Today, King Tuff has shared another new song off his forthcoming album, The Other [pre-order here], out April 13th via Sub Pop Records. “Raindrop Blue,” oozing with soulful bass lines and pulsating saxophone melodies, continues Kyle Thomas’s new artistic vision as King Tuff. You’re listening to the song here now via the Emmanuelle Pickett-directed visuals above. Pre-order for the album is available now.
Speaking about “Raindrop Blue,” Thomas lays out its relevance to the greater story of the album and its relationship to the previously-released song ”The Other”:
“…I took the hand of the Other…you fell onto my fingers like velvet to the touch…
Is Raindrop Blue the lost forgotten lover? Is she the Other? Is she the Blue Subaru?
Funny story about that Blue Subaru…
I wrote “The Other” in October 2016. At the time it was a fictional story about losing myself and the quest to find the creative spirit again. I imagined myself driving around in a 1982 blue Subaru Brat, which has been my dream car ever since I was a little kid. I would see them driving around my hometown, Brattleboro, Vermont, and I thought the name Brat had something to do with the town itself. It always seemed like the unicorn of cars; you’d only catch a glimpse of one when you weren’t looking. So I was driving this car around in my song cuz you can do whatever you want inside a song.
A year and a half later and the album was done. I sent it to my good friend Em so she could take a listen. She’s been in school studying dreams and alchemy, and we talked about the dark side of the moon, the flip side of the mirror, the unknowable Other and things in the lyrics which were oddly in line with her studies. She’s always had the most poetically surreal dreams as long as I’ve known her, full of symbols and strange beauty, like she’s tapped into some kinda psychic conduit. She was in Vermont but her dreams had been telling her to go to New Mexico. She needed transportation for when she got there, so she was hunting around on Craigslist to find some dusty old high-desert gem she could zoom around in. The first car that popped up: “1982 Blue Subaru Brat in Albuquerque.” The exact car from my song. She sent me the ad. I immediately booked a flight out there, bought the car, and drove her back to LA in a blaze of romantic glory.
The lyrics in the song had somehow come true.
It felt like whatever this mysterious “Other” was, it seemed like maybe it was on my side. Helping me along. As long as I had faith in it.
So..is Raindrop Blue the Other? or the Subaru? Probably both and probably neither. But one thing is for certain: I love to dance.”
Thomas self-produced the record and brought in Shawn Everett (War On Drugs, Alabama Shakes) to assist with the mixing process.No less hooky than previous records, the new songs ditch the goofy rock-and-roll bacchanalia narratives of earlier records in favor of expansive arrangements, a diversity of instrumentation, and lyrics that straddle the fence between painful ruminations and reconnecting with that part of yourself that feels childlike and creative and not corroded by cynicism. The record features contributions from Ty Segall (drums), Jenny Lewis (vocals), Greta Morgan (vocals), and Mikal Cronin (saxophone).
Thomas views the entire experience of the record as a kind of psychic reset. “I let the songs lead me where they wanted to go, instead of trying to push them into a certain zone. King Tuff was always just supposed to be me. When I started doing this as a teenager, it was whatever I wanted it to be. King Tuff was never supposed to be just one thing. It was supposed to be everything.”
King Tuff Tour Dates + Ticket Links
On top of all this good news, King Tuff has also announced a North American tour beginning May 3rd in San Diego. Cut Worms will open the shows, and all tickets go on sale this Friday, February 9th. Visit www.kingtuff.life for more updates.
King Tuff on tour:
May 3 - San Diego, CA - The Casbah *
May 4 - Phoenix, AZ - Valley Bar *
May 5 - Santa Fe, NM - Meow Wolf *
May 7 - Houston, TX - Rockefeller Hall *
May 8 - Austin, TX - Barracuda (outside) *
May 9 - Dallas, TX - Club Dada *
May 11 - New Orleans, LA - One Eyed Jacks *
May 12 - Atlanta, GA - The Earl *
May 13 - Nashville TN - The Basement East *
May 14 - Lexington, KY - The Burl *
May 16 - Washington DC - Rock & Roll Hotel *
May 18 - Brooklyn, NY - Music Hall of Williamsburg *
May 19 - Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church *
Their Prime will be available worldwide from Sub Pop Records with the exception of Canada through Royal Mountain Records
Stoked to announce we signed Canadian rippers Jo Passed, and on May 25th we’ll release Their Prime, the band’s first full-length record, worldwide through Sub Pop Records, with the exception of Canada through Royal Mountain Records. The album, which features the singles “ MDM,” “Glass” and “Millennial Trash Blues,” was recorded during the fall / winter of 2016/17 at Thor’s Palace & KW Studios, both in the band’s hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia.
