Posted: 02/02
First Aid Kit’s bountiful success continues apace with their album The Lion’s Roar entering the UK Top 40 this week, as well as hitting Number One in the their native Sweden with 20% of all records sold last week.

New single ‘Emmylou’, released on 13 February, has been playlisted at Radio 2 and 6 Music and scored ‘Record of the Week’ at 6 Music, Xfm and Nick Grimshaw on Radio 1.

They return for a full UK tour that commences at Kings College on 23 February.


Artist: First Aid Kit
Title: ‘Emmylou’ single
Release Date: 13 February 2012
Label: Wichita Recordings
Format: Digital
Cat Number: WEBB334SDL
Website: www.thisisfirstaidkit.com


“I loved their voices and their innocence... listening to them sing is very powerful. They’re wonderful” Jack White
‘Album of the Week’ Independent on Sunday
“A brilliant album from sisters Klara and Johanna Soderberg” 5/5 Sunday Telegraph
“An intoxicating mix of widescreen Americana and Scandinavian poise” 4.5/5 The Sun
“The voices of Johanna and Klara are enough to weaken knees... The lyrics’ heavy-hearted take on relationships is more evidence of an astonishing maturity” 4/5 Mojo
“Klara and Johanna Söderberg have crafted remarkably mature work” 4/5 Uncut
“It’s pretty perfect” 8/10 NME
“Nothing short of magical” 4/5 The Fly
“The second album from the Swedish Soderberg sisters is full to the brim with charm”
4/5 The Guardian
“A country-rock revelation” 4/5 The Independent
“There’s genuine beauty here” 4/5 Evening Standard
“Their truly sublime sibling harmonies are still the shining beacon they always were” 4/5 The List
“The Lion’s Roar is full of rich textures that unfurl around Klara and Johanna’s bittersweet harmonies... First Aid Kit have woven their Swedish sangfroid into a bewitching brand of Americana” 8/10 Clash
“4/5” Q
“4/5” The Times
“4/5” Daily Mirror
“8/10” Loud & Quiet

First Aid Kit UK dates:
Thurs 23 Feb Kings College London www.livenation.co.uk £12
Fri 24 Feb Academy 3 Manchester www.ticketline.co.uk £10
Mon 27 Feb Kings Tuts Glasgow www.gigsinscotland.com £10
Tues 28 Feb The Wardrobe Leeds www.lunatickets.co.uk £10
Wed 29 Feb Thekla Bristol www.livenation.co.uk £10

In the last year alone, the Söderberg sisters from Stockholm have worked with Jack White and Conor Oberst, sung for Patti Smith and toured with Lykke Li.

Klara and Johanna will kick off what is sure to be an incredible 2012 with new single ‘Emmylou’, a track already noted by many as an album highlight with the Independent On Sunday asking “who can deny the charm of a song whose chorus runs ‘I’ll be your Emmylou / I’ll be your June / You’ll be my Gram / And my Johnny too’?”. The gentle ode to country music’s greats is wrapped in a beautiful love song, accompanied by soft pedal steel and soaring harmonies. A fitting tribute to Gram, Johnny, June and Emmylou.

After playing a very special performance at Bush Hall in December, First Aid Kit will bring their unique and moving live show to the UK for a headline tour next month, playing London’s Kings College on the 23 February.

First Aid Kit’s first American-recorded album, The Lion’s Roar was released on 23 January 2012 and juxtaposes sadness and beauty in the best traditions of folk and country music.

Posted: 02/02
Artist: Liz Green
Title: ‘Bad Medicine’ single
Label: Play It Again Sam
Release Date: 12 March 2012
Cat Number: PIASR566DS1
Distribution: PIAS
Formats: Digital
Website: www.lizgreenmusic.co.uk


“Don’t give me none of that medicine, for I’ll spit it right back out” ‘Bad Medicine’ Liz Green

The unique Liz Green received a plethora of praise for her wonderful debut album O, Devotion! upon its release in November 2011.

She played a multitude of radio sessions that included a varied array from 6 Music’s Marc Riley and Radcliffe & Maconie (the station also gave her the ‘Album of the Day’ accolade) and Radio 1’s Gilles Peterson to Radio 4’s Loose Ends & XFM’s John Kennedy and also performed on BBC2’s The Review Show.

