Jack White has called upon major labels to build their own vinyl record pressing plants in light of recent supply chain issues and manufacturing bottlenecks.
“At least once a week, without fail, someone will reach out asking me to help expedite their vinyl record manufacturing. It’s a natural thought… knowing that I own a pressing plant and have my own record label, “if anyone could help, it’s this guy!”
With industry-wide turnaround times for vinyl currently leaning towards the length of a human pregnancy, it’s obvious, in a world so contingent on being of-the-moment and timed just right (a single, an album, a tour etc.), these timelines are the killers of momentum, soul, artistic expression, and far too often, livelihoods.
I’ve done everything within my power to help. Third Man Records began a concentrated focus on vinyl in 2009 with hopes of exposing its wider potential to the farthest reaches of the music industry. In 2017 I furthered my commitment by opening Third Man Pressing… a plant which has always been open to anyone and everyone who walks in the door and wants to press a record, from bedroom hip hop artists to field recording documentarians. And in the last year, I’ve doubled down and invested in even more record presses, more employees to run them, and more shifts to try and accommodate the insane growing demand for vinyl product.
There are people who will say – isn’t this good for Third Man? More demand than you can handle? To which I say, even though Third Man benefits in the short term, in the long term it ultimately hurts everyone involved in the vinyl ecosystem given the bottlenecks and delays. Something needs to be done.
While the entirety of vinyl investment and framework in the past decade has originated from independent companies and investors, the bigger problems we now see require major solutions.
In this spirit, I turn to our collegial big brothers in the music world, Sony, Universal, and Warner, and politely implore them to help alleviate this unfortunate backlog and start dedicating resources to build pressing plants themselves.
To be clear, the issue is not big labels versus small labels, it’s not independent versus mainstream, it’s not even punk versus pop. The issue is, simply, we have ALL created an environment where the unprecedented demand for vinyl records cannot keep up with the rudimentary supply of them.
Across the globe, there are now a handful of NEW companies, building both automated and manual vinyl presses. It’s easier to purchase a vinyl press now than it has been in four decades. And with more ancillary innovators popping up every day helping advance every facet of the industry, this isn’t a difficult decision to make. It’s a no-brainer.
We’re all on the same team with the same goals. I truly believe that with a good faith investment in the infrastructure that got us here, we can continue on this upward trajectory and further inspire the worlds around us. Now is the time. Thank you.
Soaring with sentiments of hope, love, longing, and loss, multi-Platinum selling, and JUNO Award-winning artist Barney Bentall plots a sonic constellation of Americana to traditional Folk with the upcoming release of his new album, Cosmic Dreamer.
Set for release April 22, 2022 via True North Records, the album includes the title track, “Cosmic Dreamer” — available now.
With special guests Ruth Moody, Valentino Trapani, and Adrian Dolan joining on three songs, the 11-track LP features nine new all-originals from the prolific artist alongside two covers — Bob Dylan’s “You Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” and Gordon Lightfoot’s “Shadows.”
Cosmic Dreamer marks the seventh solo release for Bentall and now numbers over 20 overall when including his JUNO Award-winning band, The Legendary Hearts, and his other releases with The High Bar Gang, Bentall Taylor Ulrich and The Cariboo Express.
“I wanted to experiment with other things and everybody, bless their hearts, was very good about it,” he shared in an interview of his ever-broadening range of roots, country, bluegrass — and even instrumental, as heard in his recent album RanchWriters, written and released with long-time friend, Spirit of the West’s Geoffrey Kelly. “It’s important for me to write songs and try different music styles. Why limit myself? To me, it’s just good music.”
COVID-19 caused Bentall to spend less time with other songwriters and musicians than he would have in the past, so Cosmic Dreamer has fewer co-writes than previous efforts.
Bentall co-produced the album with multi-instrumentalist Dolan, and much of it was recorded and mixed at Dolan’s Track + Trestle studio in Ladysmith, B.C. The album-closing “Cody Road” was recorded by The Drifter & The Preacher producer John Raham at Vancouver’s Afterlife Studios.
Bentall wrote Cosmic Dreamer’s title track at Yellowpoint Lodge on Vancouver Island in late February 2020 while he was taking a course at Ladysmith Marine Institute to receive a new certification to allow him to continue to drive rigid-hulled inflatable Zodiac boats on Arctic expeditions for a travel company called Adventure Canada.
Cosmic Dreamer is available April 22, 2022 via True North Records.
