[Listen/Download] – Guards – Entire EP Featuring Cults & Caroline Polachek
I know next to nothing about this band, other than Cults made a tweet late last night/early this morning saying they were featured on the new EP by a band called Guards and they linked to their Bandcamp page.
So check it out I did and I’m glad I did, because it’s pretty fucking impressive. It’s seven songs long and is tagged as “alternative, doom, new wave, power pop, rock & roll, New York”. I looked for a MySpace/Twitter/Facebook page and came up short. Regardless, just enjoy this stunning, fresh, new lo-fi summer gem. Not only does it feature Cults but also Chairlift’s Caroline Polachek.
UPDATE: So I got in touch with the band (it’s actually just Richie on his own) who wrote back and told me that they don’t have a MySpace (“Bandcamp is the future”) and he sent me a press photo. Also, there seems to be more than just a working relationship between Guards and Cults, as Richie (unless it’s a giant coincidence) is related to Madeline from Cults, sharing the same last name (Follin). The talent clearly runs in the family, as does their apparent “love” for the mysterious (when Cults first appeared nobody knew anything about them, other than the fact that they were awesome, and the same holds true here too). He’s also got another solo project and another band (The Willowz).
Keep up to date with Guards – Bandcamp
Guards – “Resolution Of One”
Guards – “Trophy Queen” (featuring Caroline Polachek)
Guards – “Sail It Slow” (featuring Cults)
Guards – “Don’t Wake The Dead”
Guards – “Crystal Truth”
Guards – “Long Time”
Guards – “I See It Coming”
[Listen/Download] – Brand New Song By Cults – “Oh My God”
I gush, what can I say? Sorry? Ok, maybe sometimes a “sorry” is warranted, but most of the time it’s not because I’m not the only one gushing.
The latter part of that sentence is definitely true for Cults. I gushed back in March when they showed up unannounced out of nowhere and turned us all on. I gushed when Forest Family Records told us they were their first signing/release on the new label, and I gushed when I got the limited edition vinyl.
Now I’m gushing because thanks to Adult Swim’s glorious 8 Singles in 8 Weeks project, we now have a brand new, gush-worthy Cults song. It’s a little more upbeat than their previous three songs and the words are easier to make out, but it still has that sweet summer Cults sound to it. Give it a listen below as well as the lead track for their first 7″ single “Go Outside”. They also did a video for it, their first ever video (other than that video that was doing the rounds a month or two ago of them playing live).
Cults – “Oh My God”
Cults – “Go Outside”
[Watch] – Cults Play “Go Outside” Live In NYC
Along with Gauntlet Hair, Sleigh Bells, BRAHMS, and Burnt Ones, Cults round out my top five buzz bands of the year so far.
They burst onto the scene back in late February, early March with three ridiculously catchy songs, the biggest hit of which was “Go Outside”. This is what appears to be the first video of them playing anything live, and the sound is just as good as on the 7″ they released via Forest Family Records a few weeks back. It was recorded at NYC’s Mercury Lounge at the start of May and shows the pair (Brian Oblivion and Madeline Follin) doing a damn fine job of bringing their big sound to the live stage.
Deek it below and have a gander at my write-up about them back in March and listen to their three songs; “Go Outside”, “Most Wanted”, and “The Curse”.
Cults Sign To Brand New Record Label – Forest Family Records
Cults, the mysterious and much hyped band that burst onto the scene a few weeks back have signed with Forest Family Records. FFR is a brand new record label, founded by Gorilla vs Bear and Weekly Tape Deck, and their first release is a limited 7″ run of 400 copies of “Go Outside” (the song that put Cults on the map), pressed on bright yellow vinyl with the B-Side “Most Wanted”. The single drops on April 20th and you can pre-order it from their site for $8.
Also, for every order placed on their site, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to a charity that benefits animals. So, go order. I did.
Check out “Go Outside”, “Most Wanted” and “The Curse” below.
(via Gorilla vs Bear)
[Discover] – Cults – [Indie-Soul]
Eight days ago a mysterious, unknown band called Cults uploaded three songs (“Go Outside”, “Most Wanted”, and “The Curse”) to their Bandcamp page that quickly started being passed around the interwebs among bloggers and music fans alike. The fact that these three songs are pretty damn good but yet little-to-nothing was known about them is what makes it all the more intriguing.
