Sights and Sounds: Hoodoo Gurus, The Head and the Heart, Jackson Browne, Jade Bird, 2CELLOS

 Plenty of good news from across the sonic universe for music fans...Robert Kinsler

After 10 Years, Hoodoo Gurus ready new album

LP preceded by new single "World of Pain"

Check out the video HERE

Hoodoo Gurus take the reins of year 2021 — their 40th year as a band — to embark upon one of their most eventful years to date. Their new album (as yet untitled), due in the final quarter of the year, is the first full-length recording with relative new recruit to the band’s lineup. 

 

This year also marks the release a new Hoodoo Gurus single, the explosive glam stomper “World of Pain,” available now.

 

Hoodoo Gurus founder, singer and chief songwriter Dave Faulkner explains that the song “details the misadventures of a night on the town, beginning with a drunken altercation with another punter (‘Your fist smashes my face/Chairs fly all over the place/What a sorry sight’) and concludes with our hapless narrator waking up in bed fully dressed, in the throes of a hangover, all the while trying to remember where he last saw his cell phone.” 

 

That’s a world of pain indeed. Mind you, this is a fictional story. Faulkner is not necessarily saying these things happened to him but, cumulatively, he may have learned a thing or two about coming off the worse for wear after a big night.

 

Musically, “World of Pain” marries a stomping glam-rock verse to a boozy barroom-blues chorus, proving the Hoodoo Gurus have lost none of their edge. The Gurus give listeners all of the thrills of a night on the town with none of the unwelcome aftereffects. Cheers to that!

 

The long-awaited album, their first in more than a decade (the longest interval between Hoodoo Gurus albums in their history), alongside their return to the stage, makes for a year for which the band is full of a palpable and infectious level of determination, drive and spirit, evident in their current state of mind.

 

As Faulkner explains: “The last 12 months have been frustrating and nerve-racking for everyone, but for the Hoodoo Gurus this dark cloud has had a silver lining. Forced to rely on ourselves instead of the outside world for validation, there has been a creative rebirth within the band that has resulted in a string of singles and a new album. Most important of all, the musical bonds between the four of us have never been stronger. When the discussions are all about which songs we’re sad about having to leave off the record, that’s a damn good sign. I’m tellin’ ya, folks, we’ve got a real spring in our step right now.”

 

The event-filled calendar for Hoodoo Gurus in 2021 comes after the release of three tracks in the last 18 months. The punk-snarl of “Answered Prayers” emerged in late 2019, followed by the politically charged “Hung Out to Dry” in July 2020 and a slice of soaring power pop in the form of “Get Out of Dodge” in October of last year. 

 

Since their formation in 1981, Hoodoo Gurus earned nine ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association) Top 20 albums, nine ARIA Top 40 singles, and a host of multi-platinum albums. The band’s evocative and relatable lyricism, peerless song writing — with a hint of punk attitude — placed in a distinctively Australian context have resulted in a balance of critical success and enduring mainstream appeal for 40 years. Among the many artists who have publicly namechecked Hoodoo Gurus are Steve Van Zandt, Manic Street Preachers and Courtney Love, and they’ve been perpetually influential to generations of artists who’ve arrived after them.

Few other groups have toured as comprehensively, achieved such an enduring reputation over successive generations, enjoyed such loyalty from fans and maintained such high currency for their work, both within Australia and abroad.

 

The enduring legacy of Hoodoo Gurus is reflected in sell-out tours, the numerous tracks that are indisputable staples of radio, inclusion in “best album” countdowns, even having songs played at weddings and funerals — these are just some of the barometers of the strong legacy the band enjoys. 

As elder statesmen of Australian rock ’n' roll, the Hoodoo Gurus are held in the same high esteem by their peers as they are by their fans. In 2007, the group was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame. Two years earlier, a cross-section of the Australian music community paid the band the ultimate homage by lovingly producing a tribute album of Gurus covers entitled Stoneage Cameos. 

