A beautiful thing to think about is that stars on earth look like blobs, but in space, really defined structures.
Grace Ives, on her upcoming album, Janky Star
Brooklyn-based DIY artist, Grace Ives announced the release of her upcoming sophomore album, Janky Star in the beginning of April with “Lullaby.” The second single from the forthcoming album is my favorite breed of melancholy music; cleverly disguised with upbeat instrumentals, Ives sings of an introvert’s amplified anxiety on “Lullaby.” “What a mess, what a lovely mess,” she croons on the chorus. Whether she’s describing life, the spectrum of emotion, or the room in which a potentially agoraphobic individual might find comfort while watching the same movie over and over, she’s right. It’s all a lovely mess, isn’t it?
Ives described the song as the “homebody’s anthem” in a press release for the single, saying, “This song is about the comfort and anxiety that comes with isolating yourself.” The track is Ives’s groundhog day song, as it describes her experience of “living the same day over and over again.” A fitting theme for the cultural atmosphere of the times, “Lullaby” was brought to fruition with the help of producer Justin Raisen, who has worked with other avant-garde pop artists, such as Yves Tumor.
Ives’s discography, which consists of her experimental first album, 2nd, and her 2016 EP titled Really Hot, sees the artist on an expedition of musical exploration. Artists tend to explore different sounds with the hope of expansion. For Ives, it seems less about broadening her audience and more about broadening her perspective. In an interview with The FADER, Ives shared the confusing process of using “music as therapy,” saying, “On some of my songs, I don’t even know if I’m expressing something — but I can hear myself really wanting to say something, like there’s this unsettling feeling inside me.”
Janky Star is slated to be released on June 10th via True Panther Records.
TGG guest writer Molly MacDuff chats with Caroline Meade to discuss her latest single, “I HATE IT!” I don’t understand loving something and not doing itCaroline Meade “I write my meanest songs on my best days,” singer/songwriter Caroline Meade explains to me. On one of these days, “I HATE IT!” was born. As the first…
I have butterflies. Wonderful lilac and periwinkle and rosy butterflies flutter in circles around my heart, waking me from my dark dreams, dragging me into the sunlight, dancing me into summer. It’s been a while since I’ve felt love within a song. I’ve only been listening to melancholy music. Angrier guitar riffs, sad lyrics. It…
It satisfied something in me for the moment, and personally, it felt important to put out there and just not care how much attention it got. I can picture a flock of monarchs fluttering around in the bright morning sun. Birds chirping in the distance. I am dreaming and white sun peers through blinds, wasting…
I like working with the idea that songs don’t need to take a normal, organizational path
Sali
When I listen to this song, I picture an early spring sunset, blue and pink and yellow form a tie-dye sky. I’m on the train watching the sun slide beneath the city, the world passes by quickly but the song plays at regular speed. I am young and I am managing a difficult love. The song is “Please,” the most recent release by independent, Brooklyn-based artist, Sali.
This single, released today, April 22, follows her debut EP Charming, released March 2021. Graduating from Boston University in 2018, Sali developed her love of music and music production from her time in the BU Acapella community. This experience comes across in her music as angelic harmonies. She’s spent all her life in music, taking jazz and opera lessons as a child.
“Please” is more alternative than the previous tracks she’s released, as Sali wanted to bring in a bit more of a surf-rock vibe and branch out from the accessibility of hip-hop and pop production that she’s used to. As the first song she’s produced by herself, the shift is inspired by “living in Brooklyn and being more social.” Reggae with the bass, hip-hop on the drums, and a slow build to the ambient chorus are all components of the track that build this unique sound. “I like working with the idea that songs don’t need to take a normal, organizational path,” Sali explains. “I had this in mind with the cool outro that’s not exactly a bridge or an outro.”
Sali started writing this song based on some advice that her mother had given her about people who are withholding love or affection, the kind of people that want you to prove yourself to gain their attention. She explains that isn’t inherently romantic or based on a specific romance; she built it around this idea of having a relationship with a withholding person and the frustrating feeling that develops from managing it. “When you see the opposite of the withholding type of love, it’s so much more beautiful, even if you’re hurt or guarded,” Sali says.
