The Nialler9 New Music playlists are always being updated.
Featuring Japanese Breakfast, The Weather Station, Richard Dawson, Hotwax, Sharon Van Etten.
See the end of the post for the Spotify playlist featuring all the tracks added, which is updated weekly.
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The Weather Station
Mirror
I’ve yet to get a listen to Tamara Lindeman’s new album Humanhood, her first since 2021 but ‘Mirror’ is a fine introduction of what to expect.
The song references the climate crisis, “you were dousing your fields in a chemical rain, you were cutting my arm to transcend your own pain / Oh but god is a mirror – everything is.”
Of the song, Lindeman said:
“I wanted the song to warp and disintegrate; to come in and out of being like the imaginary scaffold that holds up a fantasy or cognitive dissonance. In the end, the band grows garbled and comes apart, giving way to a suspension of synth and string textures. I wanted it to feel like being bathed in light; maybe the light I was talking about in the song.
The Weather Station Tour Dates
Mon. Jan. 20 – Liverpool, UK @ RT Liverpool – record store performance
Tue. Jan. 21 – Leeds, UK @ Jumbo Leeds – record store performance
Wed. Jan. 22 – Nottingham, UK @ RT Nottingham – record store performance
Thu. Jan. 23 – London, UK @ Rough Trade East – record store performance
Thu. Mar. 6 – Brighton, UK @ CHALK
Sat. Mar. 8 – Dublin, IE @ Button Factory
Sun. Mar. 9 – Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club
Mon. Mar. 10 – Glasgow, UK @ Saint Luke’s
Tue. Mar. 11 – Manchester, UK @ Band On The Wall
Wed. Mar. 12 – Bristol, UK @ The Fleece
Thu. Mar. 13 – London, UK @ Islington Assembly Hall
Richard Dawson
Gondola
English singer-songwriter Richard Dawson specialised in homespun songs that speak to the everyday details of modern living.
‘Gondola’, from forthcoming album End of the Middle out February 14th on Domino is sung from the point of view of a grandmother reflecting on her life, it’s the realest, truest song you’ll hear this week.
Hotwax
One More Reason
English trio Hotwax do good things in the alt-rock realm, as heard on 2023’s ‘Phone Machine’.
‘One More Reason’ is from their forthcoming debut album Hot Shock, out March 7th. You really can’t go wrong with a rolling psych-rock bassline of the kind that runs through this song.
The album out on Marathon Artists, was recorded with producer Catherine Marks co-producing alongside Steph Marziano at London’s RAK Studios While touring the US, the band also recorded with Warpaint drummer Stella Mozgawa at her studio in Joshua Tree.
Sharon Van Etten
Southern Life (What It Must Be Like)
Sharon Van Etten and her band The Attachment Theory dropped a new song called ‘Trouble’ last week, which sounded like a nicekrautrock-leaning album track from the forthcoming record (February that has already given us the anthemic ‘Afterlife’.
I want to highlight the December single though as I missed it at the time, ‘Southern Life (What It Must Be Like)’ has a real early 90s alt-rock single feel to it. That’s three for three for this album so far.
Japanese Breakfast
Orlando In Love
Michelle Zauner has announced the release of her fourth album on Dead Oceans, due March 21st, For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) takes its title from a line in the lead single ‘Orlando in Love’, an string-assisted acoustic-grounded track, with pretty production.
It was produced by Blake Mills – who has worked with Bob Dylan to Fiona Apple at the famous Sound City studio in Los Angeles.
It’s the first album since 2021’s Jubilee, and the release of her can’t-recommend-highly-enough memoir Crying In H Mart – one of the best music-related books in recent years.
With success, Zauner “felt seduced by getting what I always wanted,” she says. “I was flying too close to the sun, and I realised if I kept going I was going to die.”
As such, the story of Icarus, and the folly of ambition is theme for the record.
Lead single ‘Orlando in Love’ a reference to John Cheever’s short story In the World of Apples, based on Orlando Innamorato by the Renaissance poet Matteo Maria Boiardo. In Zauner’s version, the hero is a well meaning poet who parks his Winnebago by the sea and falls victim to a siren’s call, his 69th canto.
Also added to this week’s playlist:
- Marie Davidson – Demolition
- John Glacier; Sampha – Ocean Steppin’
- Caribou; Solomun – Climbing – Solomun Club Edit
- Sharon Van Etten – Trouble
- BICEP; ELIZA – CHROMA 008 TANGZ
- Jungle – Keep Me Satisfied
- Close Counters; shiv – FREEDOM WE’RE NEEDING
- Shn Shn – Anomalies
- Perfume Genius – It’s a Mirror
- MIKE – Bear Trap
- Lucy Dacus – Ankles
- Oracle Sisters – Blue Left Hand
- Maribou State; Andreya Triana – All I Need
- DJ Koze; Ada – Unbelievable
- Biig Piig – One Way Ticket
- Billy Nomates – How’d You Grow A Girl
- POSER – Good Time
- Tessa Rose Jackson; Caoilian Sherlock – Sad Duet
- Bootie Grove – Sweet 1
- Mantua – high talk//swell divide
Nialler9 Weekly Playlist
Nialler9 New Music Playlist
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