California native Hannah Pearl Utt co-wrote, directed and stars in Before You Know It, a dark comedy about stage manager Rachel Gurner (Utt) and her off-kilter, small theatre-owning family. In the wake of a sudden family tragedy, Rachel and her actress sister Jackie learn their presumed-dead mother is actually alive and thriving as a soap-opera star, and Rachel’s already-precarious reality descends into surreal chaos. Also starring Judith Light (Transparent), Alec Baldwin, Mandy Pantinkin, and Jen Tullock, who co-wrote the film. (1091 Media)

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›› ISSUE Feature: Go-See feature with Hannah Pearl Utt.

She’s made us laugh in the comedy series Master of None, Saturday Night Live and the film Mr. Roosevelt, but it turns out that Noel Wells’ talent doesn’t stop there. She’s also a songwriter and singer and has recently released her debut album, It’s So Nice!, a dynamic showcase that places an emphasis on songwriting with tunes that traverse folk, pop, alt-country and psych-rock. Circling themes of loss of innocence and heartbreak, the album reflects on modern times—a defiant anti-political diary with an eye toward the future. (Independent)

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›› ISSUE Feature: Interview and performance by Noël Wells.

At age three, Lillie Mae was touring bluegrass festivals with her family band—living out of a motorhome, surrounded by gospel music, and bound by religious conventions. Now she’s beating her own path as part of a new, grittier generation of country singers. Other Girls, Mae’s second album on Jack White’s record label, was produced with Grammy-winner Dave Cobb in the historic RCA Studio A in Nashville, Tennessee. (Third Man Records)

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›› ISSUE Feature: Interview and performance by Lillie Mae.

Stonechild is Jesca Hoop’s sixth album. She explores the complex concerns of contemporary culture and politics through the personal and poetic. The album was recorded in Bristol with producer John Parish (PJ Harvey, Aldous Harding, This is the Kit). Parish’s minimal and purist approach helped clarify Hoop and her ideas, refining and casting them like an element in its rawest form, subtly yet effectively re-aligning her sound.
        Hoop’s career has been dotted with collaborations, perhaps most notably her 2016 collaborative album with Sam Beam (aka Iron & Wine), and for these sessions she found new collaborators in This Is The Kit’s Kate Stables, Rozi Plain and members of the band Lucius. While Hoop’s trademark finger-picked guitar and ethereal textures remain central, under the influence of Parish the songs and their presentation are ever more direct.
        The album’s title came to Hoop after a trip to a Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum, where the Stonechild is the sad but compelling spectacle of an unborn foetus, that a woman carried for over 30 years. “They become a hard ball of bones, a rock. It’s a beautiful sounding word – phonetically, hard and soft – but also I was taken by the idea of carrying something for a long time and then giving it up. I hope I have created an album of substance. There is meat on these bones.” (Memphis Industries)

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›› ISSUE Feature: Interview and performance by Jesca Hoop.

Mattiel, the already critically lauded Atlanta-based band fronted by charismatic 26-year old frontwoman Mattiel Brown, releases her second album Satis Factory. (ATO)

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Calexico and Iron & Wine release Years to Burn. This is Calexico’s Joey Burns and John Convertino and Sam Beam of Iron & Wine first full-length Album since the critically acclaimed 2005 In the Reins EP. Burns explains: “As touring musicians, we all have families at home, but we form a sort of family together on the road. Then we say goodbye and go home to our real families. So to reunite feels good, and to re-establish that connection to friends and music, and to find new directions and perspectives on life. This project had to find the right time. We’re all different people than we were in 2004, and music helps to bridge some of the gaps. For all the things going on in our world and in each of our lives, this connection, this friendship, this love that we have—this album is a vehicle for that bond. It’s a chance to see where we’re at, take stock and be there for our friends.” (Sub Pop)

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›› ISSUE Feature: Interview with Calexico and Iron & Wine in 2005 on their critically acclaimed In the Reins EP.

Four years after the release of his critically acclaimed horror film It Follows (2014) writer and director David Robert Mitchell returns with Under the Silver Lake a neo-noir black comedy thriller starring Andrew Garfield, Riley Keough and Topher Grace. The film follows an aimless young man living in a hip Los Angeles neighborhood who finds himself in over his head as he investigates the disappearance of his beautiful neighbor.(A24)

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Shana Cleveland has been beguiling listeners for years in her role as the superlative frontwoman for elastic surf rockers La Luz. Now Cleveland is evolving her sound on the new solo full-length Night of the Worm Moon, a serene album that flows like a warm current while simultaneously wresting open a portal to another dimension. The record sees Cleveland expanding her sonic palette, incorporating psychedelic folk sounds with out-there subject matter and inspiration including Afrofuturism and alternate dimensions. (Hardly Art)

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