For Sali, producing her own songs has been a liberating learning experience. She’s no longer working solo, but incorporating talented people from her community and from internet friends she made during the pandemic. “There’s a lot of collaging in songwriting and producing,” she states. “As a black woman in music, it can feel like you’re losing control.” Sali notes that she has to always think about who she’s involving in the process to make sure they respect her wishes and artistic vision. She’s grateful that everyone she’s worked with thus far is incredible, respectful, and supportive. “Please” is mixed by Daniel Chironno, mastered by Joshua Pleeter, recorded musician on bass is Jonathan Kim, and the lyrics and production are, of course, done by Sali. Her friends teach her a lot about production, and she relies on her influences and surroundings to inspire her creatively.
Her next EP called Other People, which includes “Please,” is set to be released this summer, with a scheduled release party to go with it. She’s just recently begun to perform her tracks live, singing and playing with a band this past Monday, April 18th at the East Berlin in NYC. Of the future, Sali laughs as she says, “Production will always be a process because I want to be really, really good.” Listening to “Please,” you can hear the simplistic yet pleading tone she presents, not only through her poetic lyricism but through her production as well. This is a track for young people in the city, created by one and the same.
In 2021, singer-songwriter and guitarist, Ariane Roy was presented with Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame’s Slaight Music Emerging Songwriter Award. Now, although the first, say, 13 times I listened to “Ta main,” it was based on pure vibes alone. After translating the lyrics to English (I do not speak nor understand French– well, maybe a tiny bit now), I see why she was presented with this award.
“Ta main,” or “your hand,” is a song written about desire. In the song, Roy describes an exciting, intimate encounter backed by jaunty, infectiously dance-inducing instrumentals. The first verse is pure poetry, even as poorly translated to English: “Your trembling hand / A labyrinth on my skin / All the paths it walks / Get lost on my bones.” The undertones of enchantment in Roy’s voice, the melody, and instrumentals in “Ta main” culminate a perfect spring song.
The single was released in October of 2020 with a beautifully whimsical music video directed by Adrian Villagomez. In the video, we see stunning, sprawling shots of varying landscapes, sexually-spurring shots of lovers and friends, breaking tides and dancers in lobster costumes.
In February of this year, Roy released her debut album, medium plaisir, or “medium pleasure.” In tandem with the album, Roy released Le Grand Plaisir, an incredibly creative visual for the album, also directed by Villagomez. In the 20-minute video, Roy performs in a warmly-lit room with her equally talented band on a circular stage surrounded by walls of curtains.
Performing 6 tracks from the album, Roy and Villagomez create a rollercoaster of an experience. At one point, during “Le paradis de l’amour,” the room is invaded by lovers in rain ponchos, enjoying the physical spoils of human connection. Later, during “Apprende encore,” the lovers return, sans ponchos, and strip the musicians of their instruments, turning the performance into an underwear-clad dance party.
Jessica K
Jessica is a writer in her late twenties and is casually withering away in the Midwestern Wasteland of Central Indiana.
The man behind the curtain of Papercuts, Jason Quever, is a lifetime student of the philosophy of music. Gaining and imparting his wisdom throughout his musical career, his talent for arrangement has graced tracks belonging to Beach House, Sugar Candy Mountain, and more.
Papercuts’ latest single, “Palm Sunday,” was released ahead of the band’s forthcoming album, Past Life Regression, which is set to release April 1. The single is an apt representation of where psych-pop-turned-folk Papercuts excels: lofty instrumentals weighted with wistful lyricism. Quever describes the single as being about “lost love and unfulfilled potential.” In a press release for the single, Quever shared, “It’s about someone you never quite forgot about, but left you feeling epically let down and full of longing.”
The single is paired with a music video depicting phone calls back and forth between lovers. Beautifully capturing the melancholy of “maybes” and “what ifs,” “Palm Sunday” evokes one of the most dreaded human emotions: regret.
