L.I.F.E. Press, stands for Listen It Fixes Everything Press, and by "It" we mean music, because the common consensus is that music is the best medicine. This is a website that brings the scene right to your bedroom. We photograph shows, interview bands, write reviews, and do artist spot-lights. We may even have your favorite musician as a guest writer. Keep your eyes peeled because everything we're doing you won't want to miss. We're not just another music news site. We're a place to see great photos, find amazing interviews, and read some well written reviews. You may even find out about artists you probably never knew existed. Listening to music can really fix everything, even if temporarily, it is the fix you need. This is the place to get your daily fix.
John O’Callaghan, known for being the singer and front-man of Arizona rock group, The Maine, just released a solo side project song called ‘Sour Grapes’. O’Callaghan is known for posting poetry-esque writings on his Instagram, and in the old days, his Myspace account. And this song is very similar to that. It feels as though he has put his poetry to song with a much mellower sound than The Maine would ever produce. Having an outlet other than the band to release music seems to be a great decision for O’Callaghan. ‘Sour Grapes’ is a moving love song that will remind old school The Maine fans of the songs O’Callaghan used to post on his personal account back in the day. It’s a nice change from The Maine’s music, but it doesn’t veer too far away from their sound that The Maine fans won’t dig O’Callaghan’s side project. We are definitely a fan and cannot wait to hear what else O’Callaghan has in-store for us as John The Ghost.
Brooklyn based band, Ackerman, have just released their latest single, ‘5/7′. Ackerman is a 4 person band that one can’t really place into a genre, and that’s what makes them great. We at L.I.F.E. Press believe that any fan of music could find something they love in their songs. The best way we can think to describe them would be electro-pop meets Beach Boys. In a world where music seems to all be going in the same direction, Ackerman are a breath of fresh air.
For more updates on Ackerman, keep your eyes peeled here and throw them a like on Facebook by clicking HERE
I enter my long time friend and music producer, Will Tenney’s apartment to see him recording a guitar track in his in-room studio. Sitting on the couch in his room is Megan McDermott, who you will all come to know as Newschool. Megan and Will have been writing music together for the past 6 months, which all started when Erik Olsen (SVP of Promotion at Crush Music) called up Will saying he had a new artist he wanted Will to work with. Megan starts to excitedly tell me how she’s going to have a full page spread in the next issue of Substream Magazine. Megan draws you in when she speaks to you, with her bubbly personality and piercing blue eyes. She makes you feel comfortable, as if you’re long time friends instead of two strangers who just met. She truly has the charisma and look of a pop-star. Will interrupts our conversation to play me two of the songs that are going to be on Megan’s EP, ‘Small Talk’, that is due out on the 8th of April.
The first song he plays me is titled ‘Pardon Me’, a sultry voice comes out of the speakers and a soundtrack that’s more dynamic than your average pop song accompanies it. The song reminds me of something I would expect to hear on a Halsey record, which I whisper to Megan as the song plays and her eyes light up as if I just told her she won the lottery. Next up is ‘Wild Things’ which Megan informs me is the more radio style pop song out of the two we’ll be listening to today. ‘Wild Things’ definitely has a hook that will get stuck in your head, and a catchy chorus that I can see young girl’s screaming at boys for years to come.
I haven’t been this excited about an new artist in quite some time, but Megan deserves all the praise I am throwing her way. She wanted something and she has gone for it full force. With an amazing team behind her with Will at the helm as co-producer, there is only one way Newschool can go, and that is up. For now you can check out a sampler of her EP on Soundcloud and if you like what you hear you can purchase it pre-sale by clicking HERE. I would advise picking this EP up so you can say you were around from the beginning of the reign of Newschool.