Cosmic Dreamer Tracklisting
“Cosmic Dreamer”
“Whiskey Jack (Home)”
“Why Are You So Sad”
“Soul Sister”
“You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (feat. Valentino Trapani)”
“Oh Foolish Me”
“Not Standing Up To You”
“Shadows”
“No Good Time To Go”
“Potter’s Wheel (feat. Ruth Moody)”
“Cody Road”
Stranger Than Kindness: The Nick Cave Exhibition opens Friday, April 8 at the Galerie de la Maison du Festival in Montreal. Tickets are now available via evenko.ca
This is the North American premiere of the exhibition, which was previously presented at The Black Diamond, Copenhagen, Denmark. There are currently no plans for the exhibition to travel to the USA.
The exhibition was met with acclaim from press and visitors alike when it opened in Copenhagen in March 2020.
Stranger Than Kindness: The Nick Cave Exhibition is an unprecedented look into the creative world of musician, storyteller and cultural icon Nick Cave. With more than 300 objects collected or created by Nick Cave through six decades of his creative and private life brought together in large-scale installations, the exhibition is an artwork in itself. Created for The Black Diamond of The Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen, and with Cave as a co-curator and co-designer, the exhibition is an unorthodox fusion of biography, autobiography and fiction, asking what shapes our lives and makes us who we are.
Nick Cave’s body of work encompasses a wide range of media and modes of expression, with narrative forms at its heart. Stranger Than Kindness: The Nick Cave Exhibition invites visitors to follow Cave’s development as an artist – and to gain insight into the overarching themes of his work, his working methods and the many sources of inspiration underpinning it all. Behind each work is an equally fascinating artistic process not originally intended for public view; the exhibition opens up the innermost parts of Cave’s creative universe and offers a story of its own.
Stranger Than Kindness covers the journey from Cave’s childhood in 1960s Wangaratta, Australia, through the chaotic years with his first bands, The Boys Next Door and The Birthday Party, and his relocation to Berlin and then London. Central is the ever-evolving collaboration in Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, from the band’s inception in Cave’s most obsessive period in Berlin, up to their latest release Ghosteen (2019), widely acknowledged as their best work ever. The exhibition reveals how Nick Cave’s life, music, archives and fictions continue to intertwine, inform and inspire each other.
Stranger Than Kindness has been designed in collaboration with Nick Cave to create a series of immersive installations which allow visitors to inhabit the thoughts and creative process of an artist. It is a tangible, physical narrative, in which the space and exhibition design become an extension of the many stories contained within Cave’s life and writings.
“ When the Royal Danish Library contacted me with the idea of a “Nick Cave Exhibition” I was reluctant to get involved. I am not nostalgic by nature and I had no time for a trip down Memory Lane. But the team at the library were clearly serious people with a wonderful infectious energy and they drew me in! We created an exhibition that feels unprecedented in its audacious reach, its feet rooted in the past while extending into the uncertain future. In the end we were able to put together an exhibition of extraordinary detail that commented on the fragile and vulnerable nature of identity. I am so proud to be a part of this unique and unorthodox exhibition — a shattered history we called Stranger Than Kindness,” says Cave.
Stranger Than Kindness vibrates between the voice of the curators and the voice of the artist. Cave working closely with the curators has resulted in an original take on the biographical exhibition, allowing a new experience with the material, the objects, and the life and stories of Nick Cave. A merge of biography, autobiography and fiction placed in a spatial narrative – and an invitation into an artist’s mythical universe of creation.
Together with his long-time musical collaborator, Warren Ellis, Cave has also composed and recorded an 800 square meter (approx 8,600 square feet) soundscape that both supports and contrasts the physical narrative across the eight rooms of the exhibition.
The exhibition also contains two installations created with artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, who wrote and directed the 2014 Bafta-nominated Nick Cave feature film 20,000 Days on Earth.
Nick Cave’s archives are bountiful and diverse: drafts, original artwork, handwritten lyrics, diaries, photographs, videos, found objects and much more. Rich, obsessive and unorthodox they are a vibrant, inexhaustible source of exploration of his work. This is the wellspring of Nick Cave’s lyrics and their teeming world of imaginative imagery and vivid characters. Delving deep into this archive is not just an act of retrospection, it is also a journey through Cave’s history and creative processes.
For Cave there is a close connection between the visual and his narratives. Pictures made from blood and hair, glue and found objects – such as pornographic photographs, religious prayer cards, and kitsch lenticulars – were often the springboards for the songs themselves.
