After spending two years living on opposite coasts and pursuing their own creative projects, Ivan Howard and Kelly Crisp returned last spring to set to work on the sixth full-length album from the Rosebuds. Joining up with Bon Iver frontman Justin Vernon (a friend and former bandmate who, in a 2011 interview, noted that the Rosebuds make “some of the most important music in the world”), the North Carolina-bred duo spent a week in Vernon’s studio teasing out a batch of songs that effortlessly weave the hooky songcraft of classic jangle-pop, the cagey romanticism of new wave, and a refined yet full-hearted sensibility all their own. Featuring Vernon on guitar and synths—as well as Bon Iver drummer Matt McCaughan and and Sylvan Esso's Nick Sanborn on bass, both longtime pals and cohorts of the Rosebuds—the resulting Sand + Silence radiates both a graceful intensity and the loose, joyful energy that comes from making music with friends.

Extracting brilliance from easy collaboration is old hat to the Rosebuds, who formed in 2001 and carried out their first live shows as performance-art pieces that turned the stage into a replica of their own living room. “From the beginning we knew we weren’t going to be a regular band, that we wanted to keep it fun and creative, like an ongoing art project,” says Crisp. With their most recent releases including collections of original Christmas and Halloween songs and a record of Sade covers, the Rosebuds catalog reveals the restlessness of their creative appetites by shifting from the acoustic balladry of 2005’s Birds Make Good Neighbors to the dark synth-pop of 2007’s Night of the Furies to the dreamy indie-rock of 2011’s Loud Planes Fly Low. “One of the main things that’s kept this band going is we have no rules about what kind of music we should record or who can help us record it” says Howard. “We’ve always kept it free and open, and never been scared to go in strange directions. The songs themselves, whatever they want to become, are always first.” But despite the anything-goes approach, the Rosebuds invariably stay true to a melody-centric musicality that’s driven by their singular chemistry, delicately crafted songwriting, and untamable excitement about the possibilities in making art.

Co-produced by the Rosebuds, Vernon, and BJ Burton, Sand + Silence began when Howard (who had recently launched a solo project under the name Howard Ivans) came to New York in early 2013 to work with Crisp (who had newly entered Columbia University’s graduate program for fiction writing). While their original intention was to revamp a number of songs cut from Loud Planes Fly Low and turn those tracks into an EP, Howard ended up sitting down at a piano in the studio and sketching out a whole new series of songs. “I decided to quit trying to force the older songs into something that worked for us, and instead write some new ideas and just see what happened without any pretense,” he says. “Right away it just felt really good and sounded like a new Rosebuds record to me—the tone and melodies reminded me of the lightness of the early Rosebuds days, with this feeling of the music being new and inspiring but still so simple that almost anybody could play it.” Once they settled into Vernon’s April Base Studio in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, the Rosebuds devoted a week to bringing those new songs to life by recording live (a previously unexplored tactic for the band). “Everyone in the room we were working with is such a great musician, so we’d hit record and the whole thing would just sail,” says Crisp. “Everything would get done in just one or two takes, and the songs all ended up having this buoyancy to them.”

The Rosebuds - "Blue Eyes"

Buy the Cruel Kids EP now at: https://halcyondrive.bandcamp.com

Produced, Recorded and Mixed by Steven Schram 
Mastered by Brian Lucey @ Magic Garden Mastering LA

Photography and artwork by www.robertoechsle.com

LYRICS:
We are the bastion,
We are the final test,
We are the questions you haven't answered yet,

And now I'm waking it up,
To a fight, to a lie,
I've gotta wake it up tonight,

I'm talking about the Cruel Kids,
The Cruel Kids, they're dancing on your tombstone,
Your tombstone, they're breaking all the rules kids, the rules,
Kid's are lonelier than Crusoe.

Well it's been a year since she appeared
On the island in my middle ear,
It's the closest that I've ever been,
Yea I'm talking about a different scene,

I'm talking about the Cruel Kids,
The Cruel Kids, they're dancing on your tombstone,
Your tombstone, they're breaking all the rules kids, the rules,
Kid's are lonelier than Crusoe.

Hey, won't
Hey I won't,
Hey I'm ready,
I won't, I'm ready
I won't, I'm ready

I'm talking about the Cruel Kids,
The Cruel Kids, they're dancing on your tombstone,
Your tombstone, they're breaking all the rules kids, the rules,
Kid's are lonelier than Crusoe.

Crusoe

Medic

HEIM is a new Norwegian pop-duo. Their dripping, pumping, freshly made single "Secret" is an electro-organic symbiosis of pop, pastel and longing. In a porous soundscape with Påls pulse and Åse Avas breath.

Secret

Mirrors facing Mirrors facing Mirrors facing Mirrors facing Mirrors facing Mirrors facing Mirrors

Blue Mirror

From the 'Bad::Better' EP, available now via Light Organ Records.

Download: http://apple.co/1ODoPwC
Stream: http://smarturl.it/badbetter

www.finetimes.ca
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youtube.com/finetimesfinetimes
play.spotify.com/artist/5f0e3HVbhcQhIl0gwJHsLq

********

“I unabashedly love pop music,” explains Fine Times singer Matthew Moldowan. “I couldn’t consider doing anything else.”

This, in a nutshell, explains the Vancouver duo’s reason for being. Longtime friends Moldowan and bassist Jeffrey Josiah Powell have been striving to achieve pop perfection since founding Fine Times in 2010. Their self-titled album came out on Light Organ Records in 2012, charting nationally on !earshot’s campus radio charts and earning nominations at the 2013 Indie Awards and the 2013 Western Canadian Music Awards.

Now, Fine Times has upped its game with a hook-filled batch of songs recorded with The Zolas' Tom Dobrzanski at his Monarch Studios. With mixing by Dave Bascombe (Charli XCX, Depeche Mode), the songs blend ebullient melodies with an undercurrent of lyrical darkness, seamlessly incorporating synth-spiked new wave, bass-blasted industrial pop and bubbly dance-rock.

“We really wanted to get the songs as short as possible,” Moldowan says. “Those are the kind of pop songs that I like. Get in, get out.”

Not Dead

Between Two Minds

I'm Not Dead released February 24th 2017.

Hide in the Ocean

I'm Not Dead

"Say" is the first track of Best Behavior's upcoming EP "Things That Happened' available in fall 2017

8/4/2017

Free Download

Released via Elephant Records September 29.

Produced by Mr BJ Jackson - www.mrbjjackson.com
Mixed by Donald Clark
Mastered by Nick Watson

Getting Over You (By Dressing Up Like You)

Army Of One

follow Simon's new project polythene here -> https://soundcloud.com/polythene-world

Wake available on spotify - https://open.spotify.com/album/0BPrVYosgdffeFoPwZQdc2

Only Bodies OUT NOW:

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/only-bodies/id888305690

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