Canadian folk singer-songwriter Matthew Swann records under the name Astral Swans. He’s back with a new, self-titled record, which includes a few great duets with fellow songwriter Julie Doiron. (Also, we’ve been doing this for 300 weeks. We’re old.)
If it wasn’t for the accent, you would think Jade Bird was another southwestern American half-country, half-Stevie Nicks songwriter. You know, the kind we love around here. It’s easy to know where the confusion might come from: in her second album, the English musician is joined by producer Dave Cobb (who else?) to bring us one of the most interesting Americana records of the year so far.
We took a week off because we can. It gave us a few extra days to dive deeper into Snapped Ankles’ excellent “Forest of Your Problems”. The noisy London post-punk (if we can define it like that…) band refines their sound further, bringing us some hip-moving motorik we can use to pretend the world is back to normal and we can all dance again. Responsibly.
YĪN YĪN’s debut album is another gem coming from the same vibrant Dutch scene that brought us the great Altin Gün. But instead of looking at Turkish folk and psychedelia for influence, the lads from Maastricht infuse South East Asian textures in their Moroder-inspired disco – with a nod to the Ghanaian institution that is Kiki Gyan’s “24 Hours in a Disco” in their single “Dis kô dis kô”. Plus: new tracks by 10 000 Russos, Heavy Lungs, Ancient Shapes, Battles, PAUS, Maria Reis, Chairlift’s Caroline Polachek, Hop Along’s Frances Quinlan, Sarah Pagé, Destroyer, Mikal Cronin, Why?, Common Holly, Simone White, Andy Shauf, Frazey Ford, Courtney Barnett, Youbet, Lankum, Leonard Cohen, and Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster.
It’s starting to be too common: no matter how warm and sunny it is in the week leading up to the festival, NOS Primavera Sound (NPS) is doomed to be ruined by at least one day of rain. The first day did not look promising after the announcement of the passage of depression Miguel (no, not the rnb star who performed there a couple of years ago) through the north of Portugal. Flights were cancelled, Ama Lou and Peggy Gou could not reach Porto in time to perform, strong winds and rain showers threatened to turn Parque da Cidade into a muddy mess, the gates were opened almost an hour later than it was scheduled.