“Mac DeMarco — fresh off his annual Christmas cover — will kick off 2023 with his first new album in four years, Five Easy Hot Dogs. The instrumental album will arrive on Jan. 20 on digital/CD, while a vinyl drop is scheduled for May 12 via Mac’s Record Label.”
“King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard released five studio albums this year, encouraged fan bootlegging and didn’t rely on TikTok”
“Certainly, this is one of their loosest, most sprawling records, with almost every track exceeding seven minutes; on the other hand, even the most outré odysseys are less a product of improvisation than intricate arrangement. When the Afrobeat-steeped “Ice V” and the dizzying 13-minute showstopper “Hell’s Itch” settle into their fleet-footed grooves and start introducing new ideas every 16 bars, the effect is less like a band showing off their chops and more like rotating MCs chiming in with a few rhymes on a posse cut. And where past Gizzard epics have embraced a racetrack construction, whipping in and out of recurring motifs at regular intervals, the mischievous “Magma” is built more like a spiral staircase, its guitar accents and frisky rhythms swirling skyward en route to the cataclysmic, wah-wah-splattered finale…”
“As is widely known, I have the correct music taste,” Ezra Furman says, tongue perhaps in cheek, in presenting us with her list of favorite music of 2022. “Other people are in error. For example, the number one album of 2022 seems to be something called Mind-Nights by Tailor Swift. The most talked-about artist of the year is Conye West, who very clearly said ‘slavery was a choice’ in 2018, giving decent people reason to ignore him forever, and yet he is still selling lots of records and commanding the public eye. Meanwhile the transgender rock’n’roll artists creating the great classics of our era (Alex Walton, Asher White, Harmony’s Cuddle Party) go mostly unheard and unheralded.”
“The Mosswood Meltdown returns to Oakland’s Mosswood Park on July 1 & 2. They’ve announced the initial lineup, which is headlined by Le Tigre, and making it even more electroclash are their old friends Gravy Train!!! (featuring Seth “Hunx” Bogart) who are reuniting for their only 2022/2023 show. The initial lineup also includes rare performances by Tina & The Total Babes, The Rondelles, and Quintron & Miss Pussycat, with more to be announced soon”
“The CIA started out as a duo, Denée & Ty Segall, but are now a trio with regular Ty collaborator Emmett Kelly joining for second album Surgery Channel which is out January 20 via In the Red. They’ve just shared a new song from the record, “Inhale Exhale” which is a jagged blade of skronky post-punk. Listen to that below”
“In October, SXSW 2023 (taking place this year from March 13-18) announced its initial wave of performers. Now, the Austin fest’s music portion has shared another giant round of performers (301, to be exact), including …. the recently reunited Be Your Own Pet, OSEES…”
“Check out both Top 20s below and head to Rough Trade US and Rough Trade UK for their full Top 100s”
SXSW has announced 301 more artists for its 2023 edition which goes down March 13-18, 2023 in Austin. Additions include The Zombies, OSEES, Be Your Own Pet, Catbite, The Lemon Twigs, Warmduscher, Palehound, Party Dozen, We Are The Union, JER, Kill Lincoln, Cheekface, Enumclaw, Adwaith, Obongjayar, Aoife Nessa Frances, Thor & Friends, Chickasaw Mudd Puppies, Death Valley Girls, Dream Wife, Fake Fruit, Gay Meat, July Talk , Girl Scout, Jessica Winter, Patrick Holland, THICK, Bella White, Garrett T. Capps & NASA Country, Mariel Buckley, Pendant, Snooper, and more.
“OSEES have shared a video for “Scum Show” from this year’s very punk A Foul Form. Directed by Malo Sutra Fish on a Super 8 camera with hand processing and animation by l’Etna Collective Lab, the video is as raw and visceral as the song itself. You can watch that below.
