The power of music has always been a vessel for connecting with others – it supersedes language, indifference, and beliefs. It is a method that has brought the farthest ends of the world closer together, and Matell’s newest releases, “Honest Man (DJ Tremelo Remix)” and “Something To Fk With (DJ Tremelo Remix)” embody that very sentiment.
Matell’s passion for music has always been clear. However, there were few people who influenced him as much as actor and rapper, Aaron Carter. A handful of conversations fueled by a deep connection with music between Carter and Matell made the Colorado-based artist want to release the singles now.
After Carter’s untimely passing, it became a fire that will burn forever within Matell.
Matell reflects on his light-hearted conversations with Carter, saying, “We tossed around ideas and talked about other things along the way. Aaron would want me to talk about music, which was a shared passion between us. His spirit carries on in his music. My heart goes out to his son Prince Lyric Carter.”
Matell’s collaborative effort embody the spirit of Carter’s music and general take on life. Matell wrote these songs exclusively for Aaron to sing and produce on his Rakkaus Records. “‘Honest Man’ came from a conversation about people taking you seriously. Carter told me he would stay home and work on his music, despite what people said – and that’s where I got that concept.”
““Something To Fk With” came from our messages online. We would go back and forth writing instrumentals to lyrics or vice versa, and I decide to change one of those compositions to reflect the current climate in the news and the chaos in the world.”
Matell has appeared as a featured performer in tribute to iconic jazz singer Nancy Wilson at the BMA Music Awards, and as a special guest on Minnie Foxx’s Los Angeles concert tour. He has been honored by VH-1’s Save The Music and nominated for Song of the Year as a lyricist for “We Will Survive.” Matell was also nominated for the Best Editor’s Choice Award for Outstanding Writing for “Eastern Trees” by the American Poetry Society.
Matell says, “Rest In Peace, Aaron Carter. Your family, your fans, and the world truly mourns for you. Your spirit lives on through your artistic integrity.”
Friendly Giants boomed to life during the mandatory lockdown of 2020 when John Wittmayer and Shawn Fisher met and workshopped each other’s songs. As bands go, the duo added more talent to their collective, adding James Stephens, Barry Jones, Amy Heasman and Holly Schweitzer. Trevor Yost incorporates drums into some of the band’s discography. Each member lends their respective talent, be it Fisher on violin, Jones on trumpet, or Wittmayer on vocals.
“The sum of our parts creates music that we all identify with, and this sharing is what thrills us to keep creating,” Wittmayer says.
On their new track, “Dancing By Myself,” Heasman leads the vocal track with a dark, haunting call to a past lover or close friend. She croons, “What do you see when you look inside me? What do you feel when you brush up beside me? Why can’t you know if you can dance by my side? I’m not a muse for your own gain. I’m not a fool to play your games.”
The revenge saga crescendos into a brooding synth wonderland full of hollow bass drumbeats and consistent hi-hat hits. Jones’ trumpet licks mesh with Heasman’s croony questions throughout the outro, where the title comes into the spotlight.
“I’m dancing by myself,” Heasman exclaims while Jones trills through his trumpet melody, pungently trilling under the pensive refrain.
Although Heasman contributes her evocative lyrics to Dancing By Myself, Wittamayer conceived the tune. “I had the initial idea and music for Dancing by Myself. I was awkwardly trying to learn Cubase 10 during the long dark winter months of the Great Covid Lockdown. I was exploring electronica and beats and worked at composing semi-organic melodic statements accompanied by hypnotic beats on a computer,” he said.
Wittmayer added the band prides itself on running an open and non-judgmental environment where each member can pitch their ideas. Our musical collaboration allows room that no idea is not worth exploring. We try it out, and if it sticks, we all embrace it. So far, so good,” he said.
