FRIDAY OCT 25, 2019
Magnapop
Magnapop is an alternative rock band based in Atlanta, Georgia. Formed in 1989, the band has consistently included songwriting duo Linda Hopper as vocalist and Ruthie Morris on guitar. Magnapop first achieved recognition in the Beneluxcountries of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg through the festival circuit and have remained popular in Europe throughout their career. After modest success in the United States in the mid-1990s with the singles "Slowly, Slowly" and "Open the Door" and a series of albums produced by Michael Stipe, Bob Mould, and Geza X, the band went on an extended hiatus due to the dissolution of their record label. They returned with a new rhythm section in 2005 on the Daemon Records release Mouthfeel. The band has continued to perform and record since this reunion and have self-released two more albums. Magnapop's musical style is noted for blending the pop vocals and melodies of Hopper with the aggressive, punk-influenced guitar-playing of Morris and her back-up vocal harmonies.
Magnapop is an alternative rock band based in Atlanta, Georgia. Formed in 1989, the band has consistently included songwriting duo Linda Hopper as vocalist and Ruthie Morris on guitar. Magnapop first achieved recognition in the Beneluxcountries of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg through the festival circuit and have remained popular in Europe throughout their career. After modest success in the United States in the mid-1990s with the singles "Slowly, Slowly" and "Open the Door" and a series of albums produced by Michael Stipe, Bob Mould, and Geza X, the band went on an extended hiatus due to the dissolution of their record label. They returned with a new rhythm section in 2005 on the Daemon Records release Mouthfeel. The band has continued to perform and record since this reunion and have self-released two more albums. Magnapop's musical style is noted for blending the pop vocals and melodies of Hopper with the aggressive, punk-influenced guitar-playing of Morris and her back-up vocal harmonies.
Nikki & the Phantom Callers
Growing up in rural Dadeville, Alabama, Nikki Speake has a specific Southern grit embedded in her soul. More Flannery O’Connor than Margaret Mitchell, there’s a morbid spirit to much of Speake’s writing, and nowhere is that more apparent than Nikki & the Phantom Callers’ debut LP, Everybody’s Going To Hell (But You and Me). The eleven-track collection of boot-stomping alt-country and jangly indie-rock weaves a series of stories exploring a beautiful darkness in stark contrast to their predominantly sunny tonality; a Southern Gothic study of grief soundtracked by country-tinged ‘60s pop. “I am very Southern, I grew up in a traditional Southern Baptist family going to church three times a week,” says Speake. “Those older Southern generations have so much grief surrounding them—even the church services are morbid. I think my vocabulary was formed by that, so it’s just how I think.”
Speake has been living in Atlanta for years now, playing in the garage-rock power trio Midnight Larks and the all-girl psych-rock outfit Shantih Shantih, and performing alongside acts like Shooter Jennings, Lydia Loveless, L.A. Witch, Joshua Hedley, Black Lips, Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires & more prior to forming the Phantom Callers in early 2017. In the short time since their formation, the band—featuring lead vocalist/rhythm guitarist Speake, lead guitarist Aaron Mason, drummer Russell Owens, and Speake’s Shantih Shantih bandmate Anna Kramer on bass and backing vocals—has garnered acclaim from national media outlets including Paste, Wide Open Country, PopMatters, Cowboys & Indians Magazine & more, and in 2018 was named Atlanta’s best country band by Creative Loafing.
Nikki & the Phantom Callers’ new LP was recorded in late 2018 at Maze Studios in Atlanta. To record the album, Speake enlisted Ben Etter (Deerhunter, Cate Le Bon, Hazel English) as lead engineer and brought on Bronson Tew at Dial Back Sound (Drive-By Truckers) to master the record. The result is a crisp, expansive record with as much sonic depth as emotional resonance and an unmistakable Southern rock swagger.
It’s no wonder Everybody’s Going To Hell (But You and Me) drips with authenticity—this is the record Speake has been unconsciously working towards for decades; a raw, macabre expression of Southern experience that blends garage-pop, country and rock & roll into something all its own. “When I started doing open mics twenty years ago, I’d play country songs I wrote and a handful of Springsteen covers,” says Speake. “That country-rock sound has always been what I’ve wanted to make, it just took me a long time to find a group where I could make that happen. In all my other projects I’ve been a supporting player—and I love them—but this one is mine.”
