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Month: January 2019

Fidlar Breakdown Their New Album

Fidlar
Jason Tate

Fidlar have done a track by track breakdown of their new album for Consequence of Sound:

So, I grew up in Hawaii. [“Get Off My Rock”] originally started as a song about Los Angeles. It was supposed to be “Get Off My Block.” In the neighborhood I moved into, there was just a lot of backlash for people moving into it, you know? Gentrification and everything like that. When I went back to Hawaii, I saw it at a whole different scale. I hadn’t gone back to Hawaii in three years, and I went back and just saw my neighborhood totally change.

It was basically one of the first ideas written for this record. That song was an experiment that was like, basically, how do you get away with doing a song like that without any punk drums or whatever. It was […] more like a Beastie Boys vibe than anything. We just used a bunch of drum machines and stuff like that instead of a bunch of guitar pedals and guitars and distortion. It was a weird experiment that just took on a life of its own I guess.

5 Seconds of Summer Working on New Album

5 Seconds of Summer
Jason Tate

Michael Clifford of 5 Seconds of Summer confirmed the band is working on a new album with Loudwire:

“We actually just started working on our fourth record on Monday. So it’s happening, it’s in the works and it’s happening right now,” Clifford says. When asked for a timeline for a release date for new music, he said, “Who knows. We’re looking at all possibilities, it could be this year or could be next.”

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The Better Oblivion Community Center Interview Roundup

Better Oblivion Community Center 2
Jason Tate

It’s Better Oblivion Community Center roundup time.

We’ve got an interview with DIY Mag:

“I was spending a lot of time in LA in the last couple of years, and I ended up hanging out with Phoebe and her friends a lot,” Conor explains, speaking to DIY over the phone from his native Omaha, Nebraska, where he and Phoebe are recording in the run-up to Christmas. “They’re always working on songs together, and trying to write for different people’s records, and their own records, so it’s a cool scene to be around.” He continues: “[There are] a lot of songwriters that are happy to share their songs and so we just wrote one of those songs on a whim, and then it turned into…’let’s do another one!’ And then ‘maybe we’ll make a single!’ and then…” Well, then it turned into the Better Oblivion Community Center.

A video interview with NME:

Asked why they chose to release the album by surprise, Bridgers told NME: “I really wanted to, because even before we started this I had a really good idea of what our hypothetical band would sound like. I don’t think it does like sound that, so I wanted to make sure that people didn’t think it was going to sound a certain way. It’s not duet-y. I think we stayed pretty true to it being its own band.”

An interview with Rolling Stone:

Bridgers and Oberst, who plan to take their new band on the road this spring, share a jovial familiarity with one another. Discussing the album in advance of its surprise release, Bridgers explains the process of deciding who sang lead on which song: “Conor — sorry to speak for you — but Conor doesn’t sing harmony.”

“No offense taken,” he replies with a chuckle.

“I would make an active choice to be like, ‘Okay, I always sing harmony, so on a couple of these songs I want Conor to sing harmony,’” Bridgers continues.

“It made me a better singer to have to do that,” Oberst adds. “It was cool to stretch myself a bit. It’s definitely not my strong suit, but Phoebe’s really fucking great at it. So to have a vocal coach like her being there being like, ‘No, you can do it. Try harder…’”

And an audio interview with Matt Wilkinson at Beats 1.

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PledgeMusic Owes Artists Thousands of Dollars

Billboard
Jason Tate

Colin Stutz, writing at Billboard:

According an anonymous former employee who wished to remain anonymous, the root of these problems is improper money management where PledgeMusic failed to hold artists’ campaign funds separately and securely and instead invested it back into the company. The idiom “robbing Peter to pay Paul” came up in many conversations describing PledgeMusic’s actions and as the company’s growth slowed the situation worsened. Over the last year, according to the former employee, in effort to reduce overhead, PledgeMusic also laid off about a third of its U.S. staff and moved out of its New York offices into a WeWork shared workspace.

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