Once Heasman penned the perfect lyrics for the tune, Fisher and Jones took to production, and Wittmayer recorded his “delicious, dirty guitar riffs.” The band stated this single elicits a “gypsy influenced-polyrhythmic Moroccan groove, with a powerful homage to a Bulgarian sounding women’s choir.”
Friendly Giants favors a genre-blending atmosphere of indie tones and free-sounding hippie-pop. “The band is endlessly inspired by the Slocan Valley’s lively artistic communities and their surrounding landscape where music brings people together,” Wittamayer said.
“Dancing By Myself” is out now, and keep your eyes peeled for Friendly Giants’ debut album dropping in spring 2023.
It can be demoralizing to go through a string of disappointing dating experiences and be left empty-hearted and empty-handed. Pop-country songstress Bree Taylor wrote her latest single “My Last Breath” – available now – with that frustration in mind, and as a salve for the desire to give up. “My Last Breath” is merely one song of perseverance on an entire album, Dauntless, dedicated to fearlessness.
A soaring pop song with just the right amount of country jangle and twang, “My Last Breath” is a stream of sunlight in a dark room, a ray of hope in a seemingly hopeless situation.
“Have you found that special someone that you’ll love until your last breath after tons of heartbreak?” Taylor inquires in the adjoining caption to the music video on her YouTube channel. “Maybe you’re still going through disappointing dating experiences and haven’t found them yet. I hope this song resonates with you no matter your relationship status, because I wrote it when I was not in a place of feeling this beautiful love, but it gave me HOPE that I could one day have that BIG ‘love you until my very last breath’ kind of love.”
Even with its big, bold production and wailing guitars, the shining star of “My Last Breath” is Taylor’s voice, captured in its rich honey tones and whiskey notes, and also in its deep empathy and feeling. In the video, Taylor walks through sunflower fields during the golden hour, enjoying the beauty of her surroundings – and the beauty of her own company. You get the distinct sense that Bree Taylor is rooting for your lonely heart – even if it’s on the other side of the world – and that big, beautiful love she knows you’re going to find, even if right now that just means a deeper relationship with yourself.
“My Last Breath” is the final single off Taylor’s debut album Dauntless, representing her metamorphosis as a person and an artist. “Dauntless was chosen as a title because the word encompasses who I have become as a person and as an artist in being bold, fearless, courageous and unapologetically me,” Taylor explains. “It represents coming into who I am and standing up for myself and what I believe in and not being told who to be or having to fit someone else’s mold of who they think I should be.”
Dauntless kicks off on an upbeat, exuberant note with “Turn It Up” – “I need a guitar/ pedal to the metal/ and a fast car” – celebrating life, and the love of music. “Burning Bridges” (which soared to No. 1 on the Canadian Indie charts in October 2020) promotes forward movement, and the willingness to keep going despite any roadblocks. Then, with its laid-back chorus of “put your beers up in the air,” “Sha La La” comes along as an ode to fun, and memorable nights out full of live music, karaoke, and, yes, plenty of beer! The smash hit “Kryptonite” – which yielded a second No. 1 hit on the charts, along with nominations for “Song of the Year,” “Video of the Year,” and “Best New Artist” from the Mississauga Music Awards – is about an addictive relationship that’s wrong even though it feels so right.
Meanwhile, the heartbreaking “Cry” hit No. 2 on the Indie charts, and it captures the healing power of a good cry before you dust yourself off and move on. The shimmering “Drive” goes back to the theme of putting the pedal to the metal, about a revitalizing road trip with your best girlfriends. “On My Own” further encapsulates dauntlessness, in an introspective examination of trusting oneself and going it alone. The album concludes on the aforementioned “My Last Breath,” simultaneously about a life-changing love, and the aching desire for it before it arrives.
With commanding vocals, and ability to resonate, Taylor is an ode to a young Shania, or Trisha Yearwood. For Taylor, singing, writing, and performing were built into her DNA and, by the age of six, the soon-to-be breakout artist was already exhibiting signs of being a musician. Despite her hearing impairment, she found her voice, and eventually trained with the legendary vocal coach to the stars, Bob Garrett (Los Angeles) and Lorraine Lawson (Toronto, ‘The Launch’), and released a debut EP Unbreakable in 2019, before releasing her full debut this year.
