Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Beach Bunny’s Sound ‘Sweetly Resigned, Sweetly Vengeful’
“Blame Game” Beach Bunny Mom+Pop
Beach Bunny recently capped a breakout 2020 with their debut LP “Honeymoon,” gracing many Best Albums of the Year lists including The New York Times, Rolling Stone, LA Times, Consequence of Sound and others. On Jan. 15, the band released their new EP “Blame Game,” along with a confrontational video for its title track directed by Matt Gehl. “Blame Game” follows the release of lead single “Good Girls (Don’t Get Used)” and the band’s incendiary late night TV debut performance of the song on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
Frontperson and Beach Bunny creative force, Lili Trifilio’s bold lyricism has earned critical praise from The New York Times’ Jon Caramanica who said of their debut LP, “…the unifier is Trifilio’s voice: sweetly pleading, sweetly exasperated, sweetly resigned, sweetly vengeful.” Her confessional songwriting shines through on their latest release, which takes aim at toxic masculinity, sexism and the emotional labor of unreliable relationships.
American Songwriter noted, “Brazen lyricism…Each song from the EP reflects on raw emotions that isolation brought to light.”
“Our Two Skins” Gordi Jagjaguwar
Gordi (aka Sophie Payten) will release the “Our Two Skins (Remixed)” EP on Jan. 27. The collection features tracks from 2020’s “Our Two Skins” remixed by fellow artists.
The genesis of “Our Two Skins” was a nervous breakdown while pacing around an Etihad flight from Australia to Europe in late 2017. Payten had finished exams to earn a medical degree and after trading her “nice, safe relationship” for a new one, she began coming to terms with a new truth in her identity. That identity struggle and her new relationship, which played out against the backdrop of the marriage equality plebiscite in Australia and her Catholic upbringing, led to an isolated internal state.
The remoteness of Canowindra, the tiny town where Payten’s family has lived for over a century, proved the right location for recording. There was no phone reception, no wi-fi, and a tin outhouse located in a nearby shearing shed. Self-imposed creative restrictions and limited resources resulted in a chronicle of intense and impossible times Payten spent renegotiating who she is and how she fits in the world.
“A Common Turn” Anna B Savage City Slang
London-born, Dublin-based singer/songwriter Anna B Savage releases her debut album, “A Common Turn,” on Jan. 29. “Baby Grand,” dropped Jan. 19, is both the title of Anna B Savage’s latest single from the debut LP and the title of a short film she has been working on with ex-boyfriend and filmmaker, Jem Talbot, to be released later this year. The pair have co-directed the “Baby Grand” music video, which reworks a scene from the film and blurs the lines of reality where art imitates life imitating art imitating life.
“‘Baby Grand’ (the film) and ‘A Common Turn’ (album) are companion pieces: woven together in subject, inspiration and time. Talbot was, for want of a better word, a muse for ‘A Common Turn.’ Expressing ourselves through our different mediums (mine: music, his: film) became a way for our disciplines to talk, perhaps in place of us,” Savage says of the work.
“A Common Turn” is deeply vulnerable but without submission. Savage lays claim to her own fragility, and the stories she tells are of taking up space, finding connections, and owning the power in not knowing all the answers.
“Before Sunrise” Nana Yamato Dull Tools
Tokyo-based musician Nana Yamato will release her debut album, “Before Sunrise,” Feb. 5. Each song on the album is a secret hidden in the late-night glow of a young girl’s bedroom, created in the precious witching hours of the teenage heart, before dawn returns with the tedious demands of adulthood. Dreams, and the language of living inside one’s imagination, are the prevailing theme of “Before Sunrise.”
Yamato’s brilliance lies in a profound imagination that confronts the isolation and claustrophobia of Tokyo life, without losing grasp of the whimsy and romance of girlhood. It’s hard to ignore the romance the artist has with the streets that she walks; Japanese and English vocals sing about the lights and sounds of the city, as if there’s no place else she could exist. Yamato describes her style as “critical fantasy,” a fitting label for a sound that exists as much in a carefree daydream as they do in a crowded subway. With not enough live music to fill a weekly listing, this spot will continue to be filled by news and reviews of new albums, both local and national. Send information about your new releases to Jocelyn Murphy at jmurphy @nwadg.com.