To celebrate all this ecstatic news, Liz will release ‘Bad Medicine’ with a glorious gem of an exclusive B-side ‘Rybka’ on 12 March and head out on a full UK tour from 22 March that stops at London’s Bush Hall on 3 April.

As for ‘Bad Medicine’, Liz explains its genesis with her usual illuminating heartfelt humour. “This is probably my favourite song. It’s a different bag of badgers altogether from the first version of it. Me and Peri spent a long time trying to nail that trumpet solo. I eventually ended up playing it to him on a kazoo! Because I can’t afford to take a full band everywhere I go, I’ve built up a bit of a reputation for being a great mouth trumpet player.

There is a simple story. The sad story of a man who is neglected by his fellow men. Punished by them for his difference. When I mention him walking like a Bible prophet I think of a man I used to see walking round Manchester, striding, head high, beatific smile. I haven’t seen him around for a while. I hope he’s still walking that way. The opening lines are how I felt when I first heard Son House. I think I’d not heard the rawness of emotion come through a recording so easily as it did with his recordings. That’s the aim isn’t it. To capture a little bit of soul.”

Liz Green press quotes:
“A sensational debut” Sunday Times ‘Album of the Week’
“4/5” Q
“4/5” Uncut
“To call Liz Green a one-off talent is something of a drastic under-statement” Esquire
“A gorgeous record” ‘Album of the Month’ Diva
“Eccentric and rather magical” 4/5 The Guardian live review
“A vital, vibrant, very English 21st Century musical force” 4/5 The Sun
“O, Devotion! finally fulfils expectations” 4/5 Daily Telegraph
“Her USP is her extraordinary voice” 4/5 Metro
“O, Devotion! brims with depth, detail and fleet drama” The Independent
“Lesser performers will be jealous as hell” The Fly
“Wonderful” ‘Single of the Week’ Guardian Guide
“A deliciously dark and serpentine journey” 4/5 Daily Mirror
“Her enchanting mix of muddy blues-tinged folk songs possess a warmth that gets immediately under your skin” Music Week
“A surfeit of simple yet beautifully crafted songs” 8/10 Drownedinsound
“O, Devotion! is a strong, fascinating debut that asserts Liz Green as a unique talent to be reckoned with” thelineofbestfit

Liz Green live dates –
Thurs 22 March Birmingham Glee Club £8
Fri 23 March Exeter Cavern £8
Sat 24 March Bristol Louisiana £8
Mon 26 March Glasgow Captains Rest £8
Tues 27 March York Duchess £6.50
Wed 28 March Newcastle Cluny 2 £7
Thu 29 March Sheffield Riverside FREE
Fri 30 March Leeds Brudenell £8
Sun 1 April Norwich Arts Centre £8
Mon 2 April Brighton The Hope £6
Tue 3 April London Bush Hall £12.50
Wed 4 April Cambridge Portland Arms £7
Thu 5 April Manchester Deaf Institute £7

Posted: 02/02
Artist: AU
Title: Both Lights album
Release Date: 2 April 2012
Label: The Leaf Label
Formats: CD/Limited Vinyl & Digital
Cat Number: BAY82CD
Distribution: SRD
Web: au-au-au.com

Please check out the single ‘Solid Gold’ featuring Colin Stetson here http://soundcloud.com/theleaflabel/au-solid-gold.

“Excellent fun” ‘Song of the Day’ The Line Of Best Fit
“Damn good” 8/10 ‘Single of the Week’ No Ripcord


Praise for AU:
“The melodic yearning of Wyland’s vocals gives the songs a hint of ecstasy”
The New Yorker
“Versions is a true game changer for this still young band”
Dave Allen (Gang of Four)
“AU just sound like a better band here, more flexible and distinctive. Wiser, too: They highlight their strengths. Wyland’s singing, unique and expressive” Pitchfork
“AU might be a contrary bunch, but Versions is all the more brilliant for it” 8/10 NME
“Versions has provided Wyland with the perfect opportunity to reflect on his career thus far and introducing the uninitiated to the potential of his sound”
Drowned In Sound
“Terrifically exciting and somewhat confrontationally joyous stuff… Not only are Wyland’s wanderers golden by name but they’re thoroughly wondrous by nature”
The Quietus

Portland, Oregon duo AU have never sounded more alive, more vibrant and more human than on Both Lights. Luke Wyland and Dana Valatka channel their need for catharsis into the physical side of making music: the pleasure of connecting with real instruments; writing complex, multi-layered songs; astonishingly intense live performances. It makes their music immediately engaging, lending it a razor-sharp energy, even at its quietest and most contemplative.