Last up was METZ, by this point the venue is packed. Bowery Ballroom doesn’t have a photo-pit, so I’m shoved up against the stage right in the middle of the action. The crowd’s vibe is getting anxious and excited for the headliner. The other photographer next to me asks if I’ve ever seen METZ live before, when I say no, he smiles and tells me I’m in for a treat, and boy was I. I don’t think I could describe METZ music to you, even if you offered me $1Million to try. It’s out of the box, almost metal but almost punk, there’s no real way to describe it, other than hard and loud and amazing guitar riffs. METZ have so much fun while on stage, that even though the lighting is flashing and you can only see them for 5 seconds at a time, you can tell they are in their happy place while on stage. The crowd is going wild, so into the music it seems as though their fans forget they’re not the only one at the concert. It’s kind of beautiful to see people get so lost in music.
No matter what kind of music you like, if you like music, you will enjoy METZ. Watching them live was an experience like no other, and I advise all music lovers do so. Check them out on Facebook and definitely see them next time they’re in town.
The 1975 have finally released a new song, well they did 3 weeks ago, but the video just came out and it’s been quite some time since we heard anything new from the guys of the 1975, and never have I been so okay with having waited for something this long. This song is pure 1980′s music gold, but with a 2015 spin. The 1975 could have ignored the very obvious 1980′s inspiration and made the video completely different, but instead they embrace their 80′s love and go all out with the video. Bold colours, silly dancing, and vibrant outfits scream 1980′s, while the hilarious cardboard cutouts strewn around their performance space reminds us that we are in fact watching a 21st century music video, that and the HD quality of the video, but that’s just semantics. The 1975 never disappoint, and if this is a sign of things to come from them, I am even more excited than I originally was when they announced new music was coming.
Halsey released the music video for New Americana today, her first single off of her debut LP Badlands. When I first listened to the song, it felt pretty straightforward to me, but after watching this video, it seems that I may have misinterpreted the song. The video is shot beautifully, and Halsey is clearly trying to spread a message that reads between the lines of her song’s lyrics. The video beautifully depicts sort of what America has turned into, a country of people who just watch as others are brought down because they’re different to them. Or at least that’s what I got out of the video. Halsey is a force to be reckoned with and I am personally a huge fan of her work. I think she has every potential to be the voice of a generation, and it seems like from this video she is going to try and be just that. The fact that the album, when listened to in the order it was released, feels to tell a story, and that this video ends with the beginning of what looks to be the video for her song Drive, which is the song that follows New Americana on the album, is absolutely brilliant. I love that she’s probably going to visually connect the songs for people. I am 100000% ready for this girl to take over the music industry.
On the 24th of August Los Angeles based band, Marriages, took the stage at Scala in London. Following a great turn out at Arctangent Festival, Marriages played to a sold out crowd opening for DeafHeaven in London. While the bands differ in vocals, their instrumentals work together very well. A lot of the crowd were new to Marriages, at least it seemed so from the conversations I over heard coming from the front of the pit. But the crowd was still excited to see them live, and they were not disappointed. Marriages put on one of the most interesting live shows I’ve ever witnessed. They’re very intune with each other and vibe off each other well. They allow themselves to get lost in their own music, which is really nice to see.
L.I.F.E. Press: So you and Emma were in another band together before Marriages, right?
Greg Burns: We were. We were in a band called Red Sparowes but Sparowes is on a bit of a hiatus now. She played on the last Red Sparowes record and she was in the band for several years, but now we have Marriages.
LP: The instrumentals in the two bands have a similar feel, what made you guys decide to branch off and do something where you’ve incorporated vocals?
GB: We just really wanted to do something that was different than Red Sparowes that was a big part of it. On Kitsune, the first record, the vocals were more of a texture or an instrument in a way. On Salome they’re more prominent, but that was just the evolution of the band. We didn’t just want to have another instrumental band because we felt it would be too similar to Red Sparowes. We consciously wanted to have shorter more concise songs, and we wanted to do something that stood apart from Red Sparowes.
LP: On the topic of the vocals being more of a texture; what made you guys decide on Salome to put the vocals at more of the forefront of the songs?
GB: It was kind of just an evolution of the band. I think it just happened naturally when we writing the songs that it became more vocal centric. We didn’t decide until we were mixing the record to push the vocals up to the front. It wasn’t an explicit decision that we made, it just kind of happened.
