Bret McKenzie is a Grammy and Academy Award winning artist most well known for his band Flight of the Conchords and their eponymous television show. McKenzie is internationally renowned for singing and writing funny, strange, and unique songs primarily for film and television. Bret’s songs have been sung by Kermit the Frog, Celine Dion, Lizzo, Benedict Cumberbatch, Brittany Howard, Homer and Lisa Simpson, Fred Armisan, Miss Piggy, Amy Adams, Jason Segal, Ricky Gervais, Benee, Isabela Merced, Spongebob Squarepants, Tony Bennett, Mickey Rooney, and more.
As a young adult Bret was an active part of the Wellington music scene playing in multiple bands across multiple genres. He was a founding member of the popular band The Black Seeds…
Tag Archive: Sub Pop
Debby Friday is a Nigerian-Canadian singer-producer who found some success a couple of years ago with her debut album Good Luck. It won the Best Electronic Album 2023 Polaris Prize, the Canadian equivalent of a Grammy or Brit. That album had a moody rock-tronic feel.
The new one, created in her new London base with her guitarist, the Australian producer Darcy Baylis, is more straightforward EDM, but draws from a varied palette and retains her personality. It’s a likeable club-centric outing.
Initially, it appears she’s going to go 4/4-bangers-all-the-way but, as the album goes on, she becomes more lyrically reflective. She’s said the relentless touring after her debut wore her down, and the lyrics sometimes reflect this.
There’s one thing Forth Wanderers want to make clear as they prepare to release their third album The Longer This Goes On: “We’re not back,” guitarist Ben Guterl says emphatically. It’s perhaps an unexpected sentiment to pair with the band’s first album since they parted ways seven years ago, but the band insists it’s just an honest answer—they came together to record the ten intricately constructed gems that make up this new record, and they’re still figuring out what being in Forth Wanderers means to them, over ten years after the project’s conception.
…The five-piece releases music on their own terms, which is rare for an act on a label as big as Sub Pop. The result is a discography with no misses. Forth Wanderers’ output is consistently…
With 2018’s Vessel, Frankie Cosmos, then the six-year-old solo project of New Yorker Greta Kline, signed with Sub Pop while becoming a proper four-piece. Their third Sub Pop release, 2022’s Inner World Peace, found Kline’s bouncy, bittersweet indie pop stretching into psychedelic and ’70s pop/rock territory for the first time — at least the first time so conspicuously.
Three years later, Frankie Cosmos return with the rejiggered lineup of Kline, longtime bassist Alex Bailey, and newcomers Katie von Schleicher (who co-produced Inner World Peace) and drummer Hugo Stanley from the now-defunct Palm. Recorded in a house where they were all living together at the time, it’s the project’s first band-era effort to be produced and recorded…
Throughout their short yet prolific career, The Bug Club has undergone many changes. What started as a blues-rock revivalist group has evolved into an artsy indie rock outfit, centered around cheeky songwriting and subtle experimentation. In 2024, it was announced that The Bug Club had signed with the prestigious Sub Pop Records, marking yet another major shift for the energetic rockers. Their Sub Pop debut, On the Intricate Inner Workings of the System, landed in 2024 and introduced The Bug Club as a daring, punk-tinted rock band unconcerned with genre norms and expectations. After plenty of sonic toiling, it would appear that The Bug Club has landed on a sound they can call their own, which brings us to a crossroads as we near the release of…
“There’s a running joke in our town,” Alan Sparhawk told a German reporter in 2011. “It says you can’t make a record in Duluth without a banjo on it. The banjo is the sound that signals white people to start drinking and dancing.”
For most of the past three decades, however, Sparhawk has presented a quite different sound of Duluth to the rest of the world; one more evocative of “the slate gray skies and the mysterious foghorns” that another famous son, Bob Dylan, mythologised in Chronicles. Between 1993 and 2022, Sparhawk’s musical energies were concentrated on Low alongside his late wife, Mimi Parker, and on an often stark, slow, musically and emotionally unflinching kind of music. When a rare banjo appeared on their…
The debut full-length album Blest from Brooklyn-based artist Yuno finds him expanding the scope of his sound, embracing pop grandiosity and exploring vocal styles. Yuno’s musical journey finds him unrestricted by genre or style as he evolves. His 2018 EP Moodie (also on Sub Pop) found him dealing with a traumatic breakup. On Blest, he is back exploring the world, moving into new relationships, and trying to enjoy life. In the past, Yuno was responsible for all aspects of his work. Blest is co-produced by Frank Corr, who also contributed keyboards, drums, and guitar.
While older tunes had more indie/emo undercurrents, Blest’s best moments are when Yuno fully embraces his large-scale pop influences. The opening title track is a great…
Over its crisp 32 minutes and nine songs, Altogether Stranger embraces electropop, lo-fi terrain and gothic solo contemplation. By deconstructing modern R&B, the upbeat “Come on” is as close as it gets to pop’s mainstream. The unifying factors are Lael Neale’s way with a tune – she writes a memorable song – and her penetrating yet translucent voice.
The Virginia-born, now Los Angeles-resident Neale’s third album is firmly in the art pop bag. Her main instrument is the electronic Suzuki Omnichord, which can employ pre-set rhythms, be played with buttons and strummed via a touch-sensitive plate. Effectively, it’s a rhythm-assisted analogue of an autoharp. Despite this, Altogether Stranger is not a folk-slanted album.