As it turns out it’s a couple (Brian Oblivion and Madeline Follin) based in New York, both 21, both from San Diego, and both really fucking talented. They spoke to Pitchfork who got some more information about them which you can read after the music. I’ve posted the three songs below, each of which you can download for free from their Bandcamp page.
Cults – “Go Outside”
Cults – “Most Wanted”
Cults – “The Curse”
Pitchfork: How did Cults start?
Brian Oblivion: We were just making music in our house in our free time. Neither of us have ever been in serious bands before. Actually, Madeline had a record contract when she was nine years old.
Madeline Follin: Yeah, it was pretty funny. My stepdad’s band was recording, and I just got on the mic. He had me cover “Amoeba” by the Adolescents, and some record company offered to sign me, but my parents wouldn’t let me. In the song and another song I had recorded, it said something about me drinking gin or something; it was really funny. I had a chipmunk voice singing punk rock songs at nine years old.
BO: The band was called Youth Gone Mad. But that’s the extent of it thus far. Doing music together really just kind of came out of living together and dating. I would make tracks and try to sing on them. Eventually, I realized that Maddy was a lot better at it than I was, and we started writing songs together.
Pitchfork: I just looked up Youth Gone Mad on iTunes. Did you do a record with Dee Dee Ramone?
MF: [Laughs] Yeah, I did. Dee Dee was friends with my stepdad and my mom. My mom was his art dealer. He was a nice guy.
BO: She was obviously really young when…
MF: Yeah, I was super young. I was probably only 12 when he passed away. But yeah, he would come over and record all the time.
Pitchfork: I know you weren’t expecting to get any kind of attention this early, but do you have any plans for Cults? Are you going to play any shows or release any music?
BO: Yeah, we’re finishing up a full-length record right now. We’ve been working on it for a while. The first three songs were just part of a larger full-length that we were working on for a long time. But we’re making plans to tour this summer and just kind of seeing where this could take us.
Pitchfork: Are you talking to any labels?
BO: We’ve had a couple of emails so far. But we just put these songs up online two weeks ago. It’s all just been really surprising and bizarre. Madeline’s been walking around almost throwing up all day.
MF: People have been emailing us. I don’t really know what to do at this point.
Pitchfork: It says something about the way the internet works that you can get attention so instantaneously like that.
BO: Right. I think that’s awesome. Part of it plays into the fact that we didn’t have any information about the band online. That’s what’s so great about the internet. Someone out of left field with no connections can gather a lot of attention if they create something worthwhile. But it’s also a problem with the internet. Everybody wants to know everything about you. We want to pigeonhole and categorize bands, and it kind of flattens their image. Back in the day, there was kind of a mystery to rock and roll, where you could look at album covers and imagine what their lives are like. Now we’re not satisfied unless we know exactly what they do everyday, who they are, where they live. Putting the songs up online without any info was partially just a coincidence, but it’s also a reaction to that attitude– trying to inject something bigger into what’s become an extremely compartmentalized music industry.
Pitchfork: Does it make you uncomfortable that people want to know these things about you?
BO: Yeah, kind of. Because we’re not… I don’t know. As cheesy and cornball as it sounds, at the end of the day, it’s all about the songs. We want to make classic music, and where we live or how old we are and what records we’ve played on before is all interesting, but that doesn’t really matter.
MF: Yeah, that’s why we’re so happy about it. Nobody has any idea who we are, and everybody’s like, “Whoa, what is this? Awesome.”
BO: It’s been really validating for us.
Pitchfork: Your songs have this nostalgia to them. You’re both young, but they sound like simultaneously like 50s pop songs and 80s pop songs.
BO: Yeah, that was kind of the idea. Madeline comes from a largely punk rock background. We both grew up in San Diego, but I came from more of like a psychedelic surf-rock kind of thing. So when we got together and started dating, we had the problem of finding music to listen to. We met up on the common ground of Motown and soul music.
MF: Lesley Gore.
BO: The Shangri-Las, stuff like that. Through listening to that, we started getting really into it and writing songs like that.
Pitchfork: On “Go Outside”, you sample the cult leader Jim Jones talking. How come?
BO: The next sample is these kids being interviewed by the BBC. They were living in a cult, talking about the terrors of the outside world. A lot of the idea of the band and its name is the idea of liberation, of choosing your own way of doing things. Madeline and I both had weird times in our life before we met up and got together and, through the music, got into a really good place. It’s about finding your own meaning and how something that’s potentially looked down upon doesn’t necessarily need to be bad. I wanted to incorporate these speakers saying beautiful things even though they’re bad people.