Through their chart-topping successes throughout the ’80s and ’90s, their international triumphs and countless sold-out Australian tours, from their 1998-2003 break-up through to their comeback, Hoodoo Gurus have been — and remain — one of the most popular and successful musical acts Australia has ever produced.

THE HEAD AND THE HEART 

RELEASE COVER OF 

CROSBY, STILLS, NASH & YOUNG’S “OUR HOUSE” 

Transcendent Cover Is Available Today Digitally, 

In Celebration Of New Reissue Of CSNY’s Déjà Vu

LISTEN NOW

CSNY Déjà Vu: 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition Is Available Now 

Featuring The Original Album Remastered,

Plus Over Two Hours Of Rare And Unreleased Music

“When we first started as a band, we shared a two bedroom apartment where ‘Our House’ was played so much it became like a mantra of unity and connection to each other, as we discovered what we wanted to do within our music. To say it’s an honor to now be asked to cover that very same song is an understatement. Happy 50th anniversary you legends! Déjà Vu Forever!” – The Head and The Heart

LOS ANGELES – The Head and The Heart, coming off their acclaimed fourth album Living Mirage, have released a transcendent new cover version of the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Our House,” available today digitally. The original version, written by Graham Nash, has been a longtime inspiration to the band and was originally released on the landmark Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young album, Déjà Vu, which is available now as an expansive 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition with over two hours of rare and unreleased audio.

The single cover art designed for The Head and The Heart’s version of “Our House” serves as an homage to the original CSNY Déjà vu cover and features an image of the actual house in Seattle that was an early home to the band.

Déjà Vu: 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition is an expansive collection that includes a newly remastered version of the original 8x platinum album on both 180-gram vinyl and CD along with nearly two-and-a-half hours or rare and unreleased demos, outtakes, and alternate takes. In addition to topping the pop charts, the album also featured three Top 40 singles, “Woodstock,” “Teach Your Children,” and “Our House.” 

Presented in a 12 x 12 hardcover book, the collection comes illustrated with rarely seen photos from the era and annotated by writer/filmmaker Cameron Crowe, whose revealing liner notes recount the making of the album through stories told by the people who were there, including David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, and Neil Young. A deluxe vinyl version is also available with the full content across 5 LPs of 180-gram vinyl. The deluxe vinyl version is available for pre-order exclusively at CSNY.com and Rhino.com for $249.98. The music is also available now on digital download and streaming services and in high-resolution audio at www.neilyoungarchives.com.

Jackson Browne's new single

“My Cleveland Heart” out now

 

New Album Downhill From Everywhere out July 23, 2021

Jackson Browne has released his new single "My Cleveland Heart," available to stream/purchase worldwide. The single, co-written with his longtime guitarist Val McCallum, comes from Browne’s forthcoming album Downhill From Everywhere due out on July 23, through his label Inside Recordings. The album is also now available to preorder through Browne's website.

 

Stream/purchase "My Cleveland Heart" HERE

 

Preorder Downhill From Everywhere HERE

 

This week, Browne shared the music video for "My Cleveland Heart," directed by

Alissa Torvinen featuring a cameo by Phoebe Bridgers, with Rolling Stone saying, "It’s fitting for Bridgers — who has cited Browne as an influence and recently enlisted him to duet on 'Kyoto' — to receive his heart, almost like Browne is passing down the singer-songwriter torch."

 

Follow Jackson Browne:

Website - Facebook - Twitter - Instagram - YouTube

Jade Bird

Announces her new album: 

Different Kinds of Light

Due for release on August 13th via Glassnote Records

(pre-order HERE)

+

Releases Title Track

(Listen HERE)

The video for title track can be viewed HERE

Having teased her new album with a series of taster singles and live performances, acclaimed young British singer-songwriter Jade Bird has today confirmed details of the release. Different Kinds of Light is Jade’s sophomore record and will be released via Glassnote Records on August 13th, 2021. 