Both Lights, their long awaited third album and first for The Leaf Label, is the closest their recorded incarnation has yet reached to the blissful force of an AU live show, both expanding outward in new directions and tightly honing their compositional abilities.

Luke Wyland is the leader and principal songwriter of AU (pronounced ‘Ay-You’). After recording his debut album peaofthesea under the name luc in 2005, the band came together as he began to perform live. Over a number of records and various live incarnations Wyland’s songwriting matured, from 2007’s softly-spoken Au to their last full-length proper, 2008’s acclaimed Verbs. Faced with the realities of touring full-time, Wyland teamed up with drummer Dana Valatka and set about rearranging Verbs’ densely layered songs to suit this new, slimmed down AU.

Having spent his teens and twenties playing in metal and exploratory rock bands, Valatka’s hard-hitting approach to percussion was a further catalyst for transformation. Their work as a duo became increasingly collaborative, pushing them both to the limits of their own playing abilities. Their live shows shifted to match, simultaneously more intense and more exuberant, with Valatka on percussion and Wyland taking care of everything else: vocals, keyboard, sampler, lap steel, banjo and melodica (often two or more at once). The first recorded result was 2009’s tremendous Versions EP, featuring radical reworkings of songs from Verbs, on which the duo carefully pared away any extraneous material, leaving the raw emotional matter of the songs intact and exposed.

Following a lengthy 2009 tour (140 shows in that year alone, playing alongside Deerhoof, The Dodos, Akron/Family and many more), AU returned to connect with their hometown, and set to task on what became a rebirth. The recording process for Both Lights took nearly two years, and found them seeking an entirely new approach, beginning most of these songs as simple improvisations. “It was a real process of letting go,” says Wyland, “A sort of subliminal shift into sounds and ideas that, at first, felt quite challenging.” Rather than sounding like a tough record to make, Both Lights is striking precisely because it feels so animated, so triumphant.

Exploding from the blocks with the uplifting ‘Epic’, the entire album draws its power from this process of renewal, erupting joyously into life. Complete with earth-cracking saxophones by man-machine Colin Stetson (the powerhouse who also contributes to the album’s first single ‘Solid Gold’ and plays with all from Arcade Fire to Bon Iver), it’s an appropriate opening salvo for an album that began life in a tiny room that Wyland built from scratch in the back of a friend’s garage, and sprawled into a one-man tug-of-war with love, loss, pain, anger and desire.

Featuring the vocal talents of Portland singer Holland Andrews (who also appears on ‘Get Alive’ and ‘Crazy Idol’), ‘Solid Gold’ evokes the volatile and thrilling highs and lows of new relationships. While working on Both Lights, AU contributed a track to the Tradi-Mods vs. Rockers compilation, which found them and their contemporaries reinterpreting the electrifying music of Congolese ensembles Kasai Allstars and Konono No.1. Those groups’ influence is present in the metallic melodies of ‘Solid Gold’ and the machine rhythms of second single ‘OJ’: equal parts tenderness and heady euphoria.

“It’s a true amalgam of my entire history with music and the sense of self I have gained from it since I was a child,” says Wyland. “I was seeking to write music that fully encompassed myself, rather than relying on superficial playfulness and shying away from saying anything uniquely my own.”

So it makes sense that Wyland has allowed his resonant baritone to take centre stage on Both Lights in a way that previous AU albums only hinted at. Where in the band’s earlier days he was camouflaged among fellow singers or hidden behind dense layers of instrumentation, here his exposed voice lays bare a delicious tension between the music’s mood of jubilant release and the darker, more cautious tone of his lyrics. The music behind him flits with gleeful abandon between styles - choral folk, ferocious jazz-punk, wild percussive workouts – and the album’s singular, freewheeling logic is defined by the duo’s willingness to let go of constraints and allow the music’s natural flow to dictate the direction of their playing.