The band have delivered an official video for Their Prime standout “MDM,” which was directed by Eleanor Petry.” Bandleader Jo Hirabayashi says of the video, “something something, on my phone too much, something something, marshall mcluhan, something something, stanley kubrick, something something, the medium is the message, something something, ouch my insides.”
Jo has been part of the DIY music scene since his late teens. Initially it was just him and his high school best friend Elliot Langford against the world. They were the “freaky music weirdos” and they began their own band projects. Jo was pretty sure that it would be two of them riding into the sunset – or maybe the gloom – together. Personal circumstances and the phenomenon of the late 20s return of Saturn (for those who believe in astrology) got in the way. Their band Sprïng called it a day. That’s where the life of Jo Passed began. The idea of a band dynamic is far more appealing to Jo than solo projects, and the current incarnation of Jo Passed feels like its most robust yet.
Jo, along with his friend and drummer Mac Lawrie, moved across the country from Vancouver to Montreal. The two would play shows in Montreal and eventually tour the far right corner of North America. Upon Jo’s return to the west coast, multi-instrumentalist Bella Bébé officially joined the band in January of 2016, expanding Jo Passed from trio to a full quartet. Multimedia artist Megan-Magdalena Bourne began working with Jo Passed on a video project for the song “Rage” (from the Out EP). This creative partnership would eventually lead to her taking on the role of bassist for the band.
When not geeking out over The Zombies, or Nirvana, or Johann Sebastian Bach… Bella, Mac, and Megan have worked with Jo to realize the live experience of Their Prime, following two Jo Passed EPs titled Up and Out.
Jo Passed has scheduled a few spring club shows and festival dates before hitting the road later this year. Current highlights include shows with Hardly Art’s Dick Stusso (March 16th-24th) and an appearance at Treefort Music Festival in Boise (March 21st).
Mar. 16 - Bozeman, MT - Labor Temple* Mar. 18 - Denver, CO - Lost Lake Lounge* Mar. 19 - Salt Lake City, UT - Kilby Court* Mar. 21 - Boise, ID - Treefort Music Festival Mar. 22 - Seattle, WA - Barboza* Mar. 24 - Portland, OR - Crush House * Apr. 14 - Victoria, BC - Lucky Bar *w/ Dick Stusso
Preorders for Their Prime are now available through Sub Pop and Royal Mountain Records. LP purchases in North America through megamart.subpop.com and select independent retailers will receive the limited Loser edition on clear vinyl (while supplies last).
Their Prime is a record about identity and the loss of time that happens as a direct consequence of being in the city with nowhere to rent, no time outside of employment and no realistic expectations to live up to. It encompasses that fear of being beyond the glory years, the most creatively fruitful period of one’s life. Those years were lost to contemporary struggles for working relationships, home, identity and space. “It’s me owning my worst nightmare,” he admits. “A lot of the Jo Passed project has been about confronting fears. I was afraid to move away from Vancouver to Montreal on my own. Afraid to leave musical relationships I had. Afraid to bare the full responsibility of a project. I’ve been putting out records and not ones anyone’s necessarily heard. Being open about those fears is a good way of dealing with them. You end up at this point where you hit 30 and you’re like, ‘Oh what happened? Am I done? Did I not activate my main creative energy?’ It’s a ridiculous idea but 30 feels a little like 1000 in rock n roll terms.” You can hear the frustrations and the jitters in the crashing loud-and-quiet motifs throughout the album’s twelve tracks, which offer up a patchwork quilt of sound, similar to Faust’s IV or Fugazi’s Red Medicine[read more at Sub Pop].
Jericho Sirens will be available worldwide on March 16th
As previously announced, Friday, March 16th, 2018 will mark the release of Hot Snakes’ Jericho Sirens, the long-awaited fourth album (and first in 14 years!!!) from the San Diego-based punk rock recidivists. For your listening enjoyment, we now share the second single from the band’s new record, entitled, “Death Camp Fantasy.” (also available on Spotifyand Apple Music.
Jericho Sirens is now available for preorder - available on CD / LP / DL / CS - from Sub Pop [right here]. And the band’s newly reissued catalog - Automatic Midnight, Suicide Invoice and Audit in Progress- is also available now on Sub Pop [over here].