 

In advance of confirming details of the new album, Jade released  "Headstart" and  "Houdini" at the back end of 2020, followed more recently by the BBC Radio 1 play-listed single "Open up the heavens" and the live EP RCA Studio A Sessions, taken from her live stream show from the iconic studios earlier this year which once again showcased her natural talent, uncompromising sense of self and enviable musicianship to the world. Jade also recently played a sold out, socially-distanced US tour and turned in a brilliant performance of "Headstart" for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (HERE).

 

The RCA studios in Nashville and the americana/alt-rock music scene feature heavily in the life cycle of this new album as that’s where Jade majoritively recorded ‘Different Kinds of Light’ with powerhouse producer Dave Cobb (John Prine, Lady Gaga). Over the last 2 years, Jade has organically become part of a community of American songwriters and artists, and the likes of Jason Isbell, Sheryl Crow and Jade’s friend and collaborator, Brandi Carlile have all taken the British voice firmly under their wing.

 

Jade Bird’s self-titled debut album was received with much critical acclaim when it was released in 2019. Even as a first offering from the then 21 year old, the album helped set the bar for female musicianship in the current age, carried along by Jades mature and sharply observed narrative vignettes of relationships, divorce and everything in between. With this new album, Jade has grown, she’s travelled the world, collected stories, met fascinating new people, fathomed her own emotions and settled in Austin amongst a new and empowering musical family who showed her that a happier, more holistic and sustainable way of working was possible. This journey has helped her see love and relationships in a new light from her teenage self growing up in the UK. It’s been a gateway to self-discovery and an untangling of held onto experience. 

 

On the record Jade says "Different Kinds of Light at its most basic is about falling in love and at its most complex, the chaos of trying to get away from your past. I’ve written about fictional characters, about myself and people who don’t exist, or at least only exist in my mind, memory and imagination.

 

This record started in Japan, a small getaway from a busy year. We took it to Mexico, to Nashville and to upstate New York adding pieces of songs along the way until it became the different phases of who I am, what my relationship is and what my relationship to other people has become.

 

It’s been a big exploration through evenings and mornings spent under strange skies. With Different Kinds of Light came different kinds of clarity in my life."

 

For Jade, it’s always been important to stay connected to the music that she had written (as always), not capitalising on momentum or anyone else’s idea of a career plan. She had a taste of the hype cycle, making the BBC’s 2018 Sound Of… poll and being tipped everywhere from Vogue to Rolling Stone. Her debut album arrived a year later. Despite those early garlands, she didn’t become an overnight success. “I was really glad,” she says. “Musically I was not ready. Lyrically I was not ready. And mentally I was not ready.” Nevertheless, ‘Jade Bird’ received plaudits from the likes of Pitchfork and NPR. And it showed Jade, an obsessive at bettering her craft, how she wanted to build on the foundations she had laid.

 

If her debut reflected on “literally every male family member being absent, present, absent, present”, she says, ‘Different Kinds of Light’ reflects on what it means to stay, to love, to allow yourself to be loved. It’s about “being with somebody who you adore more than the whole world that hasn’t got the foundations to believe in themselves,” she says. “Hasn’t had people supporting them in a way that their potential can be realised, ‘cause they’ve been crippled by the people or environments that surround them.”

 

Jade translated these conflicted emotional states into sharply observed narrative vignettes that show her flair as a storyteller: the guy oblivious to what’s in front of him, the escape artist who confesses to being “asleep at the wheel my whole damn life”; the wastrel burning through their promise. “If I had a penny for all your potential, I’d be left drowning in my mouthful of metal,” Jade sings on Now Is the Time. It speaks to how quickly her writing has matured from the more polemical storytelling of her debut. “When you’re young, you sit in a chaos of emotions and desperately try to write out of it,” says Jade, who’s still only 23. “But when you’re older, you work out what’s affected you and why more clearly. It’s amazing what two years can do: it’s like you’re writing as you’re watching instead of writing to see.” 