Both Lights closes with a suite of sorts, a final quartet that traverses AU’s entire range while serving to draw all the album’s disparate themes together for one final volley. The manic ‘Why I Must’ slides seamlessly into the softer landscape of ‘Go Slow’. Next song ‘Old Friend’ features a beguiling half-sung, half-whispered vocal turn from Sara Winchester, for whom the song was written, and who has contributed to every one of AU’s albums. Its closeness and intimacy bleeds finally into towering closer ‘Don’t Lie Down’, which ends the album as it began: with a call to arms, to action and to life.

AU will tour Europe in April 2012.

Both Lights will be released as a beautifully packaged CD and limited edition vinyl, as well as digitally.

Posted: 31/01
Gayngs members announce details of new project Poliça, with a free download of their first single ‘Lay Your Cards Out’. Check it out here: http://soundcloud.com/memphisindustries/polica-lay-your-cards-out

And for the Jay Z endorsed video: http://youtu.be/Rl03afAqeFQ


Artist: Poliça
Title: Give You The Ghost album
Release Date: 23 April 2012
Label: Memphis Industries
Formats: CD/LP/Digital
Cat Number: MI0233CD/LP/D
Distribution: PIAS
Website: www.thisispolica.com


“Poliça deals in a type of R&B inflected electronic music that defies explanation.... Music with this many synthetic textures and vocal treatments has rarely sounded so natural.” Spinner
“A swirly combination of layered rhythms, some awesomely manipulated vocals and a dragged-out, slow motion feel....the perfect soundtrack to an almost-winter weekend” NYLON
“Ryan Olson and singer Channy Leanagh lead the group, Channy front and centre with her potently echoed voice riding over forward drums and driving bass” The Fader

Minneapolis continues its golden run of producing quality talent with the first project to arrive out the Gayngs collective, the super slick electronic pop-soul outfit Poliça. Fronted by ice cool vocalist Channy Leanagh who sang with Gayngs, produced by Ryan Olson and featuring Mike Noyce from Bon Iver, it’s a who’s who of the current Twin Cities scene. Continuing the tradition of having friends in high places with Prince and Kanye West among Gayngs fans, Poliça have already been backed by none other than Jay Z who posted their video for the new for single ‘Lay Your Cards Out’ on his Life + Times blog: http://lifeandtimes.com/lifetimes-video-premier-polica-lay-your-cards-out

After collaborating in the studio and live with Gayngs in 2010, it became apparent that Channy and Ryan should form a group of their own. “As touring progressed and Channy got more comfortable with the band and singing the songs, she would reinvent the parts she was doing in brilliant ways. It made me want to see where else she could go” explains Olson. Ryan’s pop sensibilities and electronic adventurism would prove to be the perfect vehicle for Channy’s recent growth and evolution as a vocalist and dynamic experimentalist. In June 2011, they began writing together what would become Poliça’s debut album, Give You The Ghost.

The result is eleven perfectly formed auto-tuned songs that re-shape the intersection of pop and digitised R&B. And for all Poliça’s synthetic manipulation, Channy’s soft vocals and Ryan’s electronic soundscapes reveal a tender heart beneath, pulsating with life and raw emotion. Give You The Ghost opens with the attention grabbing sonic of first track ‘Amongster’, the two drummers immediately coming into full effect as it builds to a heady mass of beats, bass and Channy’s wandering vocals. ‘Violent Games’ continues the heavy on the drums theme, with duelling beats that intensify to machine gun-like levels, led by Channy’s urgent and cyclical vocals “Tremble at the taste of / Tremble at the taste of / Tremble at the taste of in his hands”.

Born out of the break-up of a recent relationship, the majority of Give You The Ghost reflects the difficulty of facing up to your mistakes and making peace with them; an exorcism via exciting new musical possibilities. “The recurring theme of this record is ‘what in the hell just happened and who in the hell am I anyways’” says Channy. This redemptive mood is key for the track ‘Dark Star’, released online late last year amidst a viral whirlwind. Backed by smooth brass breakdowns throughout and mid-tempo loping rhythms, it’s typical of Poliça’s often meditative content fused with the addictive refrain “Ain’t a man who can pull me down from my Dark Star”.

First sashaying single proper ‘Lay Your Cards Out’ and the dreamy ‘Wandering Star’ both feature Mike Noyce of Bon Iver on vocals and are equally as deliciously funk laden as they are hypnotic, with more ratatat drums from Ben Ivascu and Drew Christopherson, propelling the lush arrangements and slinky bass, provided by Chris Bierden.

