youbet - Vacancy (Live)
Watch Youbet's live performance of "Vacancy" found on the new album, Way To Be -> youtube.com/watch?v=uYmUu6q1SYc
Touring in support of the record begins this Sunday, June 23rd, with an album release show at TV Eye in Ridgewood, NY (with Crosslegged and Iceblink). Catch the full tour here-> https://www.hardlyart.com/pages/on-tour
Julia Shapiro - A Couple Highs
Suburban malaise meets Pacific Northwest beauty in this subtle homage to the Kelly Reichardt film Wendy and Lucy. "A Couple Highs" can be found on Perfect Version, the solo debut of Julia Shapiro, singer/guitarist of Chastity Belt and Childbirth. Celebrating 5 years this week! Watch now-> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOTTVallY_A
Julia Shapiro - Natural
Chastity Belt and Childbirth's singer/guitarist Julia Shapiro released her solo debut, Perfect Version, 5 years ago this week!
Watch the music video for "Natural" -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gjkeDijV7g
how can somebody be so blindly confident
I wanna know that trick
how can you love yourself so damn much
it isn’t natural
Julia Shapiro - 5 years of Perfect Version
Happy 5 years to Julia Shapiro's Perfect Version!
Shapiro had wanted for a long time to learn how to record and mix her own music, and out of the uncertainty of the future of her music career and her health, she began to record the songs that would become Perfect Version, her solo debut for Hardly Art. What she created in the space of ten songs is an intimate and beautifully self-aware examination of feeling lost in the life you’ve created for yourself. It’s an album of shimmering guitars and layered vocals that feels vast in the emotional depth it conveys and masterful in the way each song is intentionally crafted and recorded.
Stream/grab it in your fav physical form today-> hardlyart.xyz/juliashapiro_perfectversion
Chris Cohen - Sunever
On July 12th, Chris Cohen will release Paint a Room, his fourth full-length and debut effort for Hardly Art. Watch the animated video for his latest single, "Sunever" -> https://hardlyart.xyz/chriscohen_paintaroom
Cohen wrote “Sunever” for a transgender child in his life while considering the difficulties that hard-and-fast categories can create. This song reminds us that we are “always in between” and that transitions are just a part of life. With the hook, he sweetly sings his vow: “You’re gonna find a way.”
🎥Lilli Carré
youbet - Seeds of Evil
Youbet's Way To Be is available now for your ears!
Across the album, darkness is regularly softened by Llobet’s inclination towards lightheartedness. “Seeds of Evil,” a topsy-turvy study of self-criticism, plays with this contrast, pairing a lovely melody with devilish lyrics about losing perspective. “It’s choose your own adventure music,” Llobet says. “I like to keep listeners on their toes.” Watch "Seeds of Evil" now-> youtube.com/watch?v=aw1DPQwE5tU
🎥Callan Thomas
La Sera - Hour of the Dawn
Happy 10th Anniversary to La Sera's Hour of the Dawn!
In the summer of 2013, La Sera decamped to a sweltering studio in East Los Angeles with engineer Joel Jerome and banged out the ten songs that would become Hour of the Dawn—an album that never walks, but runs; a collision of unleashed punk and ‘80s power-pop.
Grab it on vinyl and stream this way-> hardlyart.xyz/lasera_hourofthedawn
The celebration of youbet’s new album Way To Be continues! Watch the killer new video for album standout “Peel” now. And for those who haven’t yet heard, Way To Be by youbet is OUT NOW!
https://hardlyart.xyz/youbet_waytobe
Director/Editor: Brittany Reeber @beereebz
Video Production House: Analoga Co. @analoga.co
Video Producer: Jessica DiMento, Anthony Argento
Director of Photography: Adam Kolodny
Assistant Director: Serena Hughes
1st AC: Will Jones
Gaffer: Gavin Cantrell
Production Assistants: Dan Pechia, Harrison Kroessler
Best Boy: Bandit
Special thanks to Rollin Studios, Tyler Postiglione + Thump Studios
5 years of Versing's 10000
Happy 5 years of Versing's 10000!
Emerging from a stint as a drummer in a stoner-metal band, Daniel Salas formed Versing as a vehicle to vent obliquely about his political and social views with irony and humor. Populated with strange characters, his songs often double as “critiques of centrism and conservatism, from a leftist perspective. That's a theme: committing to something or doing something that may be hard but is the better option. However, when I write politically, it's more allegorical and can be interpreted beyond the political realm. I find that more interesting to write about than my personal life.”