The band have also shared the video of their recent KEXP session which has John Dwyer and crew blazing through tracks off the new album — watch that below as well”
“Opening with the punk-blues intensity of “Living Under a Rock,” the band put forth an immediate wave of energy that set the tone for everything that would follow. As one might expect, much of the set focused on Rapscallion. “Virgin Criminal” and “The Royal Vagabond” each tapped into the band’s droning jangle pop with the latter seeing Ambrose Kenny-Smith bust out his harmonica for a solo finale”
“At age 35, Segall has released more records than most artists do in a lifetime. He has 14 studio albums to his name, not including the many side projects he’s a part of. 2012’s Slaughterhouse is a wildly noisy rock ‘n’ roll affair, while the next year’s Sleeper has him strumming an acoustic guitar. Some of the loudest music Segall has released has been with the band Fuzz, which has him behind the drum kit, the instrument he learnt before guitar.”
“Furman, the artist hailing from Chicago, Illinois, has become defined by her directness. Her music tackles queerness and transness, as well as notions of young romance and mental health, often from the perspective of ripe anger and frustration”
Melbourne’s 60’s tinged psych-rock punks The Murlocs brought their outrageous live show to euphoric crowds at LEVITATION festival last weekend and will perform at Red Rocks Amphitheatre tomorrow alongside King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard with whom they share several band members. In celebration of their national headlining fall tour kicking off a week from today, the band has unleashed the “Living Under a Rock” (Live at the Forum) video. The electrifying video gives fans and critics an early taste of their explosive live performance.
“Melbourne’s 60’s tinged Psych-Rock outfit The Murlocs recently played at Levitation and will perform at Red Rocks Amphitheatre today alongside King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard with whom they share several band members. In celebration of their national headlining Fall tour kicking off soon, the band has unleashed the “Living Under a Rock” (Live at the Forum) video”
“Australian-psych rockers The Murlocs have steadily accrued a dedicated following over the past decade and have largely stepped out of obscurity and into the indie spotlight. With six studio albums and a rigorous touring schedule – including tours with fellow Melburnians King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – Uncle Murl are about to embark on a headlining U.S. tour. They glimmer on stage and riff around gloriously. We chatted with the Murlocs’ lead vocalist, harmonica player, percussionist, keyboardist, guitarist, and all around mastermind, Ambrose Kenny-Smith, before they hit the road”
“Over the last thirty years, Kathleen Hanna has been at the forefront of punk and politics. From pioneering the genre of riot grrrl with Bikini Kill to melding third-wave feminism with electro-pop in Le Tigre, Hanna’s music has always rallied against the norms of the day. But despite the music’s specificity, many of the messages still feel frustratingly vital. Chatting with Maps ahead of Bikini Kill’s 2023 Australian tour, Hanna discusses her frustration with the band’s relevance: “I wish that this band had no business being on a stage again” she tells Fee, “the thing that’s really upsetting is that [we’re] still relevant”
“Australian psych-rock band, The Murlocs will perform at Red Rocks Amphitheatre tomorrow alongside King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard with whom they share several band members. In celebration of their national headlining fall tour kicking off a week from today, the band has unleashed the “Living Under a Rock” (Live at the Forum) video. Frontman Ambrose Kenny-Smith shares, “Some people live a sheltered life by choice and some people are born into it. ‘Rapscallion’ has had enough of living under a rock. It’s time for a fresh start.”
“Fresh off of performaning at LEVITATION in Austin and with a show at Red Rocks Amphitheater with King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard (with whom they share several members) tonight, 60s psych twinged punk band, The Murlocs, are kicking off their headlining North American tour with a bang and bringing their energetic and outrageous live show on the road, heading to Philadelphia on 11/7 and criss crossing the continent over the next three weeks”
“King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, the pretty-much-every-genre rock band from Australia, boarded a tour bus in Montreal at 2 a.m. one night this month and arrived in Brooklyn nine hours later. No gig until the following night, in Queens: a rare day off. “I passed out for an hour at the hotel, grabbed a chicken burrito, and here we are,” Ambrose Kenny-Smith, one of the band’s singers and multi-instrumentalists, said that afternoon. “Here” was a skate park under the Kosciuszko Bridge, on the Brooklyn side of Newtown Creek. “On off days, we try to go for a skate,” he said. “It keeps the mental health in check.””