Bree also holds philanthropic causes close to her heart. Supporting and bringing awareness to mental health, human equality and poverty, Bree recently kicked off her new concert series ‘Cheers & Beers’ on June 10th, 2022, in support of TenFed and Kids Against Hunger Canada, helping to feed children and families suffering from food insensitivity in Canada and across the globe.
Burna Boy has released “Whiskey”– a hard-hitting mini-documentary that displays gripping visuals of the continued pollution, flooding, and overall negligence in his hometown of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. “Whiskey” also appears as one of the Grammy-winning musicians most poignant songs on his sixth studio album, Love, Damini.
The mini-doc features first-hand accounts from members of the community, giving form to the realities they face including: an inconsolable mother who tearfully recounts the loss of her son due to sickness as a result of the pollution and a lack of medicine, a doctor reiterating the extreme effects of the damage to the oil city — with the water surrounding the city polluted by crude waste, to an old truck driver complaining about the bad roads, which has claimed the lives of people who have no choice but to use boats to be able to cross to the other side.
At an exclusive screening of the mini-doc in London last night, Burna Boy went on to say, “Everything was a lot worse than the way I left it. The air was fully polluted, everything would be black when you wake up, even the cars. It’s really what you see in the documentary. This is real life, everyday life for my people. I feel like we’ll make songs about everything else, so why not make songs about what’s really going on and what’s really affecting the people in real time. That’s what the song ‘Whiskey’ is. I hope it does its job and creates the necessary awareness and some type of change comes from this. If you don’t know, now you know.”
Burna Boy, who frequently partners with philanthropic initiatives, highlights The R.E.A.C.H. (Reach Every Available Communal Household) – a charitable organization based in Nigeria which helps to provide resources to the community that raised the African Giant. All donations to The R.E.A.C.H. go directly to victims of the community as they work to provide aid via food, clean water, household necessities and medicine.
Highlighting specific issues his hometown community is facing, Burna Boy hopes to shed light on other parts of Nigeria & Africa, the Caribbean, and the rest of world that suffers similar environmental issues. A proud Rivers State indigene who has been awarded a Distinguished Service Star (DSSRS), Burna Boy opens himself up to the world to show where he comes from, the part he’s played as an influential member of his society, and where he’s going – first as an individual, and then as an artist. Afterall, his first ever song was made in a tree house built on the pipelines in Port Harcourt.
For more information on The R.E.A.C.H. or to contribute with a donation please visit https://thereach.ng/.
Indie rock titans The Postal Service and Death Cab for Cutie have today announced plans for a landmark 20th anniversary co-headline North American tour. The extraordinary live run will see both iconic groups performing their seminal 2003 albums in full – The Postal Service’s RIAA Platinum-certified Give Up and Death Cab for Cutie’s RIAA Gold-certified breakthrough fourth studio LP Transatlanticism – two classics released within a mere eight months of one another that year.
Benjamin Gibbard, the co-founder of both bands, will pull double duty throughout the tour, performing with The Postal Service – comprised of Gibbard, Jimmy Tamborello, and Jenny Lewis – as well as with Death Cab for Cutie (alongside Nick Harmer, Dave Depper, Zac Rae, and Jason McGerr).
“I know for a fact I will never have a year again like 2003. The Postal Service record came out, Transatlanticism came out. These two records will be on my tombstone, and I’m totally fine with that. I’ve never had a more creatively inspired year.” – Gibbard
The tour was announced this morning via an exclusive trailer on the band’s socials (watch HERE).