The band will play a hometown release show in San Diego at the Casbah on March 7th, which is then followed immediately by a midwestern U.S. tour March 10th-16th.
Mar. 07 - San Diego, CA - Casbah [Sold Out] Mar. 09 - Chicago, IL - Thalia Hall Mar. 10 - Detroit, MI - El Club Mar. 11 - Cleveland Heights, OH - Grog Shop Mar. 13 - Nashville, TN - Mercy Lounge Mar. 14 - St. Louis, MO - Blueberry Hill Mar. 15 - Milwaukee, WI - Cactus Club [Sold Out] Mar. 16 - St. Paul, MN - Turf Club
Please join us in welcoming multi-talented artist Yuno to Sub Pop Records! We will release his music into the world throughout 2018, beginning with this official video for “No Going Back.”
Yuno’s bittersweet vocals glide over a buoyant bass line and, fittingly, one of the song’s central themes is passing a point of no return.
Yuno both stars in and directs the “No Going Back” video and offers this of the visual, “The video pretty much represents how I was feeling when I wrote this song. Kind of wandering around, not too sure about where I want to go, but definitely sure about where I don’t want to be. Just trying to make sure I have some fun along the way.”
Yuno was introduced to the label by Ishmael Butler of Shabazz Palaces and Digable Planets fame, who’s a member of Sub Pop’s A&R staff. Butler offers his praise, “First time I heard Yuno, I peeped, of course, that he possessed all the trappings of a great musician, impeccable taste on his riffs, songs catchy but not corny, familiar but dopely strange. There was seductive magic that I couldn’t, and still can’t put my finger on, which is the essence of his uniqueness. Kids a star, man.”
27-year-old Yuno’s pedigree is diverse. His parents are from the UK, and of Jamaican descent, and his musical upbringing involved a wide array of discovery mainly as a result of being part of his local skateboarding subculture. That’s what got him into music: hanging out with friends at their now abandoned mall, going to the skate shop, playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater video games, watching skate videos, and listening to all the music featured therein.
At home, he’d listen to reggae, ska, rocksteady and classic R&B, but it was skating that got him into rock and rap. Formative albums included ones his friends would pass along to him on burned CDs: HIM’s Razorblade Romance, AFI’s Sing The Sorrow and Rancid’s …And Out Come The Wolves. He never really went to shows because rarely anyone worth seeing would come through. The first gig he attended was headlined by a rapper called MC Lars. That’s what made him consider starting a solo project – seeing one dude onstage, recreating all the music alone with a laptop. To this day, he’s only been to four shows. “I’m used to just watching them on YouTube,” he says. “ I never think about a live show when writing songs. I just make whatever.”
He continues “I knew in high school that I wanted to make music. When I was really young, drawing had been my thing; and in middle school I started to make videos with my friends – little skits. Then I began playing guitar.” In eighth grade, his cousin taught him how to make beats, and that’s when Yuno arguably began. His dad also bought him a $20 guitar at a flea market. Despite his mom insisting he get lessons, he taught himself by learning online guitar tabs, mostly for metal bands. He says, “I’d bring my guitar to school every day. In high school, I had a lot of friends that played guitar, as well. We would all come to school early, learn songs and play for each other in the cafeteria.”
Yuno creates his music in his home studio, self-producing, and engineering, playing all the instruments. He also shoots all of his press photos, designs his album art and directs his music videos, with a great amount of attention paid to the use of color throughout his work. He explains, “Pink has been my favorite color since around 6th grade. I had pink and black shoes, skateboard, and even painted my bedroom pink and black. It was mostly inspired by Razorblade Romance at the time.” He continues, “I like being really hands-on with everything surrounding my music, even now that I’m with Sub Pop.”
Oh happy day! Loma’s acclaimed, self-titled debut is out today everywhere on Sub Pop. Listen to the album now at Spotify / Apple Music / Bandcamp / YouTube then trade yr dollars for it here or in yr friendly neighborhood record store.
We also highly suggest you check out Loma’s interview on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” from earlier this week [link here].