With Versing, songwriting is obviously crucial, but much of the pleasure in 10000 comes from its guitar textures. They're swarming, yet also spiky and agile. The funny thing is, Salas writes most of Versing's songs on his unplugged Gibson guitar. “I like a more shambolic tone than something that sounds really clean and put together. I like there to be some screechiness to it—something that's not right.”
Listen now + grab it on vinyl now-> hardlyart.xyz/versing_10000
Versing - Tethered
Tomorrow, we celebrate 5 years of Versing's album, 10000!
Watch the official video for "Tethered" -> youtube.com/watch?v=Yg62iNAbphI
Frontman Daniel Salas explains that it's “about how people are tied together,” figuratively. “It's a reminder of the interconnected-ness of humans, to people who make excuses for not doing the right thing” for the greater good of humanity.
Chris Cohen - Damage
We are so excited for you to hear Chris Cohen's new album, Paint A Room, out on July 12th! While you wait, catch the lyric video for the melodious opener and lead single, "Damage" -> https://hardlyart.xyz/chriscohen_paintaroom
ill peach - WOLF LIKE ME
Following the release of their Hardly Art debut, THIS IS NOT AN EXIT, Los Angeles duo ill peach have shared a dynamic cover of TV On The Radio’s song “WOLF LIKE ME.” Listen now-> hardlyart.xyz/illpeach_wolflikeme
Protomartyr -
Happy 10 years to this beast of a record!
Protomartyr's Under Color of Official Right was released on this day in 2014. What's yr fav track?
Missing it on vinyl? Correct that mistake here-> hardlyart.xyz/protomartyr_undercolorofofficialright
Protomartyr’s taut, austere rock was incubated in a freezing Detroit warehouse littered with beer cans and cigarette butts and warmed, feebly, by space heaters. Despite the cold, Protomartyr emerged with a sound that is idiosyncratic but relatable, hooky but off-kilter, and economical in a way that elicits comparisons to possible antecedents like Pere Ubu or The Fall as well as local contemporaries like Frustrations or Tyvek -- all of which have combined here to make one stunner of a sophomore album, and the band's first for Hardly Art.
5 years of Night of the Worm Moon
Shana Cleveland's Night of the Worm Moon was released on this day in 2019! Stream now-> hardlyart.xyz/shanacleveland_nightoftheworm
Appropriately enough, Night of the Worm Moon was recorded during a rare cosmic occurrence: 2017’s solar eclipse. “We took a break from recording during [the] totality and looked at the sun's image through a piece of cardboard projecting onto a garbage can,” Cleveland says. “When we came back inside the studio was covered in dozens of tiny crescent suns, refracted from a mirrored disco ball that [engineer Johnny Goss] had hanging in a window.”
As much a work of California sci-fi as Octavia Butler’s Parable novels, Night of the Worm Moon incorporates everything from alternate realities to divine celestial bodies. Inspired in part by one of her musical idols, the Afro-futurist visionary Sun Ra (the album’s title is a tip of the hat to his 1970 release Night of the Purple Moon), the record blends pastoral folk with cosmic concerns.
Cleveland dreamt up this premise while living in Los Angeles, a city where--as deftly explored on La Luz’s recent Floating Features--reality and fantasy casually co-exist. One particularly evocative scene laid the groundwork for Night of the Worm Moon’s psychedelic undercurrents. As Cleveland tells it, “Shortly after I moved to Los Angeles I went to a hip hotel to watch a poolside screening of a documentary about a local alien-worshiping cult. Out front celebrities were getting out of the backs of cars and rushing past autograph hounds into some roped-off room where a secret dinner was about to commence. In the lobby a woman was being paid to exist inside a glass box. [Then] a car dressed as a spaceship pulled up in front to release 30 white doves into the sky above Sunset Boulevard.”
Shana Cleveland - Don't Let Me Sleep
5 years of Shana Cleveland's Night of the Worm Moon!
TBT with the second single release from the album, "Don't Let Me Sleep"-> youtube.com/watch?v=kxUJYVBuSks
Shana Cleveland - Face of the Sun
We are getting a jump start on celebrating 5 years of Shana Cleveland's Night of the Worm Moon! Watch an idyllic day take a turn for the surreal in this music video for "Face of the Sun" -> youtube.com/watch?v=kg2OSkDZ9TE