Everybody’s Going To Hell (But You and Me) kicks off with its title track, a garagey barroom shuffle that soundtracks humanity’s descent to the underworld, inspired by a conversation with one of Speake’s patients in her job as a registered dietitian. The revelry in cheating damnation is short lived, though, as “Phantom Caller” finds Speake visited in dreams by the ghosts of those gone before her, begging for salvation that she’s unable to deliver, backed by layers of deceptively upbeat fuzz-pop. Later on the album, “Mamas Should Know,” finds Speake grappling with the death of her mother at a young age, lamenting the lost maternal influence in her formative years as she sings, “If you die before we wake / Don’t leave it all up to us to figure it out alone.”
Elsewhere on the record, “Howl With Me” nods to Speake’s country roots with a spin on the traditional murder-ballad, reflecting on the murderer’s remorse after that fact rather than recounting the specifics of the killing. The album’s centerpiece, “They’ve Never Walked Through Shadows,” wades through the mystery of the afterlife with the foreboding gait of a funeral march and the choral cadence of a gospel hymn, while closer “Fallen Angel,” explores depression, loneliness and the loss of hope atop crunchy guitars and gorgeously hazy backing vocals.
Speake didn’t write this collection of songs with the specific intention of investigating the myriad ways grief and loss manifest themselves throughout life, but the results speak for themselves. Everybody’s Going To Hell (But You and Me) stands not only as a spectacular debut from Nikki & the Phantom Callers, but as a deeply personal reflection on lives passed, loves lost, and a culture fixated on damnation.
Everybody’s Going To Hell (But You and Me) is out April 3rd, 2020.
Growing up in rural Dadeville, Alabama, Nikki Speake has a specific Southern grit embedded in her soul. More Flannery O’Connor than Margaret Mitchell, there’s a morbid spirit to much of Speake’s writing, and nowhere is that more apparent than Nikki & the Phantom Callers’ debut LP, Everybody’s Going To Hell (But You and Me). The eleven-track collection of boot-stomping alt-country and jangly indie-rock weaves a series of stories exploring a beautiful darkness in stark contrast to their predominantly sunny tonality; a Southern Gothic study of grief soundtracked by country-tinged ‘60s pop. “I am very Southern, I grew up in a traditional Southern Baptist family going to church three times a week,” says Speake. “Those older Southern generations have so much grief surrounding them—even the church services are morbid. I think my vocabulary was formed by that, so it’s just how I think.”
Speake has been living in Atlanta for years now, playing in the garage-rock power trio Midnight Larks and the all-girl psych-rock outfit Shantih Shantih, and performing alongside acts like Shooter Jennings, Lydia Loveless, L.A. Witch, Joshua Hedley, Black Lips, Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires & more prior to forming the Phantom Callers in early 2017. In the short time since their formation, the band—featuring lead vocalist/rhythm guitarist Speake, lead guitarist Aaron Mason, drummer Russell Owens, and Speake’s Shantih Shantih bandmate Anna Kramer on bass and backing vocals—has garnered acclaim from national media outlets including Paste, Wide Open Country, PopMatters, Cowboys & Indians Magazine & more, and in 2018 was named Atlanta’s best country band by Creative Loafing.
Nikki & the Phantom Callers’ new LP was recorded in late 2018 at Maze Studios in Atlanta. To record the album, Speake enlisted Ben Etter (Deerhunter, Cate Le Bon, Hazel English) as lead engineer and brought on Bronson Tew at Dial Back Sound (Drive-By Truckers) to master the record. The result is a crisp, expansive record with as much sonic depth as emotional resonance and an unmistakable Southern rock swagger.