LP: Since Salome is a bit different from Kitsune, how’s the response been while you’ve been touring since Salome was released in April?
GB: We’ve done a lot of touring on it now. We went to Europe with Wovenhands and that was amazing. The reception was really good, we were excited to see that people knew the songs and were singing the lyrics and stuff that was cool. We headlined The States, that’s the first time we did a headlining tour there, and it was good. The turn out in some places was better than others the cities were great. There were some really great stand out shows, like New York and Austin were especially good. In L.A. we had a lot of fun. We’ve started mixing it up, it’s important to us to really push ourselves in a lot of different ways including the performance aspect of it. About halfway through we started changing the configuration of where our instruments are set up and we would play on the floor sometimes and just anything to just sort of keep it fresh and stop it from being the same repetitive thing. The tour was awesome and we played Arctangent a couple of days ago and that was a really amazing experience.
LP: With Arctangent Festival, which has only been around for 3 years now, was it exciting to play something that’s so new and genre specific?
GB: It’s different from a lot of festivals in that it is very specific in terms of the music that they host. The things I thought were great about the festival were being new [as a band] and there were a lot of Sargent House (their record label) bands’ there, it was like a big kind of family thing going on there and a lot of friends were there, and it wasn’t so massive that you weren’t able to connect with people. It was cool to be able to hang out with everybody, including the people at the festival because at a lot of Festival’s there is an artist area that people never leave, but at Arctangent that sort of existed but it was far away from everything, so it was easier to just be at the festival. Which was very cool because it was cool to talk to people and actually be there and enjoy it. As far as the genre thing goes, I have mixed feelings about that, I do like it, because what happens is people there will go and see every band that’s playing, and they’re just committed to even checking out bands they’ve never heard of. At bigger Festivals though they’re there to see the three bands they love and maybe they’ll go check other stuff out, so it’s cool that people there just really love the music. But on the other hand, I do personally like when Festivals have a variety because I think it exposes bands to a kind of audience they would normally get exposure to. But Arctangent is a very special thing and I think what they’re doing is really very cool.
LP: So listening to your music, it feels like more than just an average band, it feels a bit like listening to an art piece. I get the vibe that I could like see you guys perform as an art instillation. Was that a thing you were going for, or am I just projecting my views on your music?
GB: Yea, I mean not in those terms, but I think that we try and do a lot outside of just playing music. We do try in our performance to do things that are different, more in the way that we engage with each other when we play, it’s more of a personal experience that we try and bring people into, as opposed to bands that get out on stage, face out to the crowd, and play their songs. In other cases we will set up on the floor we’ll put the drums at the front of the stage, because there’s something that happens playing music that it’s very easy to get into this routine playing songs where it’s a) it’s no longer that fun [for me] and b) there’s no real variation so it becomes static in a way that defeats the purpose of playing live, at least for us. That’s one thing, and another thing is we are all artists outside of the band, what we try and do is make a statement through our artwork which is on the record and also that we put out into the world that we’ll usually sell at shows. Lots of times Emma will sell art prints and I’ll sell photographs, so the whole thing is about an expression is about both visual art and the music itself and the performance. Sometimes I think we totally fail at doing that and we’re just a band on stage, and other times I think it really works, and it’s a much bigger experience. But I really appreciate you saying that, I’m glad you get that from the music because it’s sort of what we’re after.
LP: So there were a couple years between the release of the first album and your second album, did you plan to take your time with the second album?
GB: No, there were a lot of challenges with the record; it took a year to even actually record it. We had some pretty big problems with the engineering itself and the studio, just a lot of logistical problems in that way. I’ve never had an album take a year to record, so that was really frustrating for us. And then writing the record took longer than we wanted, but that partly was because there were other things going on for people. My daughter had been born, and Emma’s solo project was taking off, she had put a record out and was touring. But the most that we really would want between records would be just a couple of years. So we weren’t really happy with the time break between records, and we’re going to do everything we can to avoid that in the future.