“ What you see in this exhibition lives in the intricate world constructed around the song or book or script or score. It is the material that gives birth to and nourishes this official work. There is an enormous amount of this peripheral stuff – drawings, maps, lists, doodles, photographs, paintings, collages, scribblings and drafts – which are the secret and unformed property of the artist. These are not to be seen as artworks so much as the wild-eyed and compulsive superstructure that bears the song or book or script or score along. They are a support system of manic tangential information,” says Cave.
The exhibition is accompanied by the book, Stranger Than Kindness, a Sunday Times bestseller published in March 2020. The book was developed and curated by Nick Cave in collaboration with Christina Back and features full colour reproductions of original artwork, handwritten lyrics, photographs and collected personal artefacts along with commentary and meditations from Nick Cave, Janine Barrand and a substantial essay by the acclaimed American writer Darcey Steinke
Step right up: there’s been an “Attack of the 50ft Woman” at San Francisco/Toronto-based Douglas Von Irvin’s Carnival, and admission to show is just a stream away, thanks to their new dizzying-garage rock of a single.
Douglas Von Irvin’s Carnival (DVIC) are back with their latest drop, and the upbeat banger is everything you’d expect from the monster garage-pop duo of the mysterious — but friendly — Von Irvin and his constant counterpart and ‘spiritual advisor,’ Dave “Dr. Prycenstein” Pryce.
The collaborative musical partnership making up the foundation of DVIC is a fusion of eclecticism in sound inspiration, horror movies, and brilliant escapism that leaves the listener in both wonderment, and want of more. Their earliest beginnings found them on a dimly lit stage in Vegas, alongside Paul Stanley, and their instant chemistry brought Von Irvin and Prycenstein to the doors of Producer & Drummer Matt Starr (Ace Frehley, Mr. Big). Together, DVIC, with Starr, masterminded an EP of five singles throughout 2020-2021.
Back with “Attack of the 50ft Woman,” Von Irvin recalls his collaborators Dr. Prycenstein, Matt Starr and he “decided to continue writing and recording remotely just like everyone else” over the past two years.
“We started a handful of songs, and then Dr. Prycenstein sent me one of the most beautiful melodies on a guitar I’ve heard in a long time with an arrangement,” he adds.
That track became the soundscape for “Attack” — a tune inspired by Von Irvin’s own real-life run-in with a “red-faced, screaming, angry woman” he was challenged by in online group therapy.
“The Zoom situation reminded me of some crazy sci-fi movie where someone on earth tried to calm down a crazed astronaut that has gone mad over a radio, but can’t because the distance of space is in the way,” Von Irvin explains. “‘Attack of the 50ft Woman’ was a 50’s movie that featured a couple with the problem of their size difference, as the space in their way to stay married.”
His aggressive lyrics juxtaposed with the bed of Dr. Prycenstein’s arrangement of riffs, hooks and melodies produces a beauty of a track; one that aches with pain in yearning, but sonically optimistic and upbeat. Von Irvin says “Attack of the 50ft Woman” would have remained a torch song, until Dr. Prycenstein’s contribution. “I felt melancholy and at peace writing lyrics about how peaceful and tender it can be to surrender and let go of a love that’s not working for both lovers.”
Following the track’s debut in February, Douglas Von Irvin’s Carnival plan to bring the party to England for a string of acoustic sessions and radio appearances. And they’re giving each of us tickets to the carnival to see the sights, hear the sounds and marvel at the “Attack of the 50ft Woman” along the way.
Carlo Capobianco is “Sleeping With The Enemy” with the release of new synth-infused electro-pop track.
Hot on the heels of the sultry love affair that was recent single, “Pray To You,” the Canadian singer-songwriter continues to push the boundaries with his unapologetically sexy flair for dance tunes — this time an imploring request for release of a partner who is unequivocally wrong for him.
“‘Sleeping With The Enemy’, if even more so than my last single ‘Pray To You’, is what I believe to be the epitome of my album,” says Capobianco. “Sonically, it is like a dark dream or a Tim Burton story. I wanted to make sure that the feeling of unknowingly, or knowingly, loving something so deeply — can be as euphoric as it can be blinding.”
Capobianco’s alluring vocals carry the track through its spell-binding theme of lust and romance, utilizing tantalizing melodies over his flair for 80s new-wave. A modern take on an age-old theme, “Sleeping With The Enemy” accepts as it begs; pleads as it welcomes.