Jessica K
Jessica is a writer in her late twenties and is casually withering away in the Midwestern Wasteland of Central Indiana.
At one of Couch’s very first shows, playing in Cambridge, Massachusetts’s Harvard Square, keyboard player Danny Silverston returned to his keyboard post-show to find a pillow with the face of Jeff Goldblum planted on the keys. To this day, the origin of the pillow remains a mystery. However, it has become a pinnacle of the band’s personality and charisma, making an appearance at each show.
Initially formed in the summer of 2018, Couch consists of seven members: Jeffrey Pinsker-Smith, Jared Gozinsky, Danny Silverston, Will Griffin, Eric Tarlin, Tema Siegal, and Zach Blankstein. Being such a large group, everyone takes control of their own instrumentation. This, in turn, enables different flavors and a conglomerate of influences to create their cohesive sound that falls somewhere in the soul/pop category.
Couch members, left to right: Zach, Jared, Eric, Tema, Jeffrey, Danny and Will
Couch is a long-distance band, with its members spread across the country. In their first few years, the recording process was completely remote. Each member added their instrumentation and vocals and passed it to the next, like Popcorn. The members play this same game as they rotate calling on each other to share their prominent influences. Jared, Jeffrey, and Eric discuss jazz, blues, and pop as their primary influences; Tema shares Carole King, Rachel Price, and Tracy Chapman as a few of her inspirations; Will highlights his love for classic and heavy rock, pointing to the Beatles album covers decorating his wall; Zach reminisces on growing up listening to Jewish music, motown, and modern pop soul bands such as Lake Street Dive and Lawrence. All of these different backgrounds mesh into the strong lyrics and melodic forms that make up Couch’s music.
Lead singer, Tema Siegel discusses the development of their early songs, such as “Easy to Love.” After putting together the lyrics, Tema shared, “Zach and I would share voice memos back and forth of chord progressions, and we’d meet up over school breaks with ideas.” More of the members became involved during the pandemic and with the creation of the EP.
For Couch, the songwriting process is morphing by transitioning to more in-person meetings and practice time. “Before, we’d cram like eight hours of rehearsing into a day, since we had limited time meeting together in person,” trumpeter Jeffrey Pinsker-Smith explains. “There were a lot of times when being a long-distance band was exhausting.” Because of these changes, Couch’s debut EP Couch , released in 2021, includes three or four credited writers on most tracks.
The band explains how sometimes a song can start with one particular vibe and chord progression, but it ends up sounding completely different through the production and collaboration process. The identity of the song is flexible through all of the pieces beginning to come together through recording.
“The identity of a song can seriously change,” saxophonist Eric Tarlin explains. “With ‘Still Feeling You’, that song was originally guitar and voice driven, an upbeat singer-songwriter song. But we pushed it more towards a disco-pop track, like Dua Lipa or Charlie Puth, with dramatic builds and a groovy chorus.”
Through the recording process, the band is constantly keeping in mind the different ways in which the audience is listening, from streaming the music to the live shows. “When we play these songs live, we’re adapting to the arrangements to work with just the actual number of bodies we have on stage,” Tarlin says. “We rely more on our individual acts of brute force as we each contribute to the project.” Couch has managed to translate this immaculately on stage.
This past fall, Couch went on tour for the first time as a whole, cohesive band, opening for Sammy Rae & The Friends, along with finishing the late fall tour with Juice. “This experience has been a dream come true. It was a joy,” guitarist Zach Blankstein says.
Being around creative inspirations and meeting other musicians has helped the band transform their own sound and gain confidence in their performances. “It was so valuable and educational to simply watch them,” Siegel says of the experience. “Our personalities began to show more in the live performance. We became goofier on stage.”
Couch performing at Higher Ground in South Burlington, VT
The transition from completely remote production and collaboration to touring was unusual for the band, but seeing their hard work pay off and watching the audience react was worth the wait. “We’re all musicians who are used to performing, so I don’t think any of us joined a band with the idea that we’d be in a band for three years without playing any shows,” Siegel laughs. “Now we’re finally able to play together.”
