Premiere: Cave States Debuts New Video For “Julie Says”
Julie Says EP Coming May 21st
By Caleb Campbell

Next week St. Louis folk trio Cave States are sharing their upcoming EP Julie Says. After releasing their 2016 sophomore record True Life the band returned to the studio to pen new material, returning in 2020 with their new EP The End Is Around The Corner. The band have since put together another EP of “Wilco-esque Americana,” now evolving their sound with samples and found sounds alongside their acoustic instrumentation and intertwined harmonies. Today, the band debut the new video for the EP’s title track, premiering with Under the Radar.

“Julie Says” breaks somewhat from the band’s Americana mold, now delivering some of Cave States’ most sweeping instrumentation yet. The melodies feel like they’d fit perfectly with a Phil Spector girl group and the band offers a towering instrumental presence to match. Hand-claps, dramatic shots of percussion, rich harmonies, and a gorgeous instrumental outro lend the track a moving grandeur. Yet, while the instrumental palette evokes romanticism the lyrics instead do the opposite, tracing a crumbling relationship.

As band member Danny Kathriner says, “The song ‘Julie Says’ is the gist of an actual verbal exchange I had with a friend years ago – albeit modified (here) for the sake of fitting into a song. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

SONG PREMIERE: BLACK LIGHT ANIMALS REFLECT ON NARCISSISM WITH SLINKY DARK POP ANTHEM “HALO”

Black Light Animals are a psychedelic soul group hailing from the Midwest. Taking equal influence from ’70s Italian horror soundtracks, Wu Tang samples, and Ziggy Stardust-era David Bowie, their sprawling debut album explores themes of humanity, social media obsession, political division, and the concept of “amusing ourselves to death.” Sonically rich and full of spaghetti western guitars, psychedelic keyboards, hip hop rhythms, and lush vocals, Playboys of the Western World comes off as some forgotten ’70s film soundtrack, while exploring themes very much relevant to today. The album is due out August 20th via Groove King Records.

Today Glide is excited to premiere “Halo,” one of the standout tracks on the new album. With their hard-to-pin sound, the band revels in their own style of slinky dark pop that is enticing and infectious. Touches of glam rock intermingle with a cool and soulful, hip-hop-inspired beat to make for a mysterious anthem. There is something especially intriguing about the way the band melds so many unlikely musical influences, letting the vocals and a down and dirty guitar solo soar above it all. It’s easy to imagine Black Light Animals performing this song in a large venue to a crowd singing along.

Band member Cole Bales reflects on the inspiration behind the song:
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Austin Lucas ‘Alive in the Hot Zone’
CORNELIUS CHAPEL • 2020
by Kim Kelly

On his latest album, the singer-songwriter documents the tumultuous months of late spring and early summer 2020, occupying a sweet spot at the intersection of folk, punk, country, and Americana.

Every artist unlucky enough to release an album in 2020 has faced an unenviable choice about whether or not to address a certain elephant in the room, whether or not they consider themselves to be a “political” outfit. They can either try to ignore the horrors of the current administration and chance coming off as out-of-touch or ignorant, or choose to tackle the Trump era head-on, and risk feeling dated after the next geopolitical shift (remember all those Rock Against Bush compilations? Me neither, and I was their target audience). For heartland folk-punk singer-songwriter Austin Lucas, though, it was never even a question. He even went a step further by choosing to document a specific section of a specific year—namely, the late spring and early summer months of 2020, when the initial burst of the coronavirus pandemic and the Black Lives Matter uprising spurred by the killing of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor captivated the nation.

It was a move that felt entirely in character for Lucas, whose sound occupies a sweet spot at the intersection of folk, punk, country, and Americana. The Bloomington, Indiana-born artist has long sported a “This machine kills zombies” sticker on his guitar in a clear reference to Woody Guthrie’s warning to fascists, and is open about his own anti-fascist politics, as well as his background in the DIY punk scene. The punk delegation has historically tended to excel at this particular task ever since the Reagan era ushered in a generation of vital hardcore (Anti-Flag’s rollicking, venomous 20/20 Vision is an excellent contemporary example), and Lucas released an anti-fascist anthem of his own with “Already Dead,” the first single off his new album, Alive in the Hot Zone.

It has a poppy, anthemic feel that belies its sobering lyrical content. In just over three minutes, Lucas storyboards out the frustrating trajectory of slowly losing a loved one to the lure of fascist rhetoric, opening with the weary entreaty “Let’s talk, though we have nothing to say.” There are shades of Bruce Springsteen’s hangdog working-class malaise (as well as his stadium-filling sensibilities) tucked amidst the peppy chords, and Lucas nails the exasperated futility of a familiar conversation that was never going to go anywhere anyway.
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RS Country Music Picks for the Week of January 18th

Joy Oladokun’s exercise in forgiveness, Hailey Whitters how-to guide to life, and Jeremy Pinnell’s stark Concrete Blonde cover

By JON FREEMAN  & JOSEPH HUDAK

Whether it’s coming out of Nashville, New York, L.A., or points in between, there’s no shortage of fresh tunes, especially from artists who have yet to become household names. Rolling Stone Country selects some of the best new music releases from country and Americana artists.

Jeremy Pinnell, “Joey”

Northern Kentucky songwriter Jeremy Pinnell recasts Concrete Blonde’s 1999 hit  as a country dirge mournful enough to make Townes Van Zandt cry. Recorded straight to his phone in his basement, Pinnell’s “Joey” is a spare, solo rendering, with his voice seemingly echoing across endless time and barren space. The result? A version nearly as haunting as Johnette Napolitano’s original.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/country-music-picks-joy-oladokun-1115348/