Loma will begin it’s international tour in support of the album on April 6th, 2018. For a full list of dates please visit subpop.com/artists/loma/tours
What “The People” are saying about Loma:
“Together, they’ve produced eerie, mesmerizing soundscapes —an alluring tease at what they’re capable of.” — Cool Hunting
“Over whisking wind and a krautrock pulse infested by rattlesnakes, Cross and Meiburg dreamily intone a story about escaping from a sealed room. [‘Relay Runner’ is] truly lovely.” — Stereogum
“Immediately engrossing” — GoldFlakePaint
“Sounds like three musicians wildly in love.” — Monster Children
“A manifestation of brilliant musical minds in organic workspaces” — The Line of Best Fit
“‘Black Willow’ is a painting with darker contours than anything on [Cross Records’] Wabi-Sabi or Shearwaters’ most recent album Jet Plane and Oxbow, while retaining the depth and confidence of each.” — NPR Music
“the album’s tone and scale changes from track to track, but the variation feels earned along its ten songs, unified by a sense of careful crafting.” — Exclaim!
Sub Pop has signed Montclair, New Jersey’s Forth Wanderers, and will release the group’s second full-length effort and label debut, worldwide on April 27th, 2018. The self-titled album features the standouts “Not for Me,” “Nevermine,” and “Ages Ago,” and was produced and recorded by Cameron Konner in Philadelphia over 5 days in the summer of 2017.
Forth Wanderers will be available on CD/LP/CS/DL through Sub Pop right here. LP pre-orders through megamart.subpop.com and select independent retailers will receive the limited Loser edition on opaque orange vinyl.
Forth Wanderers Tracklisting 1. Nevermine 2. Company 3. Ages Ago 4. Taste 5. Not for Me 6. Be My Baby 7. New Face 8. Saunter 9. Tired Games 10. Temporary
[Photo Credit: Julia Leiby]
About Forth Wanderers:
Forth Wanderers employ a tin-can-telephone style of composition which they use even when living in the same area code. Since first collaborating in 2013 as high schoolers, guitarist and songwriter Ben Guterl and vocalist Ava Trilling have passed songs back and forth like pen pals. Guterl will devise an instrumental skeleton before sending it to vocalist Ava Trilling who pens the lyrics based off the melody. The duo then gather alongside guitarist Duke Greene, bassist Noah Schifrin, and drummer Zach Lorelli to expand upon the demo. It’s a patient and practiced writing system that has carried the quintet through two EPs (2013’s Mahogany on Seagreen Records and 2016’s Slop on Father/Daughter Records) and one LP (2014’s self-released Tough Love). Forth Wanderers, the group’s sophomore record and Sub Pop debut, is the groups’ most comprehensive and assured statement yet.
Now living in Ohio and New York respectively, Guterl and Trilling have evolved their separate but collaborative writing process. “The only way I can really write is by myself in my room with a notebook, listening to the song over and over again,” Trilling says. “I’ve never sat down to write a story, I write the song as it unfolds.” Since her lyrics are often embedded with intimate truths from her life, the private writing experience often leads to intense self-reflection.
On Forth Wanderers these introspections include meditations on relationships, discovery, and finding oneself adrift. Despite the inherent heaviness of those themes, Forth Wanderers feels joyous, a rock record bursting with heart. Take “Not for Me,” a romping track about “the ambivalence of love.” Trilling’s confession of “I can’t feel the earth beneath my feet/Flowers bloom but not for me” resists feeling like a dreary, pitying complaint; instead, as her bandmates bolster her melancholy with interlocking harmonic intricacies, she soars with self-actualization. Opener “Nevermine,” is a surge of confidence inspired by an ex-lover who is still captivated by her image. I don’t think I know who you are anymore/ and I don’t think I knew I was before” she jabs with relish. On “Ages Ago” Trilling paints the image of a constantly-shifting enigmatic lover. “I wasn’t sure who they were, they changed constantly (hence the metaphor describing the “grey coat” and cutting their hair just to “stay afloat”),” she says. “I wasn’t going to wait any longer to find out.”
Recorded over five days by friend and audio engineer Cameron Konner at his Philadelphia home studio, Forth Wanderers amplifies the heartfelt sentiments of the band’s earlier works into massive anthems. Guterl and Greene’s guitars have never sounded so sharp, Schifrin and Lorelli’s terse rhythm section is restless, and Trilling seems more self-assured than ever. “We have embraced our roles in the collaboration process,” says Guterl. “Everyone’s gotten better at their instruments and we trust each other more because we know how the machine works.” This spirit soars through Forth Wanderers, resulting in exuberant, profound songs driven by tightly bound melodies and a loving attention to detail.
Forth Wanderers have scheduled three Northeastern U.S. dates with Fat Possum recording act Hoops that begin May 3rd and end May 5th. There will be additional live dates soon.
May 03 - Washington, DC - Rock & Roll Hotel * May 04 - Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church * May 05 - Brooklyn, NY - Market Hotel * *w/ Hoops