Couch’s entire catalog to date was released before the band had performed live this fall. With that in mind, the band has had to adapt their music for live performances, adding acapella moments, clapping, and improvised solos and riffs. “We’ve opened up a lot more with this and have gone in a more jammy direction,” Blankstein summarizes. “We’re combining the two processes, and trying to find the balance between studio and live performances.”
The fall touring experience is just the beginning for this Boston-based band. Just before the new year, Couch was featured on Firehouse Music Sessions, where they played acoustic versions of some unreleased tracks. They’ve recently signed with the booking agency, Royal Artists Group, which represents some of their favorite artists. “We’re working with two people who’ve helped us book shows and gotten us into the summer festival scene,” Blankstein mentions. “It’s already helped a ton with our time management and making connections within the industry.”
New music is in the works and two upcoming shows have already been announced: March 5th at the Knitting Factory in NYC and March 18th at the Met in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. For the latter show, Couch will be sharing the stage with another band, Orange Guava Passion, where the theme is Spring Fling. The band calls for fans to dress in their school dance attire, another testament to the importance of connecting with the audience. The band is active on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube with more updates and content.
“We wouldn’t be the band that we are without that initial remote time,” Tarlin concludes. This experience allowed Couch to go into their first tour with a fan base already established. “It was really rewarding and cool to see people familiar with our songs, singing along in the audience.”
For Couch, being able to perform live, meet fans, and connect with them through shows has been the most notable part of their musical journey. “Without listeners and without fans, Couch wouldn’t really be a thing,” drummer Jared Gozinsky says. “In one way or another, we’re always writing for the people who are listening to us.”
Molly MacDuff
Molly MacDuff is a writer and editor currently attending Emerson College’s Publishing and Writing MA program.
An album that feels like an unchaperoned walk through dark and empty streets on a holiday back home– Lonesome Reunion is Cassidy Waring’s tormented debut.
Picture: families cozied up in warm houses, with bellies full and throats sore from a healthy balance of laughter and bickering as you carry on with your solitary stroll. Canadian folk singer-songwriter, Cassidy Waring‘s Lonesome Reunion is comparable to holding a snow globe. As an omnipotent outsider, you peer into a world so perfect, it’s almost fictitious. Knowing that life imitates art somehow makes beholding this tiny treasure more isolating– to know there are little towns with little houses and little families as happy as the replica you hold in your hands and yet, still so far removed from you.
Cassidy Waring photographed by Emile Benjamin
Everything you lose, needs to lose you.
Waring, “Everything You Lose”
A poignant, personal display of loss of innocence, Lonesome Reunion is somewhat of a study on the complexities of family and grief. Recorded and mastered by producer Jonathon Anderson, Lonesome Reunion features deep, folk-rooted instrumentals and sweeping, catchy melodies. Waring’s debut came to fruition after she sat for hours on end watching old VHS tapes of her family. The album’s intro, “Everybody’s Good,” features audio from one of these tapes. In the intro, we hear intimate, playful banter between Waring’s grandfather– to whom she affectionately refers as “Grandug”– and then-3-year-old Waring. “The tapes have become fascinating to watch because they are such a contrast to my painful memories as a teenager,” Waring stated in an email to The Greater Good.
The tapes, to Waring, are an ode to the glory of innocence and blissful ignorance only possessed in early childhood. “Part of me is comforted by them, they have served as proof that I have never been wrong about the amount of love and warmth that surrounded me as a kid and that we really were as happy and healthy as everyone remembers. It’s also confusing and devastating to watch these videos knowing what will happen for us in the future,” Waring stated. “When I was seventeen my mom died and her cause of death was chronic ethanol abuse,” the artist shared with me. “She and I were still very close when she passed. The main statement from anyone in and around my family is usually ‘But they were so happy, what happened?'”