The songwriter shines in his visual component to telling the story… Capobianco’s stories come to life in his music videos; his Bowie-esque androgyny fused with his Prince-like allure is a new-age take while nodding to the pop/glam rock stars of the past. “We shot the music video at the beautiful Marriagi Hotel in the Exchange District in Winnipeg,” he reveals. “That gorgeous hotel has several themed suites, and we chose Rome. The video was directed and produced by Leigh Lugosi, a new friend and wonderful creative partner. The concept and idea came kind of naturally, and I thought that filming it in a hotel was kind of ironic. Releasing it on Valentine’s Day was even funnier to me.”
Capobianco’s debut EP Pray To You is set to be released in the spring of 2022, and includes “Sleeping With The Enemy” and the title track, “Pray To You”. The seven-song strong album has been a passion project of the artist. “I am glad to say that the record is finished, and I can’t wait to get it out there into the world, as the story really does connect fully when listened from top to bottom,” he says.
Whether tangled in your own tryst of love and need, secretly hoping to find yourself in a myriad of desires versus laying in want, Capobianco’s track is a testament to an experience we’ve all been messily involved in. It’s an act of treason to ourselves to lay intimate with the wrong person — but doesn’t it feel too damn good to say “yes” even if you should be saying “no”?
Carlo Capobianco may be “Sleeping With The Enemy,” but it’s better than sleeping alone.
December 24, 1967: Before George Carlin outwardly embraced his inner foul mouth, and before he decided to grow a beard and wear his hair down to there, he did characters, including Al Sleet, the Hippy-Dippy Weatherman. He was on Ed Sullivan 11 times from 1967 until the show’s wrapup in 1971.
Three months earlier, The Doors got banned from the show for Jim Morrison singing, “Girl, we couldn’t get much higher.” But George could say, “Mexican high” on a Christmas Eve, and still get invited back.
The search for contentment and personal freedom is often a lifelong journey that can take us to many different places along the way. Blues/Rock “Woman of the World” Caroline Cotto has lived that journey and shows us the map with her smoldering new single “A Momma To Cry To.”
The drive to find herself and develop her artistry led the New Orleans-based guitarist/vocalist and songwriter from New York to Paris to London and finally, to NOLA to signal her arrival as an artist and woman who has discovered through all her travels that she’s always carried everything she needs within herself.
“‘A Momma To Cry To’ describes a young woman on the journey to her spiritual awakening,” says Cotto. “The song’s message is about forging your own path and moving forward despite one’s past.”
Laden with feverish longing, “A Momma To Cry To” is a slow-burn ballad in 6/8 time featuring Cotto’s soulful, at times mournful, vocals over tremolo guitar arpeggios, a rich rhythm section and a few sonic surprises and nods to Cotto’s diverse influences.
“It started off as a country song,” she notes. “Then, it developed into a beautiful, atmospheric world reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s album, ‘The Dark Side of the Moon,’ with touches of glockenspiel à la Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born to Run.’”
Those intriguing touches she includes in her blues has helped Cotto’s music to be featured on high profile radio shows such as “Little Steven’s Underground Garage” and Genya Ravan’s “Goldie’s Garage”.
Forging her own path is something Cotto has done all her life. A lover of literature and poetry from a very early age, she became a published poet before she was 12-years-old. Then, words were not enough and Cotto looked for a vehicle for them in music. She started learning guitar and became obsessed with it, performing at local open mics. She then went on to study at Connecticut College and New York University, performing in East Village clubs like the famous Sidewalk Café.
Cotto still longed to find her voice and more artistic opportunities elsewhere. Then, just after her 22nd birthday, she bravely left New York for Europe, settling in Paris and then London to soak up their unique inspiration, growth lessons and opportunities to perform. All these experiences have helped fuel the creation of her music since, including “A Momma To Cry To”.
“I moved to Paris to find my freedom and be inspired by my literary heroes such as Rimbaud and Baudelaire,” recalls Cotto. “Then, life took me to London where I played in blues clubs. A repeating lyric in the song is, ‘Where is my home?’ My home has been in many cities, but ultimately the greatest home I discovered was within myself.”
With “A Momma To Cry To” and her raucous and self-assured previous single “Cherry Red”, that hard-earned maturity and confidence in herself and her artistry shows up all over Caroline Cotto’s music. It’s clear that she’s an artist who’s arrived at the perfect place to give herself permission to launch.
