

In the process of making How Many Times, Rose turned to the records of Faustina Masigot and Kiki Cavazos to soothe her emotional state of mind and feel a sense of companionship. “These records were there for me. I love how music is that companion for heartbreak,” Rose says. Understanding the importance of music in our daily lives and the profound effect it can have on others, Rose hopes How Many Times can similarly accompany listeners in times of sorrow, or on lonely nights, or long drives. She adds, “My dream is that my record will do that for other people.”

Follow Esther Rose on Facebook and Instagram for ongoing updates.

PREMIERE: St. Lorelei Ponders the Moon and the Matrix on Debut LP Beast

Photo Credit: Jonathan Traviesa

Jo Morris – bandleader, vocalist, and rhythm guitarist for New Orleans-based band St. Lorelei – likes to create worlds with her lyrics. “I tend to write material that’s based on more of an internal world, whether that’s about love or just imagining fictitious environments,” she says. “All I think about when I listen to music is searching for something that really tugs at me, and I like to try to find the same feeling when I write music.”

The band — also consisting of Marcus Bronson (bass, backing vocals), Philip Cooper (keyboards), Alec Vance (guitar), and Steve Walkup (drums and percussion) — will release its debut album Beast this Friday. It paints colorful pictures of a variety of subjects, from nature to famous film scenes.

Much of the album was inspired by listening to the late singer-songwriter Jason Molina; Morris attempted to capture his vivid scene-setting with her lyrics. One of the tracks — the dark, atmospheric, keyboard-driven “Farewell Transmission” — shares a title with a song by his band, Magnolia Electric Co., which features evocative lyrics like “Now we’ll all be brothers of the fossil fire of the sun/Now we will all be sisters of the fossil blood of the moon.” St. Lorelei’s version reads like a letter to the late artist: “I received your farewell transmission/Its echoes are etched across the sky.”

The rest of the album draws from a variety of influences: the dreamy, wistful “Wish” was inspired by The Ronettes, flipping a love song on its head by describing the end of a relationship. In “Night So Dark,” an emotive track reminiscent of The Cranberries, Morris asks with soaring high notes, “Can we make it through another night?”

She remembers writing “Night So Dark” in the winter, as she looked out the window into darkness. “I was just kind of picturing waiting for the light of the moon to break through, and it’s just kind of creating the feeling that I get by watching the moon rise… creating a scene of it in my mind almost like a music video.” She remembers the phrase “too dark to dream” popping into her mind as she looked up at the sky, inspiring the line, “These nights, too dark to dream/So we splay open our hearts and pin them into screens.”

Relationship dysfunction is another overriding theme on the album. In “FOOL,” Morris belts about being deceived by love against discordant jamming, and “Snake Song,” written by Townes Van Zandt, is a haunting and poetic ode to being difficult to love, reminiscent of an old folk song.

“Outside the Green,” a cheery closing track full of harmonies and catchy guitar riffs, has perhaps the quirkiest inspiration: the movie The Matrix. “In that period of time, I had been watching that movie a lot and was just thinking about what constitutes our bodies and what is the corporeal shell — what is stopping us from being one with the elements or even with other people in sharing this same spirit?” says Morris. “I started building it around the stories in The Matrix and Neo’s journey from figuring out when he was in the actual reality and in his perceived reality.”

In her typical songwriting process, Morris brings a melody to her bandmates and describes the feeling she wants to capture, and they craft the sound to fit the mood. “It’s so amazing to be able to play with a band, especially when you’ve played by yourself for so long,” she says. Enlisting the help of engineer Mark Bingham and his barn-like recording studio amid the swamps of Henderson, Louisiana, she used layered vocal harmonies to make the album to sound “sparkling and orchestral.”