 

In the studio with Dave Cobb, the two let Jade’s sound find its groove, joining tough 90s alt-rock and the melodicism of Blur and Oasis at their sweetest to the taut rattle of Iggy Pop’s The Passenger. “That rock element that I’ve been missing and deeply love,” is how Jade describes it. “If I’m in the car, that’s what I put on.” There’s also the spirit of Fleetwood Mac’s pop epics. Stevie Nicks’ Storms inspired Different Kinds of Light’s title track, written in summer 2019 while Jade toured the US with Jason Isbell and Father John Misty. “It says so much: ‘did not deal with the road’, ‘I have always been a storm’. There's so much in that record that breaks my whole being,” she says, melting. 

 

Any trepidation Jade might have felt about her profession on her debut album has now dissipated. “I never felt like I could call myself an artist – like, we’ll see. Whereas I know that’s my occupation now. That’s who I am, and that’s incredibly reassuring.” 

 

Jade Bird remains one of the most individual and exciting female voices out there. With Different Kinds of Light we find her cool, calm and collected - confidently striding ahead into her sure-to-be enthralling next chapter of her life and music. 

 

Different Kinds of Light - out August 13th on Glassnote Records -  Pre-order HERE

 

Tracklisting:

1. DKOL

2. Open up the heavens

3. Honeymoon

4. Punchline

5. Different Kinds Of Light

6. Trick Mirror

7. I’m Getting Lost

8. Houdini

9. 1994

10. Now is the Time

11. Candidate

12. Red White and Blue

13. Rely On

14. Prototype
     

Follow Jade Bird:

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube | Spotify  

2CELLOS RELEASE HAUNTING RENDITION OF

IMAGINE DRAGONS’ “DEMONS”

 

MARKS THE SECOND SINGLE & VIDEO RELEASE

FROM THE DUO IN 2021

 

GET THE SINGLE HERE; WATCH THE VIDEO HERE

New York, NY (May 21, 2021) – Croatian duo Luka Šulić and HAUSER of 2CELLOS are back with a new single and video, a beguiling cover ofImagine Dragons’ hit song, “Demons,” available today via Sony Music Masterworks. This rendition is the second release from the pair in 2021 to celebrate their 10-year-anniversary.

 

Filmed in a mysterious bunker in Istria, Croatia, the video for “Demons” begins with an ominous door in the middle of a forest. As the strings on the track continue to build in a hauntingly beautiful way, Hauser enters the frame, and takes viewers on a journey into the unknown. Luka and HAUSER see themselves on their cellos as they burst through each verse, the chorus, and the bridge. The combination of the visuals and the track is a cinematic, suspenseful, and soul-stirring experience.  

 

Purchase and stream “Demons” here.

Watch the music video here.

 

“We tried to simplify the arrangement without losing the power of the song,” said 2CELLOS. “We wanted to make sure it was a 2CELLOS arrangement without adding too much. It’s the perfect example of a combination of the emotional, beautiful, and powerful at the same time. It’s the nature of what we do.”

 

2CELLOS is the eclectic, international sensation comprised of two classically trained cellists who reached video viral fame on YouTube from their 2011 rendition of Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal.” The pair, Luka Šulić and HAUSER, have since created a name for themselves with their electric and dynamic playing style. Together, 2CELLOS have amassed a staggering 1.3 billion YouTube views, 5.5 million YouTube subscribers, 1 billion streams, and have sold nearly 1 million tickets. 2CELLOS have taken the cello to unimagined heights as their signature style breaks down the boundaries between genres of music, from classical and film music, to pop and rock. Known for their electric live performances, 2CELLOS have sold out shows across the globe at historic venues including New York City’s Radio City Music Hall, London’s Royal Albert Hall and the Sydney Opera House. The duo has performed alongside musical greats Steven Tyler, Andrea Bocelli, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Queens of the Stone Age and George Michael, to name a few, and was hand-picked by Sir Elton John to perform both as an opener as well as part of the iconic singer’s live band. 2CELLOS are celebrating their 10^th anniversary this year, and are working hard to continue reaching new stratospheres.

 

CONNECT WITH 2CELLOS

2CELLOS.com | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube | TikTok

 

Sony Music Masterworks comprises Masterworks, Sony Classical, Milan Records, XXIM Records and Masterworks Broadway imprints. For email updates and information please visit www.sonymusicmasterworks.com/.