“‘A Momma To Cry To’ is about the power of a woman aware of her circumstance but rising above it in all her glory. She enters the realm of her divine path full of happiness, peace and is free.”
Like ebbing waves ready to get lost in, Indie pop-rockers SuperTonic roll out their latest single in “Wide Awake,” the latest to arrive from their recent LP, Time to Repair.
Featuring Big Sugar’s Gordie Johnson, “Wide Awake” is an ethereal, indie-rock uprising that mellows out the listener while enticing them to stay and enjoy.
The complementing video for the song features SuperTonic co-fronts Jay Stiles and David Pulkingham in a room of candles as their combined vox soothes and calms over the melodies; the listener is dared to identify with the lyrics, the opening nearly melancholic, as it fades into beautiful optimism.
First forming SuperTonic during the preliminary onset of the pandemic in March of 2020, Stiles and Pulkingham wrote and recorded the 10-song-strong LP Time to Repair in the Spring of that year.
Soon, they fleshed out the group with Alan Eckert (drums), Gordie Johnson (bass, vocals), and Frank Deresti (bass); Johnson would go on to mix the album, while Howie Wienberg in Los Angeles mastered.
Based between Austin and Collingwood, ON, Jay Stiles has made himself known as the leading go-to for his impressive talents and musicianship. Having worked with Austin mainstays like Black Pumas and Shinyribs, plus Ontario songwriting giants Big Sugar and Pat Robitaille, Stiles specializes in vintage keyboards, including Hammond organ, Wurlitzer electric piano, clavinet, and Rhodes.
David Pulkingham is a Texas-native and music community heavy-weight, having spent 25 years as a guitarist, singer/songwriter, producer, and teacher in Austin. With two instrumental albums to his credit, he currently tours with Patty Griffin and has played with her for the past 8 years. He co-wrote two songs on her recent Grammy winning eponymous album. In addition to his extensive touring work with Alejandro Escovedo, Carrie Rodriguez, and Sara Watkins, David has performed with both the Lampedusa and Lantern tours to benefit refugee services. On these performances he served as an accompanist for the likes of Robert Plant, EmmyLou Harris, Steve Earle, Joan Baez, Jackson Browne, Buddy Miller, Lucinda Williams, and Lila Downs.
Canadian radio personality Jeff Woods recently shared of SuperTonic and the release, noting “If there’s any solace to be found in isolation, it’s best spent in the company of music. And if one can be judged by the company they keep, this is an album that makes good friends.
“And so you’re invited to listen,” he continued. “And you’ll want to listen again. And when we’re all back to being social butterflies and out of the house and perhaps wide awake under the lavender moon, there’s a good chance when we slow down and spend the time once more, within the depth and richness of this new album, we’ll be glad we did.”
And therein lies the charm that is Time to Repair and its heady array of offerings. Where SuperTonic shine is their ability to push forward, then hold restraint — their eloquent musicianship taking the reign on the track. The delicate guitar flows neatly alongside the organ, the percussion rushing like an ocean tide — gently rocking the song in transcendent waves.
It’s easy to get lost in the tide of “Wide Awake”… And when you breach the shore, you find yourself diving back in all over again.
Halifax, NS-based veteran troubadour Steve Poltz has released his new album, Stardust & Satellites — available now via Red House Records.
Produced by Oliver Wood and Jano Rix of The Wood Brothers, Stardust & Satellites is Poltz’s 14th solo album, and comprises another exuberant, thoughtful batch of songs that celebrate life in all of its stages — including his effervescent new single, “Can O’ Pop.” The high-spirited, syncopated track is joined by an official animated video directed by Boston-based artist/animator Duncan Hatch (Galactic, American Authors). In its premiere of the video, Rolling Stone Country called the song “a delicious delivery reminiscent of ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues.”
Stardust & Satellites also includes the acclaimed singles “Conveyor Belt” and “Miles In My Heart.” Hailed by American Songwriter for “his unhinged live performances, incredible way with a comedic lyric and ability to spin a ripping tale,” Poltz is marking the album’s release with a typically busy live schedule — including seven upcoming dates in Ontario this April 2022.
// Stardust & Satellites Tracklist:
“Wrong Town”
“Conveyor Belt”
“Can O’ Pop”
“Frenemy”
“It’s Baseball Season”
“Up With People”
“Lord and Savior”
“Let’s Stay Together”
“Miles In My Heart”
“Stardust and Satellites”
