Lucky Number Music

New York pop savants Charly Bliss are back, and they want their new album Forever, out August 16th, to crush you under the weight of pure feeling. The quartet of Eva Hendricks, Sam Hendricks, Spencer Fox and Dan Shure want to sweep you up in a hurricane of heartbreak. And the album’s powerful lead single “Nineteen“, released today alongside a video directed by Henry Kaplan, does just that.

“I’ll always be fascinated by love and relationships that don’t quite work and bring tsunamis of heartbreak. The further away I am from it, the kind of love that bashes you against the rocks just as often as it carries you over waves of manic joy, the easier it is to see the full scope of it. First love is crazy,” Eva Hendricks says of the song.

Forever, produced by Jake Luppen (Hippo Campus) and Caleb Wright (Samia) along with the band’s Sam Hendricks, is full of the band’s biggest, brightest power pop yet, but it’s an evolution, not a departure. Forever crams a lifetime of feeling, decades of friendship, and years of craft into a batch of sonically tight but emotionally vast songs that activate the pleasure centres in your brain whether you’re listening alone in your headphones or in a packed room at a live show. The songs shimmer and burst, the way fireworks look like they should sound.

Walt Disco have today released their brand new single “Jocelyn”, the third track to emerge from their forthcoming second album The Warping, out June 14th, following on from their ‘cynical disco banger’ “You Make Me Feel So Dumb” and their wistful comeback single “Pearl”. Watch the dream-like music video below.

“Jocelyn” is a tender meditation on childhood, identity and the parent-child connection. Taking the form of a dreamlike conversation between co-songwriter and singer Jocelyn Si and their mother, “Jocelyn” digs into the isolation of hiding a part of yourself and the euphoria of allowing it to shine through. The track, says its namesake, is “about recognising the version of yourself that you love. And it’s not always easy to have that be the one that faces the world.”

“Lyrically it’s a dreamlike internal conversation between my mother and I, from small talk to mannerisms I’ve had since childhood. Such conversations come to mind when you change your name and gender; but it doesn’t erase these memories. I hope to live in a world where parents can allow themselves to understand the upset they may feel when a child makes this decision but can love and support them all the same ”

The band adds; “Everyone has a side of themselves that at some point, or maybe always, they feel they need to keep hidden away. This track explores the isolation of hiding a part of yourself and the euphoria of the times when you can let it out. The despairing lyrical matter of the verses opens into the joyous choruses, it’s meant to feel transformative to represent the idea of leaving your shame in the past and finding the strength to start anew.”

The band also announced a November headline tour of the UK and Europe with dates including Glasgow’s SWG3 Warehouse and London’s Bush Hall – all dates and ticket links on their website.

Glasgow’s Walt Disco have today announced their second album The Warping, out June 14th and available to pre-order now. Alongside the album announce the band have released new single “You Make Me Feel So Dumb” – the album’s “cynical disco banger”, inspired by the social burnout suffered from networking while on tour, accompanied by a wonderful tongue-in-cheek video that sees the band tearing up a stuffy corporate mixer event, which you can watch below. The new track is the second release to be drawn from the new album, following January single “Pearl”.

Written on both sides of the Atlantic, from Los Angeles and Austin to Glasgow and London, The Warping is a significant step forward from a band who have already seen strong success with debut album Unlearning. On The Warping, deft lyricism takes in deeply personal issues and writes them large, transposing feelings of envy, fear, joy and hope out of individual experiences. Yearning for another self is a recurring dream on The Warping, as they explore gender dysphoria and envy with radical honesty, accepting them as two tangled threads in the same experience.

Taking the cinematic glam of their debut and pushing it further, the band brought in classically trained orchestral musicians. Sonically, the horns, woodwind and swelling string sections lend an entirely new level to the Walt Disco sound – one that feels both fantastically organic and technically accomplished. While the foundations were laid during pre-album recording sessions at Phil Manzanera of Roxy Music’s studio the songs themselves largely come together in collaboration. The Warping was co-produced by the band and Chris McCrory, with engineering from The Vale studios’ Chris D’Adda, and the instrumentation is almost entirely analogue.

Speaking about the new album the band explain “With The Warping we explore themes of change, growth and dealing with the complex struggles that feature in anyone’s life. It feels like our most biographical body of work yet, listening to it now is like looking at a snapshot of a moment in time for us as people and as a band. This album is a roadmap of our vulnerabilities in a way, but it feels good to be so honest with our music and lay everything on the table with both our lyrics and arrangements. That acceptance of one’s emotions and honesty with oneself is what we’d hope people can take away from listening to The Warping.”

To celebrate International Women’s Day, London-based trio Dream Wife – vocalist Rakel Mjöll (she/her), guitarist Alice Go (she/her) and bassist Bella Podpadec (they/them) – have shared their cover of t.A.T.u.’s “All The Things She Said”, recorded during the European leg of their Social Lubrication tour.

Of the release the band says, “The legacy of ‘All The Things She Said’ is a total paradox – being both one of the most high profile examples of queerbaiting in pop culture and also one of the only positive depictions of same sex attraction us and our peers came across as youngsters. That and… it’s also an undeniable bop and everytime we play it live it absolutely pops off! We recorded our cover of All The Things She Said in a studio on the outskirts of Prague during our European headline tour. We had no idea what to expect from our first show in Prague and were thrilled to play to a room full of the most stylish lesbians (and lesbian adjacent people) we have ever seen. It felt cathartic, redemptive and very sexually charged to play this track live for such a receptive audience – as Queer people, for Queer people.”

The band have also announced more of their riotous live shows across the UK later this year, all dates and tickets links are on their website.

Hinds today return with a glorious bang sharing “Coffee”, their first new single in 4 years. It also marks the band’s first release as the original duo of Carlotta Cosials and Ana Perrote since they burst onto the scene in 2014 with debut single, “Bamboo”, and heralds a fresh and invigorated era, now signed to Lucky Number worldwide.

Everything that makes the Spanish band so beloved and acclaimed is on full display on “Coffee”. Produced by Pete Robertson (The Vaccines, beabadoobee) and mixed by the Grammy-winning engineer Caesar Edmunds (The Killers, Wet Leg), it features the signature dual vocals of Carlotta and Ana and doubles down on what is so special about Hinds – the bright melodies betraying universal themes, delivered with an empowering, punk attitude. The band have always represented the strength of female musicianship and friendship, inspiring a generation of young listeners and new artists as a result. Hinds say: “Coffee is a sincericide, screaming the nasty truth as loud as you can with no shame. It’s about admitting to all the things you’re not supposed to like or doing all the things you’re not meant to do. It’s a lot of fun when you can be fully honest and shut that little voice in your head that tells you what you should or shouldn’t do.”

The energy at a Hinds show is always palpable, and they kicked off 2024 playing several UK shows for Independent Venue Week, with further gigs now added in May for London, Brighton, Paris, Munich and Berlin, all dates and tickets here. The duo are also set to play SXSW 2024 in March, alongside two sold-out shows at Baby’s All Right in New York. With “Coffee” just the start of an energised new chapter for Hinds, expect to hear much more in the coming months.