LP: This London show seems to be your last scheduled show of the year, do you have any other plans for the band for the rest of the year?
GB: Not for Marriages no. Emma is going on tour with Alcest and Andrew has a solo project called Drab Majesty, and he’s about to tour with King Dude. Yea so I think the next thing that’s going to happen with Marriages is probably in several months we’re going to start writing the next record. And obviously if any opportunities come up we’re going to take them, but I think we plan to just concentrate on writing the next record.
LP: So I don’t think I have any questions left for you. Do you have anything else you’d like to say out to the world?
GB: I appreciate your time and your interest, and I just feel really grateful to be able to tour and write music and that we capture people’s interest just means a lot, so thank you.
Don Broco are on a short tour around the UK to celebrate the release of their Sophomore album, Automatic. The album came out on August 7th, which was the date of the gig I was attending. Birmingham band, Light You Up, opened the show, and they definitely got the crowd pumped for Don Broco. As the stage is getting set up for the Broco boys the crowd is shouting for them, even though we have about half an hour until they grace us with their presence. The guys finally take the stage and the crowd goes wild. For a venue that holds maybe 250 people, I feel like I’m in a room with at least 600 with the noise levels this crowd is making.
They open the set with “Money, Power and Fame” and the crowd is going mad. Most gigs I attend the crowd politely nod their heads and tap their feet, and maybe if they’re feeling crazy, dance a bit. But that is not the case with Don Broco fans. By the middle of the set the crowd is going absolutely mental. The band has amazing stage presence and it’s like the crowd wants to show they can get down to the beat as well. At the start of the second to last song, Singer, Rob Damiani, invites fans to storm the stage, and they do not need to be asked twice. Almost half the venue gets up on the stage to dance and interact with the band. At one point Rob got so lost in the shuffle of people he missed out on singing a whole verse of the song. When the song finished the band made everybody leave the stage, but by 2 lines in, some rowdy lads jumped back on the stage. Security had to come and get people to leave the stage and once these two boys got on, everybody else took it upon themselves to storm the stage as well.
The band were having an absolute blast and were trying to get people to buy the album again so they could chart with the album. The next morning they woke up to being number 3 of the UK charts. Don Broco are an amazing band to watch live and have the most amazing fans. If they’re in your area soon I would definitely suggest checking them out.
The Danish-Four piece, Communions, released the music video for, “Forget it’s a Dream,” last week. The director director Nikolaj Møller explained it as being "...about the special time and years around being a teenager growing up and becoming an adult. Around the innocent years with newly discovered sexual attraction and exploration. The longing eyes."
The band will be playing a few live shows at the end of August and beginning of September. If they come to your area you should definitely check them out.
COMMUNIONS LIVE DATES:
AUGUST 7: DE NIEUWE ANITA - AMSTERDAM, NL
AUGUST 8: WASTELANDS FESTIVAL - GHENT, BE
SEPTEMBER 9: ELECTROWERKZ - LONDON, UK
SEPTEMBER 26: PETIT BAIN - PARIS, FR
DECEMBER 17: JAZZHOUSE - COPENHAGEN, DK
Radkey recently released the music video for “Love Spills” the single for their debut album, “Dark Black Makeup” which comes out on August 21st.
The band will be touring the UK for some dates in August and September to celebrate their record release, followed by a 10 stop tour at the end of October and beginning of November.