Morris formerly sang in the Kentucky Sisters, a duo centered on vocal harmonies and ukulele, while also working on her own material, releasing the EP Ghost Queen in 2017 as a solo artist. Walkup was a fan of the Kentucky Sisters and came to a concert of theirs, and he and Morris began making music together. The band is named after the German folklore figure Lorelei, who jumped into the Rhine river after being betrayed by a lover and transformed into a siren who lured sailors to crash their ships.

During the pandemic, Morris has been using her loop pedal and building songs around vocal harmonies and guitar. She’s currently creating a series of songs lamenting antiquated activities, like using cable TV and VCRs and, nowadays, going to the grocery store without worrying about getting sick. Her goal is to “create a rich world around [everyday things] that you wouldn’t expect” — a skill she’s already clearly mastered on Beast.

Follow St. Lorelei on Facebook and Instagram for ongoing updates.

Quintron and Miss Pussycat Return With Their First Album Together in Almost a Decade

On Lundi Gras, New Orleans duo Quintron and Miss Pussycat held their annual bash marking the day before Fat Tuesday in the French Quarter. This year, the theme was a crawfish boil, with Quintron dressed as a chef and Miss Pussycat and friends playing maracas in crawfish costumes. “It was really an amazing show and it was really the last show that we did,” says Miss Pussycat (aka Panacea Theriac) by phone from home in September. “We have the footage and it’s amazing and it’s all our friends that we can’t be around. It almost makes me cry to see it.”

Last Easter, the two donned their costumes again for a shoot in photographer Tony Campbell’s yard that would become the cover of their latest album, Goblin Alert, out on Friday, October 16. The footage from their February show was used in a new video for the album’s title track. 

It’s been almost a decade since Quintron and Miss Pussycat have released a joint album, and the two return in full-force on Goblin Alert with a collection of energetic, psychedelic garage rock jams.

“Quintron and Miss Pussycat is never off the burner,” says Quintron by phone. But, in the years following the 2011 release Sucre du Sauvage, the two became occupied with other projects. Quintron, who is also an inventor known for the Drum Buddy, started developing a new instrument called Weather Warlock, a drone synthesizer that unleashes sounds derived from the weather. “That’s been a big focus for the last several years,” he says of the project, which has also spawned its own band. 

Photo Credit: Chris Squire

Meanwhile, Miss Pussycat, who is also a visual artist well known for her puppet shows, released Anthropomorphizer: Puppet Show Soundtracks. She currently has art on view at Webb Gallery in Texas and as part of the group show, “I Forgot to Laugh” at Pensacola Museum of Art. For the latter, she made a series of papier-mâché maracas filled with aquarium rocks that are resting on pillows, since, she says, “they can’t do a rock show.”

Photo Credit: Allison Green

In some ways, Goblin Alert came together in a fashion similar to other Quintron and Miss Pussycat releases. “We go through our life, we live our life and write these songs based on what we’re living and what we’re going through,” Quintron explains. “Then, when it comes time that we have enough of them, it’s time to make a record and time to think about them and sharpen the points and put it on tape and put it out.” Most of the songs on Goblin Alert, he adds, had been part of their live sets for at least a year. 

Opening track, “Teenagers Don’t Know Shit,” began as a song for another short-lived band and, Quintron explains, the portion of the song that begins with “My name is Jesus Christ and I’m an alcoholic,” was initially a separate song. “It was intentionally written with the exact same structure and the exact same chords, kind of with the intention of marrying them together,” he explains. As for the meaning of the song, he says, ” I can say, for sure, I don’t mean that teenagers don’t know shit in any kind of finger-wagging, aggressive adult way.”

Another standout track, “Block the Comet,” was inspired by the Perseid meteor shower, which they saw while visiting Miss Pussycat’s family in rural Oklahoma. “It’s amazing,” she recalls. “You have to wait a long time and then you’ll see it and then you wait and then you’ll see another one.” 

What’s different about Goblin Alert was the legitimacy of the recording process. They recorded at Pulp Arts Studio in Gainesville, Florida with producer Greg Cartwright. “It was very fancy, the nicest studio I’ve ever been,” says Miss Pussycat. They also brought in a few extra musicians, including guitarist Danny Clifton, talk-box artist Benny Divine and drummer Sam Yoger. 