It’s no wonder Everybody’s Going To Hell (But You and Me) drips with authenticity—this is the record Speake has been unconsciously working towards for decades; a raw, macabre expression of Southern experience that blends garage-pop, country and rock & roll into something all its own. “When I started doing open mics twenty years ago, I’d play country songs I wrote and a handful of Springsteen covers,” says Speake. “That country-rock sound has always been what I’ve wanted to make, it just took me a long time to find a group where I could make that happen. In all my other projects I’ve been a supporting player—and I love them—but this one is mine.”
Everybody’s Going To Hell (But You and Me) kicks off with its title track, a garagey barroom shuffle that soundtracks humanity’s descent to the underworld, inspired by a conversation with one of Speake’s patients in her job as a registered dietitian. The revelry in cheating damnation is short lived, though, as “Phantom Caller” finds Speake visited in dreams by the ghosts of those gone before her, begging for salvation that she’s unable to deliver, backed by layers of deceptively upbeat fuzz-pop. Later on the album, “Mamas Should Know,” finds Speake grappling with the death of her mother at a young age, lamenting the lost maternal influence in her formative years as she sings, “If you die before we wake / Don’t leave it all up to us to figure it out alone.”
Elsewhere on the record, “Howl With Me” nods to Speake’s country roots with a spin on the traditional murder-ballad, reflecting on the murderer’s remorse after that fact rather than recounting the specifics of the killing. The album’s centerpiece, “They’ve Never Walked Through Shadows,” wades through the mystery of the afterlife with the foreboding gait of a funeral march and the choral cadence of a gospel hymn, while closer “Fallen Angel,” explores depression, loneliness and the loss of hope atop crunchy guitars and gorgeously hazy backing vocals.
Speake didn’t write this collection of songs with the specific intention of investigating the myriad ways grief and loss manifest themselves throughout life, but the results speak for themselves. Everybody’s Going To Hell (But You and Me) stands not only as a spectacular debut from Nikki & the Phantom Callers, but as a deeply personal reflection on lives passed, loves lost, and a culture fixated on damnation.
Everybody’s Going To Hell (But You and Me) is out April 3rd, 2020.
Tiger! Tiger!
"Since 2005 Tiger! Tiger! has become an important figure in Atlanta's underground music scene, working at the cross roads of garage rock, punk and R&B. The group's second full-length, The Kind of Goodnight is a catty and cool collection of retro rock and roll rhythms that dive headlong into the dark side of the tensions that bind and repel the sexes. The album is by turns sultry and frenetic, obsessive and triumphant as vocalist, guitarist and principal songwriter Buffi Aguero cruelly croons away, kicking at the rubble of love in the ruins. Sam Leyja (organ), Susanne Gibboney (bass, vocals), Mario Colangelo (drums) and Shane Pringle (guitar, saxophone, vocals) craft a gritty and careening big beat that wanders into the most menacing parts of the ego and the soul. This is the battle cry of strength, reckoning and psychological vengeance that kicks like a Stiletto to the guts. Each song tells a tale of hurt feelings, deceit and rising above with extreme prejudice. Opening number, "Stand In" is a Velvet Underground inspired ditty that serves as a primer into the simple, powerful plod of the group's pace. And yes, "Garage rock" is the inexorable catch phrase of Tiger! Tiger!'s approach. It is a dominate strain in the group's genetic make-up, which makes sense. Aguero also plays drums for Atlanta's long-standing garage rock legends the Subsonics (who will be featured on a split 7-inch with the Black Lips later this year on Rob's House Records). Songs like "Black Daggers" and "Cheap Imitation" are not only cut from the same cloth as younger ATL siblings the Black Lips, the Carbonas and the Coathangers, the group contains fragments of the same cornerstones upon which new Atlanta is built. Tiger! Tiger! draws power from real life experience, and even though there are more than three chords bounding throughout each song, the impact of it all remains in a direct and uncomplicated channeling of very complicated emotions. Dueling frontwomen Gibboney and Aguero bring the pressure to a fine point - the wrath of not one, but two women scorned has never been so enticing. Goodnight is an exercise in catharsis and sheer triumph of will, but it is so sculpted from so much more than spun-out punk aggression. Pringle's restrained saxophone blasts in "Cheap Imitation" reveal hidden layers in the music that summon an affinity for the artful bend of '70 post-punk and '80s new wave, but it all comes back together in Leyja's long, sustained organ drones and staccato rhythms. "How Much Can You Take" and "Seaside Romance" sidestep the explosive connotations of such punchy and ragged descriptors to follow the course of a slow burn that is no less volatile, and The Kind of Goodnight is white hot."