Lonesome Reunion cover photo by Emile Benjamin
On the outside, Waring’s family could have lived in that aforementioned snow globe: “We were one of those families that went on bike rides together every week and talked about our feelings at the dinner table. It’s something I am still trying to understand, what pulled both my parents into addiction when I was about twelve. Very quickly, our house became a dangerous place to be, physically and mentally. I’ve just been trying to understand both of my parents and their relationship in a deeper way, after the fact.”
Waring released a music video for the fourth track on the album in September. In it, we see the songwriter through several days of sitting in front of an old CRT TV, captivated by family pictures in motion. “Leaving” is a wistful track about managing grief, with guitars sounding similar to what you may find yourself doing after listening this song (crying). I’d wager it nearly impossible not to feel a catch in your throat as Waring sings, “If I believed in ghosts, would you haunt me just to talk?”
Led by melancholy piano keys, “Everything You Lose” is another painfully intimate look into the stages of grief. The song was written after Waring experienced a series of losses including the ending of a romantic relationship and the break-up of her last band, all while still grappling with the loss of family years later. “I lost the sympathy cards from my mother’s funeral,” Waring sings.
When asked about this line, Waring said she was with her boyfriend at the time when she lost them: “Someone broke into his car in the mall parking lot and stole everything, including my big stack of unopened sympathy cards everyone gave me– I wasn’t ready to open them yet. What are the chances! After that verse poured out, so did the rest of the song.” Waring sings, “Everything you lose, needs to lose you.” Perhaps that sentiment works in reverse and everything that finds you, needs to find you.
Jessica K
Jessica is a writer in her late twenties and is casually withering away in the Midwestern Wasteland of Central Indiana.
Ahead of her forthcoming album, Public Storage, bedroom-pop artist Hana Vu releases latest single, “Keeper.”
What goes up, must come down– as with summer loving comes autumn heartbreak. Luckily, bedroom-pop artist, Hana Vu has provided us with the perfect bed to cry on with her latest single, “Keeper.” Encompassed by a haze of synths, “Keeper” emphasizes that we all have a choice; how we choose to view situations can differ greatly from how those situations may actually be. From wearing rose-colored glasses (“Are you a dreamer? / Oh, I dream in gold / Are you my keeper?”) to adopting a villainous narrative (“Oh, I’m fake, unreal / and all other evil things you think that I could be.”), Vu traverses different lenses and masks of the truth with the track.
Hana Vu photographed by Jing Feng
The single was released in conjunction with a music video featuring Vu performing emotive choreography by Jas Lin. After hearing the single, the video’s director, Maegan Houang, wanted to create a visual that would stress how isolating it can be to feel invisible or misunderstood: “By shooting the video in a single take we never let the audience off the hook. Just like Hana, we’re trapped in a cycle of being constantly ignored. I set the film in a family environment because as viewers we usually associate families with a sense of security and safety. The family environment created a contrast to Hana’s bursting performance and underscored the pain of not being visible, even sometimes by your own relatives.”
“these public expressions of thoughts, feelings, baggage, experiences that accumulate every year and fill little units such as ‘albums.’”
Hana Vu
“Keeper” is a satiating appe-teaser from Vu’s forthcoming album, Public Storage, set to be released via Ghostly Nov. 5. Having moved around a lot as a child, Vu and her family made good use of storage units, hence the album’s title. Vu takes a similar approach to writing, producing and curating her chronicles as one does to moving house. A press release for the album describes Public Storage as Vu excavating an internal universe: “loading and unpacking memories, moods, and imagined scenes with brooding introspection, agency, charisma, and conviction.” Written from her bedroom, Vu describes the collection as “these public expressions of thoughts, feelings, baggage, experiences that accumulate every year and fill little units such as ‘albums.’” For most of us, our baggage tends to remain hidden and tucked away, but the courageous 21-year-old is proudly displaying her skeletons.
Hana Vu photographed by Jing Feng
The album’s lead single, “Maker,” is very sonically different from synth-heavy, booming “Keeper.” The track is a gentle, banjo-driven cry to the universe: “Save me, oh, my angel /Are you angry? / ‘Cause I’m not strongеr and I crumble / Oh, that’s my nature / Just like you.” Vu explained her thought process behind writing the song: “I am not religious but I imagined a sort of desolate character crying out to an ultimately punitive force for something more.”