“I love drum machines. I love electronic music and I love that mode because I’ve been doing it for so long, but this was in a real studio with tape and an engineer and somebody else is pressing all the buttons,” says Quintron. “Somebody else is deciding what microphone to use for what and I just had to be me and more just singer-songwriter person. Having a drummer made it even more like that because I wasn’t having to turn the machine on and off.”

He adds, “Also, a live drummer, especially Sam Yoger, it’s like a big cushy pillow that you can fall into. That did something else to the songs that I really needed in my life, I guess.”

The dynamic gives the album a rollicking party vibe that can make you feel like you’re inside a sweaty Lundi Gras show like the one in the “Goblin Alert” video while you’re waiting for the return of tours. Better yet – the duo have just announced a Halloween Release Show that will stream live from NOLA’s DBA. “I miss everybody and I cannot wait to go on tour again,” she says. “I’m already working on a puppet show for a year from now.” 

Check out Quintron and Miss Pussycat via their website for ongoing updates.

VIDEO REVIEW: Ex Reyes “Bad Timing”

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Beautiful cinematography, chill vibes, and impressive Mardi Gras costumes and makeup are to be found in Ex Reyes’ recent video for his single “Bad Timing”—meaning, it’s a video worth watching. It gives a dark spin to the otherwise celebratory NOLA holiday, with standoffs and groups of people chucking guns into a burning police car as Ex Reyes hangs out in the periphery the entire time. Oh, and there is a lion mascot and baton twirlers that probably dance better than most people you know, too.

Mikey Hart, aka Ex Reyes, showcases his smooth falsetto vocals in this relaxed out single alongside crashing cymbals and an entrancing saxophone breakdown. It’ll have you wanting to hang with the cool kids (pretty much every single person in this video) while also inspiring you to head to New Orleans ASAP to see these festivities for yourself (as if you need further encouragement, though).

You can catch Ex Reyes on tour through October this year with How to Dress Well. Watch “Bad Timing” below.

VIDEO PREMIERE: Boyfriend “UDONWANIT”

Boyfriend New Orleans rapper

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Boyfriend is back, and we’re all in trouble. Last May, she got down and dirty with an ode to digital stimulation, and the risqué rapstress has done it again. Teaming up with fellow New Orleans hornballs SexParty for “UDONWANIT,” the raucous bounce-tinged track taunts and tantalizes as only this pairing could.

This time around, Boyfriend’s shed some of her quirkiness for a little edge. Thudding beats and aggressive synths form the undulating backbone of the song, while vocals take on a gritty affect as verses alternate between Boyfriend and her bawdy pals. “SexParty typically has a punk edge to their music, and I was really excited about making something harsh, abrasive even,” Boyfriend says of the song. With the music itself echoing the antagonistic vibe of the lyrics, it was only natural they’d make a clip that matched.

“SexParty and I had this deal going where I’d direct their music videos and they’d produce my tracks. This is a glorious converging of those efforts,” Boyfriend explains, and the result is an Office Space homage with the feature-warping affects of Soundgarden’s iconic “Black Hole Sun” video. “I wanted the video to be visually assaulting, bright – as if we’d just quit our day jobs and headed off to exact revenge on these defunct machines that had us trapped. ‘UDONWANIT’ is an exercise in office catharsis.”

The video was edited by Caitlin Richard, whom Boyfriend has known since middle school. “We’ve been getting together and making weird videos ever since we got our periods,” she says. The track is the first from an EP slated for release sometime this fall, and Boyfriend will be taking the new material out on the road when she tours the Southeast in mid-November. In addition to more production from SexParty, the EP will feature a guest appearance from Phoenix metal-drummer-turned-female-rapper Miny.

Check out the video below, premiering exclusively on AudioFemme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh_sEoj1JpI&feature=youtu.be