The name Poliça refers to the word ‘policy’, meaning a definite course of action adopted for the sake of expediency, suggesting they were formed out of necessity. Which is exactly how this album feels and sounds; urgent, original and genre defying, Poliça are absolutely essential in 2012.

Poliça will be playing a handful of shows at this year’s SXSW, more details to follow soon.

Posted: 16/09
Artist: First Aid Kit
Title: ‘The Lion’s Roar’ album
Release Date: 23 January 2012
Label: Wichita Recordings
Formats: CD/ LP & Digital Cat Number: WEBB320
Website: thisisfirstaidkit.com

Tues 6 Dec Bush Hall London www.livenation.co.uk £11

Bittersweet is the word the Söderberg sisters prefer. “We like bittersweet songs, songs that affect you differently depending on how you interpret them,” says Klara, the younger of the Swedish siblings that make up First Aid Kit. “Making the melodies and lyrics head in different directions is very deliberate,” adds big sister Johanna, “A song like ‘Emmylou’ sounds cheerful, but the lyrics are the saddest thing you ever heard.”

First Aid Kit’s first American-recorded album, The Lion’s Roar due out in January 2012, juxtaposes sadness and beauty in the best traditions of folk and country music. They even cite the Louvin Brothers cheerfully brutal version of the old murder ballad ‘Knoxville Girl’ as the perfect example of the sweet and sour they adore. And this carefully constructed collection deftly succeeds in setting references to their home town of Stockholm and long dark Scandinavian winters against an unforced backdrop of country-rock swing.

Where 2010’s debut The Big Black and the Blue was starkly intimate, The Lion’s Roar, recorded in Omaha by Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes, millions more), is a full band record. The girls’ father Benkt takes the bass, Mattias Bergqvist drums, while Mogis and Nate Walcott of Bright Eyes and a cast of Omaha-based musicians round out the sound. From the dynamic title track onwards, it’s more honky-tonk than campfire, and no less affecting for that.

‘Emmylou’ name-checks such greats as Gram Parsons, Johnny Cash, June Carter and of course Miss Harris, yet for all its upbeat appeal, it recognises the sadness in the lives and art of these heroes. “We’ve listened to those people for a very long time. We hadn’t even toured America when we started writing that song,” confesses Johanna. “We actually finished it in Australia,” adds Klara. The gorgeous ‘In The Hearts Of Men’ adds a mellotron alongside more expected textures. It sounds timeless and rather brilliant.

Initially signed in 2008 by Rabid Records, the label run by The Knife (the girls later signed to Wichita), First Aid Kit have gone from faraway teenage fans covering Fleet Foxes for fun to recording a single of Buffy Sainte-Marie’s ‘Universal Soldier’ with Jack White at his request and in his Nashville, TN Third Man studio. “I think of it now as like a dream, too good to be true,” says Johanna of the session, happily and hurriedly squeezed into last autumn’s tour schedule. Upcoming is a US tour with fellow Swede Lykke Li- “We have something in common,” winks Klara.

The exquisite ‘Dance to Another Tune’ perfectly blends Swedish sorrow and American feel while ‘Wolf’ is appropriately forest-bound, the folkiest and most European-sounding moment on the record. ‘To A Poet’ closes side one, so to speak and its elegant run-out, featuring a string quartet arranged by Walcott, particularly impressed the Söderbergs. “We recorded our last record at home. We couldn’t even have fitted them all in,” says Klara.

Despite its lonesome sound ‘New Year’s Eve’, all distant reverb and atmospherics is “actually very hopeful”. Finally the exuberant mariachi hoedown of ‘King of the World’ features The Felice Brothers, just passing through town during the session, and local hero Conor Oberst, who takes the last verse.

“We’d never worked with a producer before,” says Johanna, “Yet we never argued with Mike about anything.” The resulting record is serious fun, yet First Aid Kit are only starting. “We want to work in music forever. Our voices and songs could work in many genres,” says Johanna, “We don’t know how we’ll sound in ten years time.” But which do they prefer singing? Sad or happy songs? They roar with laughter. “We only sing sad songs.” There will never be a shortage of those and in FAK hands, they will always sound nothing short of glorious.