We are still allowed to feel lost and search for meaning in everything we encounter, that the journey may be long and scary but we will all end up back in the fold of safety eventually or just where we’re meant to be.
“Maker” music video director, Lucy Sandler, via press release
The video for the single, directed by Lucy Sandler, provides a stunning visual representation of desperately seeking refuge, peace and guidance during times of feeling lost. Sandler stated: “I want the little girl to speak to everyone’s inner child, and remind us that nothing has really changed. We are still allowed to feel lost and search for meaning in everything we encounter, that the journey may be long and scary but we will all end up back in the fold of safety eventually or just where we’re meant to be.”
Jessica K
Jessica is a writer in her late twenties and is casually withering away in the Midwestern Wasteland of Central Indiana.
Imagine hovering just a few inches above the ground, donning a pearly-white smile with a far-off look in your eye, a gentle hum of strings following you wherever you find yourself. This is how I envision neo-soul songstress, Mereba, drifting through her day-to-day life. The Philadelphia native released an equally ethereal EP last month. 7 tracks of musings tinted in beguiling shades of hazel and cinnamon, AZEB follows Mereba’s 2018 album, The Jungle is the Only Way Out.
There are three common themes spread throughout the EP: war, peace and gold. “Aye, aye, it’s a war like every day / Keep my gold up in my safe / They won’t bring me to my knees,” Mereba croons on the project’s intro, “Aye.” On the track, the artist navigates combat while clinging to pacifism: “I’m tryna master peace / Please don’t you disturb me / Your weapons can’t hurt me / My essence is shot-proof.”
AZEB‘s minimalist approach to production leaves plenty of space for Mereba to do what she does best: flex her songwriting talent. AZEB is laden with social commentary cloaked in and intertwined with poetry, a skill that Mereba executes better than many songwriters today. The artist’s folkloric songwriting ability is the brush she uses to paint dark realities a golden hue. This has been proven true with previous tracks like TJITOWO’s “Heatwave” and “Black Truck.”
The music video for the EP’s first single, “Rider,” sees Mereba and company in the middle of a barren desert landscape. The scene is almost dystopian, like a crew of drifters seeking refuge in a post-apocalyptic era. The song itself is a declaration of commitment to a deserving lover: “I needed a real one/ Call me if you’re on the run / You knew just what it was / I knew just what it was / We knew that it was love.”
References of gold are generously sprinkled throughout AZEB. Similar to Mick Jenkins’s proclivity for drinking more water, gold to Mereba is representative of pure, all-encompassing love. “I want to remind people of love, too. The very thing we deserve the right to do, and to be,” the artist has stated. On “Go(l)d,” Mereba solidifies this deduction by equating it to being “like a lighthouse in a blackout,” even as “the world we know, it went up in smoke.”
“I want to remind people of love, too. The very thing we deserve the right to do, and to be.”
Mereba
“Beretta,” my personal favorite track on the project, is a song gilded in optimism and commitment: “If this ink could seep into your cerebellum / I would so eloquently scribe my feelings unto thee / So that you would never not remember / But lemme see, if the way I feel for you is reciprocated too.”
“Another Kin,” the project’s only interlude, highlights the mental and emotional fatigue of seeing death day in and day out. Clocking in at just one minute and eighteen seconds, “Another Kin” is a gentle proclamation of how grief has become a daily occurrence for people of color. “News Come” is a more in-depth plea, rather– demand, for social and racial justice, equality and a call for reparations: “I’m done being nervous / When they see us switch lanes and swerve it / Ah, we’re diamonds under the dirt here / System don’t deserve us.”
The title of the project, AZEB, is Mereba’s middle name. The word is an Amharic term for the very point in which the sun rises. With this project, one can assume Mereba hopes to not only shed light on systems that directly affect her and many others but to also bring light and precious gold to those who may be stuck in the dark.
The Greater Good 