The sure to be highly-anticipated run will kick off September 8, 2023 at Cross Insurance Arena in Portland, ME and continue through mid-October, with highlights including shows at New York City’s famed Madison Square Garden, Berkeley, CA’s Greek Theatre, and Los Angeles, CA’s Hollywood Bowl.
Pre-sales begin Wednesday, December 14 at 10 am (local) and continue through Thursday, December 15 at 10 pm (local). Sign-up for early access to tickets here. For the Hollywood Bowl show, American Express® Card Members can purchase tickets before the general public beginning Tuesday, December 13 at 10am PT through Thursday, December 15 at 10pm PT.
The upcoming tour will mark the first live performances from The Postal Service in over a decade, following 2013’s hugely successful 10-year anniversary reunion tour for Give Up – an album which still stands today as Sub Pop’s second highest-selling album in the label’s history, second only to Nirvana’s Bleach. The reunion tour was captured for posterity on a live concert film, Everything Will Change, released in 2014 and subsequently on a live audio album released in 2020 to digital streaming platforms.
Also in 2020, the trio joined forces to support HeadCount’s “Make Your Vote Count” campaign via a star-studded video of “Zoom Auditions” for new band members which featured appearances from fans including Anne Hathaway, Kenny G, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Slash, Huey Lewis, Caroline Polachek, Michelle Zauner, Big Freedia, and J Mascis, to name a few.
Meanwhile, 8x GRAMMY Award-nominees Death Cab for Cutie are currently celebrating the release of their critically acclaimed 10th studio album, Asphalt Meadows. Produced by GRAMMY® Award-winner John Congleton (St. Vincent, Sharon Van Etten, Wallows), the new LP includes the explosive “Roman Candles” and chart-topping “Here to Forever,” the latter of which reached #1 at Alternative radio in October, after spending a record-setting nine weeks atop the AAA airplay chart this summer. The album received tremendous praise from outlets including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Vulture, SPIN, Stereogum, and Pitchfork, who lauded the record as “a late career masterwork… a restoration of their creative momentum when a mere ‘return to form’ would have sufficed.”
Formed in Bellingham, WA in 1997, Death Cab for Cutie immediately entered the ranks of the era’s most definitive bands, thanks in large part to the remarkable power of co-founder, vocalist, guitarist, and lead songwriter Ben Gibbard’s complex, often bittersweet songcraft. The band made their worldwide popular breakthrough with 2003’s RIAA gold certified Transatlanticism, later named by NPR as one of “The Decade’s 50 Most Important Recordings.” Fueled by critical acclaim, an array of high profile soundtrack placements, and such hit singles as “The Sound of Settling” and “Title and Registration,” the album debuted among the upper half of the Billboard 200 – Death Cab for Cutie’s first ever entry on the overall chart. A 10th anniversary edition of Transatlanticism containing previously unheard demos and outtakes arrived in 2013, prompting NPR to write, “For all its ubiquity and imitators, Transatlanticism holds up as an exquisitely produced, largely flawless record in which every song is bound to serve as someone’s favorite.”
2003 also saw Gibbard and Los Angeles, CA-based multi-instrumentalist Jimmy Tamborello (Dntel, Figurine) unite as The Postal Service, a long distance collaboration named for their working method of exchanging tracks via the US Mail. The duo – joined by a number of friends including singer-songwriter Jenny Lewis – proved a phenomenon with the February 2003 release of their one and only studio LP, Give Up, earning worldwide applause and eventual RIAA platinum certification thanks to infectious electro-pop smashes like “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight” (a top 3 sensation on Billboard’s “Hot Dance Singles” chart), “We Will Become Silhouettes (which reached the top 3 on the Canadian Singles Chart), and of course, the magical RIAA gold certified “Such Great Heights.” The album’s stature continued to grow in the years following its original release, ultimately spending 19 non-consecutive weeks at #1 on Billboard’s “Top Electronic Albums” chart. In 2013, The Postal Service reunited to mark the 10th anniversary of Give Up with their biggest headline tour ever, along with top-billed performances at such international festivals as Coachella, Primavera Sound, Lollapalooza, and Sasquatch. In addition, a commemorative 10th anniversary edition of Give Up saw the singular collection expanded with 15 bonus tracks, including two brand new songs, “A Tattered Line of String” and “Turn Around.”
