Jeremy Dutcher "Motewolonuwok"
From Secret City Records:
“There is no one making music like this” – NPR Music
Dutcher originally vaulted himself into the upper echelons of Canadian performance with his 2018 debut, Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa. Since winning the Polaris and JUNO Prizes, performing for NPR Tiny Desk, and collaborating with Yo-Yo Ma, Buffy St. Marie and Beverly Glenn Copeland, Dutcher returns with a moving and radiant exploration of contemporary Indigeneity and his place within it, presenting his most expansive work yet.
The Motewolonuwok album inspiration began with a poem by Cherokee writer Qwo-li Driskill. “From the heavy debris of loss, together we emerge,” a singular story of a two-spirit kin who was taken too soon, and calls us all together to witness, celebrate and heal. Jeremy sings in Wolastoqey — his native tongue, considered an endangered language — anchoring his work while he continues to reimagine the song traditions of his people from the banks of the Wolastoq River, just like he had previously done on his first full-length.
The new album also marks Dutcher’s first time writing and singing in English. A powerful invitation for collective healing and understanding. “Shared tongue is a beautiful gift, with a complicated reason,” Dutcher explains. These new English songs are also a way of singing directly to the newcomer, or settler, in their own language — a direct line of communication that seeks to platform his community’s stories of healing, resilience, and emergence to all that may hear.
'68 "Yes, and…"
From Distorted Sound Magazine:
Titled Yes, And…, the upcoming album from the Atlanta-based rock duo is the follow-up to 2021’s Give One Take One, and is scheduled to be released later this month, via Pure Noise Records.
Speaking about the upcoming new album, vocalist/guitarist Josh Scogin says, “this is by far the heaviest album ’68 has ever done. It wasn’t on purpose, it just sort of evolved into what it is. As soon as we could see the full gravitas of the album, we just leaned into it. Many of the bluesy tracks didn’t find a home and some of the parts that were on the fence, we doused with gasoline. For us, the pendulum has never been extended so far, in one direction. This is exciting because it was obvious how this album needed to turn out and it pretty much solidifies how the next album will end up as well.”
La Force "XO SKELETON"
XO SKELETON is the supple, steady, uncanny new album by La Force: a mixture of haunted pop and hot-blooded R&B that glistens at the meeting-point between life, death, and love. The album, coproduced by La Force and Warren Spicer (Plants and Animals), will be available everywhere in digital and LP format on September 29 via Secret City Records. La Force also shares Fall tour dates: three headlining shows in Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa presenting the new album, as well as European support dates for Patrick Watson.
Willow Butler + Sister Squares "Will Butler + Sister Squares"
From the Brooklyn Vegan:
Will Butler and his band Sister Squares (Miles Francis, Julie Shore, Will’s wife Jenny Shore, and Sara Dobbs) will release their new self-titled album on September 22 via Merge. “After Generations, I considered making a weird solo record,” says Will of the new album. “Me alone in the basement, etc, etc. Mostly I realized that what I wanted was the opposite.”
“I had quit my band Arcade Fire very recently, after 20 years—maybe the most complex decision of my life,” Will says of the circumstances leading up to this album. “I had spent the preceding two years at home with my three children. I was 39 years old. I was waking up every morning and reading Emily Dickinson, until I had read every Emily Dickinson poem. I was listening to Morrissey, to Shostakovich, to the Spotify top 50. I had unformed questions with inchoate answers. But, honestly, I was feeling great about the record.”