“The Melbourne-based band has put out five studio albums, but their latest is perhaps the most impressive both in music and creativity. Rapscallion, which was released on September 16th on ATO Records, is a 12-track coming-of-age novel in album form. It depicts a wildly squalid odyssey featuring various peculiar characters, partly inspired by frontman Ambrose Kenny-Smith’s own adolescence as a nomadic skate kid. The band self-produced the album at their home studios during the pandemic which helped maintain their DIY approach while applying darker, more primitive themes to their music. Kenny-Smith said that he hopes “when people hear the album they really dig deep into the world of the story we’ve created, and it gives them that same sensation of traveling into the unknown.”
“King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard have shared their thoughts on their freshly-dropped album ‘Changes’, saying their 23rd studio effort is “the most complex we’ve ever done”
“The Melbourne band, one of the most formidable live acts in the world, also somehow finds time to release more albums than almost anyone, with an admirable degree of quality control. This month they’ve already released two albums, the Can-inspired cut-and-paste exercise Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms And Lava (for which they jammed their way into songs in the studio and edited them together afterwards) and the motorik rave-up Laminated Denim (comprising two 15-minute songs, each one written at 120 bpm to mimic the pulse of a ticking clock). Today they’re back with the last album of this October outpouring”
“The band’s North American tour is a breathtaking live comeback for them, even by Gizz standards. In just over a month, they’ll play a headline set at Desert Daze; four marathon three-hour sets, three of them at the picturesque Red Rocks amphitheatre; and a stadium show in New York supported by Black Midi, Leah Senior and Jonathan Toubin”
From humble beginnings as a goofily named, “hey, why not?” college project in Australia to releasing 23 different genre-jumping albums since 2009, King Gizzard has suddenly become one of the most talked-about bands in rock, seized upon by jam band-loving Gen Z stoners, Metallica and Tool devotees jonesing for like-minded heavy riffage, suburban dads still holding a candle for AC/DC and Pink Floyd, and Discogs-loving record nerds perpetually in search of the next great buzz. At a time when many established artists can’t make the economics work to tour at all and many listeners cling to the notion that “rock is dead,” there’s something quite extraordinary about what King Gizzard is doing
“John Dwyer and the rest of the OSEES are in Austin this weekend, playing all four nights of Levitation fest, and have holiday shows in NYC in December (Brooklyn Made on 12/16 & 12/17). After that they’ll head to Australia in February for six shows”
“Having already toured with Freedom Band earlier this year, Ty Segall will begin his solo acoustic tour on November 4 in Portland. The first part of the tour is with Emmett Kelly, while East Coast shows — including Brooklyn’s Music Hall of Williamsburg on November 15 — are with Charles Moothart. He’ll head to Australia and New Zealand in the new year”
“The discography of Australian sonic explorers King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard is littered with grand conceptual flourishes, ambitious schemes and missions often seemingly impossible. Be they reinventing the electric guitar to explore the outer reaches of Middle Eastern psychedelia, soundtracking climate change nightmares with blood-flecked thrash-metal, finding new possibilities within archaic synthesisers or composing the world’s first ever infinitely looping psych-prog mobius strip, the impossible seems something the Gizzards eat for breakfast”
“The Aussie rock explorationists recently dropped ‘Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava,’ and have two more releases planned within a month. What binds them beyond mere prolificacy is King Gizzard’s infectious curiosity and creativity”
While songs like “Fake French” and “Well Well Well” glide between rap and post-punk influences, Hanna’s lyrics on “FYR.” feel ever more prescient in a post- Roe v. Wade America. In one of the cheekier references to the film Psycho, Hannah sings: “One step forward, five steps back/ One cool record in the year of rock-rap/ Yeah we got all the power/ getting stabbed in the shower/ And we got equal rights on ladies’ night”
“In All of Us Flames, Ezra Furman pens a record for the apocalypse, but it’s not at all hopeless. This apparent contradiction becomes slightly less mysterious when you consider the circumstances in which the album was made. All of Us Flames was written almost entirely during lockdown, when Furman was raising a young child and beginning to embrace her identity as a trans woman. The result is a powerful meditation on finding community in the face of solitude, with melodies that are at once morose and euphoric, all anchored by Furman’s silvery vocals. Her unique brand of intellectual but deeply-felt art-rock has won her devout fans, including comedy legend Sarah Silverman, who called Furman to chat about Judaism, baby jokes, and the overlap between comedy and music.”