THE POSTAL SERVICE // DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE
SEPTEMBER 2023
8 – Portland, ME – Cross Insurance Arena
9 – Kingston, RI – The Ryan Center
10 – New Haven, CT – Westville Music Bowl
12 – Boston, MA – MGM Music Hall
13 – Boston, MA – MGM Music Hall
14 – Washington, DC – Merriweather Post Pavilion
17 – Detroit, MI – Meadow Brook Amphitheater
20 – New York, NY – Madison Square Garden
21 – Philadelphia, PA – The Mann Center
24 – Minneapolis, MN – Armory
26 – Denver, CO – Mission Ballroom
27 – Denver, CO – Mission Ballroom
OCTOBER 2023
3 – Phoenix, AZ – Arizona Financial Theatre
4 – Las Vegas, NV – The Chelsea Ballroom at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas
7 – Seattle, WA – Climate Pledge Arena
10 – Berkeley, CA – Greek Theatre – UC Berkeley
13 – Los Angeles, CA – Hollywood Bowl
Here’s the recent BBC documentary on the story of the Hacienda nightclub in Manchester, featuring contributions from the likes of Peter Hook, Stephen Morris, Shaun Ryder, Noel Gallagher, Peter Saville, John Robb and others.
A raucous yet detailed look back at the evolution of the music press and the passionate rock and pop journalists who documented the sounds that changed our culture.
Totally Wired charts the coming of age of music publications covering the contemporary bands, trends, and scene. This book offers a history of the journalists who described the wild landscape of the rise of rock and its evolution from the 1950s to the 2000s, through R&B, pop, the Summer of Love, punk, and beyond. Author Paul Gorman chronicles the emergence of trailblazing music magazines in New York, Los Angeles, and London and their transformation into essential reading for anyone who cared about popular culture.
Gorman captures the extraordinary rise of the inkies on the back of rock and roll’s explosion into the postwar American and British youth culture. He recounts the development of individual magazines from their Tin Pan Alley beginnings to Creem, Blender, and Crawdaddy! followed by the foundation of Rolling Stone, NME, Melody Maker, and Sounds―as well as the emergence of dedicated monthlies such as Q, The Face, and Mojo. Evoking the golden age of the music press, the book is illustrated with iconic magazine artwork and archival photography throughout.
Writers such as Charles Shaar Murray, Greil Marcus, Nick Kent, and Tony Parsons not only documented the wild excesses of Led Zeppelin, the Who, and the Clash but also played an integral part in the development of the success of the bands themselves. Painting a complete picture of the scene, Gorman also tackles the entrenched sexism and racism faced by women and people from marginalized backgrounds as they tried to make it in the music industry, whether as musicians or journalists. An incisive and entertaining ride, this volume is perfect for anyone interested in popular culture, magazines, and underground cultural history.
Their story will be told. Daisy Jones and the Six, based on the book of the same name written by Taylor Jenkins Reid, takes the stage March 3, 2023 on Prime Video.
Today Lana Del Rey announces her highly anticipated ninth studio album ‘Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd’ which follows the recent success of previous albums ‘Blue Banisters’ and ‘Chemtrails Over The Country Club’, which were released last year to critical acclaim. Due for release on March 10th, 2023, the pre-order for ‘Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd’ is now live, with CD, cassette and various exclusive vinyl formats available at select retailers and www.lanadelrey.com
Alongside announcement of the new album and on sale pre-order, Lana today releases title track ‘Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd’ written by Lana Del Rey and Mike Hermosa and produced by Lana Del Rey, Jack Antonoff, Drew Erickson and Zach Dawes.