"Since 2005 Tiger! Tiger! has become an important figure in Atlanta's underground music scene, working at the cross roads of garage rock, punk and R&B. The group's second full-length, The Kind of Goodnight is a catty and cool collection of retro rock and roll rhythms that dive headlong into the dark side of the tensions that bind and repel the sexes. The album is by turns sultry and frenetic, obsessive and triumphant as vocalist, guitarist and principal songwriter Buffi Aguero cruelly croons away, kicking at the rubble of love in the ruins. Sam Leyja (organ), Susanne Gibboney (bass, vocals), Mario Colangelo (drums) and Shane Pringle (guitar, saxophone, vocals) craft a gritty and careening big beat that wanders into the most menacing parts of the ego and the soul. This is the battle cry of strength, reckoning and psychological vengeance that kicks like a Stiletto to the guts. Each song tells a tale of hurt feelings, deceit and rising above with extreme prejudice. Opening number, "Stand In" is a Velvet Underground inspired ditty that serves as a primer into the simple, powerful plod of the group's pace. And yes, "Garage rock" is the inexorable catch phrase of Tiger! Tiger!'s approach. It is a dominate strain in the group's genetic make-up, which makes sense. Aguero also plays drums for Atlanta's long-standing garage rock legends the Subsonics (who will be featured on a split 7-inch with the Black Lips later this year on Rob's House Records). Songs like "Black Daggers" and "Cheap Imitation" are not only cut from the same cloth as younger ATL siblings the Black Lips, the Carbonas and the Coathangers, the group contains fragments of the same cornerstones upon which new Atlanta is built. Tiger! Tiger! draws power from real life experience, and even though there are more than three chords bounding throughout each song, the impact of it all remains in a direct and uncomplicated channeling of very complicated emotions. Dueling frontwomen Gibboney and Aguero bring the pressure to a fine point - the wrath of not one, but two women scorned has never been so enticing. Goodnight is an exercise in catharsis and sheer triumph of will, but it is so sculpted from so much more than spun-out punk aggression. Pringle's restrained saxophone blasts in "Cheap Imitation" reveal hidden layers in the music that summon an affinity for the artful bend of '70 post-punk and '80s new wave, but it all comes back together in Leyja's long, sustained organ drones and staccato rhythms. "How Much Can You Take" and "Seaside Romance" sidestep the explosive connotations of such punchy and ragged descriptors to follow the course of a slow burn that is no less volatile, and The Kind of Goodnight is white hot."
Young Antiques
Young Antiques is a rock n' roll power trio from Atlanta, GA. Spin Magazine calls them "A triumph of ramshackle hooks" and American Songwriter calls them "A deep-south cross between Tom Petty and Elvis Costello."
Blake Rainey's literate-punk songwriting carries through on each and every album, and the propulsive band with bassist Blake Parris and drummer John Speaks reunited makes their latest album Another Risk of the Heart (Southern Lovers Recording Co.) their best yet, and features Chris Lopez (Rock*A*Teens), Kelly Hogan (Neko Case, Decemberists), and Tom Cheshire (West End Motel, ANDPW). They are currently in the studio working on a new album for 2022.
Young Antiques is a rock n' roll power trio from Atlanta, GA. Spin Magazine calls them "A triumph of ramshackle hooks" and American Songwriter calls them "A deep-south cross between Tom Petty and Elvis Costello."
Blake Rainey's literate-punk songwriting carries through on each and every album, and the propulsive band with bassist Blake Parris and drummer John Speaks reunited makes their latest album Another Risk of the Heart (Southern Lovers Recording Co.) their best yet, and features Chris Lopez (Rock*A*Teens), Kelly Hogan (Neko Case, Decemberists), and Tom Cheshire (West End Motel, ANDPW). They are currently in the studio working on a new album for 2022.