The dates are:
August
Thur 27- Aug Banquet Records New Slang, Kingston w/ Spector NEW
Sat/Sun 29th/30th-Aug Reading and Leeds Festivals
Mon 31st-Aug Rough Trade, Nottingham NEW
September
Tue 1st-Sept The Old Blue Last. London
October
Mon 26th-Oct Brighton, Green Door Store
Tue 27th-Oct Bristol, Exchange
Wed 28th-Oct Birmingham, Hare & Hounds
Thu 29th-Oct Sheffield, Leadmill
Fri 30th-Oct Nottingham, Bodega
Sat 31st-Oct Manchester, Sound Control (basement)
November
Mon 02nd-Nov Glasgow, King Tuts
Tue 03rd-Nov Newcastle, Academy 2
Wed 04th-Nov Leeds, Key Club
Thu 05th-Nov London, The Dome
If you’d like to check them out on tour you can get tickets by clicking HERE and check out more of their music HERE
The Movielife haven’t been in the UK since their break-up in 2003, but you’d never be able to tell when they took the stage Thursday evening. Electric Ballroom was packed with fans reliving their late teens/early twenties, and the energy was electrifying. It felt like a high school reunion was going on. Being from Long Island and growing up on the music scene started by bands like The Movielife, I was excited to finally see them for the first time, and that my home town heroes were just as big a deal on this side of the ocean and they are on the other side. Vinnie came on stage beaming ear to ear, you could tell he was elated to be back on stage for these people again. As the set went on, the crowd would get more and more pumped with each song, it was like the music was an adrenaline rush not only to the band but to the crowd. Seeing a band do a comeback tour is always exhilarating, especially when that comeback tour happens when you’re still young enough to enjoy it.
Oslo Hackney is a small venue, it holds maybe 300 people and has no barricade. I haven’t seen Bayside play a venue this small since 2005, so this is very cool for me to witness. I get talking to a guy in the front row who informs me that this is Bayside’s first ever headlining tour in the UK, I’m unsure as to how true this is as Bayside headlines at House of Blues’ in America, but I take his word for it as we talk about how excited he as his friends are to finally see them play a “headlining setlist”. The lights dim and the band takes the stage and the crowd starts to settle. The second the band starts playing everybody is getting into the music, screaming the lyrics back at the band and getting lost in the songs. The vibe in the venue just gets more and more excited as the set goes on. It’s so hot in the room steam is starting to come off of people’s heads, but nobody is backing down, the crowd is going crazy and it’s so exciting to see a band from a town I grew up near having such a dedicated fan base so many miles from home. When the last song starts, you can tell the crowd is aware their time with Bayside is almost over, and they give the band every ounce of their energy. The band is feeding off the crowd and the crowd is feeding off that band and it’s a beautiful thing to see happen, when a band is so excited to be playing music that the already excited crowd becomes even more into what they’re witnessing. Bayside put on an amazing show, as they always do, and if you haven’t seem them before, you definitely need to check them out next time they’re in your neck of the woods.
Joey Vannucchi, From Indian Lakes, Electric Ballroom, London, 05-28-15
When From Indian Lakes first takes the stage, fans are still piling into the venue. From Indian Peaks are newcomers to overseas touring, hailing from California, this was the band’s first trek over the Atlantic. The band’s energy was electrifying, and even people in the crowd who didn’t know who they were, were getting into the music. The whole front row were huge fans of the band, and while I was photographing the set I could hear them screaming along to every word singer, Joey Vannucchi, sang out. The crowd hung onto every word he sang, and when he addressed the crowd, telling them how excited the band was to finally be playing overseas their fans absolutely lost it, you could tell that some of them had been waiting for years to finally see From Indian Lakes play live.
The band continues on through Europe with Circa Survive and then plays some shows on their own over there. If you have the chance you should definitely check them:
May 30 Dynamo Basement w/ Circa Survive Eindhoven, Netherlands
May 31 HAFENKLANG w/ Circa Survive Hamburg, Germany
Jun 01 Bi Nuu w/ Circa Survive Berlin, Germany
Jun 02 Orange house w/ Circa Survive Munich, Germany
Jun 04 Underground w/ Circa Survive Cologne, Germany
Jun 05 FZW w/ Circa Survive Dortmund, Germany
Jun 06 Le Backstage w/ Circa Survive Paris, France
Jun 08 La Peniche Lille, France
Jun 09 Hafenkneipe Zurich, Switzerland
Jun 10 Hafen 2 Offenbach, Germany
Jun 27 The Abbey Pub Chicago, IL
Jul 17 Cesar Chavez Plaza Sacramento, CA
