Miesha & The Spanks offer a dynamic mixture of punk, garage and hard rock embellished with straightforward lyrics, gritty production and an energy that hits you in the face.
Their new Singles EP is produced by Leeroy Stagger. Expected to reign in M&TS, to clean up the noise for crisp, polished songs, Stagger, visited by the ghost of punk rock past, instead turned it up (way up), and imbued their crunchy mono-guitar sound with extra doses of fuzz and feedback. Expected to get your blood pumping.
A comeback unlike all others, John Taglieri is back with a single and video for “Talking To Myself Out Loud.” After being told he’d never sing again due to vocal cord damage, Taglieri took five years off from releasing music to learn how to use his new voice. As a singer, I can’t even imagine the devastation he must’ve gone through and the insecurities of relearning how to be his own artist, use his talent, sing the songs inside of him.
This single is unlike any other song Taglieri has ever released. And with fourteen releases and twenty-one years of being a professional musician under his belt, that’s really saying something. Going from every type of rock imaginable—hopping between country rock to hard rock to melodic hard rock, this is something much more mellow and pure.
This single and accompanying video are so vulnerable and I really respect that. After being gone for five years, Taglieri really lets us in with the main chorus: “I’ve been lying / I’ve been trying / I’ve been hiding / Talking to myself out loud.” I absolutely love the purity in Taglieri’s vocals. It feels like he’s in the room singing right next to you; you can feel the honesty and truthfulness in his words. The lyrics are very relatable to anyone who’s got goals and things to do, but has trouble getting themselves to actually work for it. Everyone has had that realization of “You tell me time has been a thief to you / It’s stolen all your dreams / But now there’s only you to blame” and it hits deep.
The orchestration also helps to emphasize the shaken vulnerability of the lyrics, starting off with the literal shaky, vibrato-esque, muted chords. There’s so much space to fill that the synth sounds strained, like it’s holding back, so when the fullness of the acoustic guitar comes in, you sigh a breath of relief. This song really plays with space and silence in such a fun way. In some of Taglieri’s earlier albums, you wouldn’t ever hear a moment of pure silence in any of his songs—just constant drums, guitars, bass, and vocals pounding away for the entire song—but this shows growth. He’s grown as a musician, grown as a person, as he’s become a father in his personal life I’m sure he’s learned to value the sound of silence and incorporates moments of peacefulness where the listener’s ears can breathe throughout.
Overall, I love the song. I think the lyrics are brave and something anyone can relate to. The vocals are obviously beautiful, as Taglieri’s voice sounds like a finely-aged scotch. In regards to the music video, it’s clear Taglieri doesn’t need a whole big production to showcase his talent. The vulnerability of him talking to himself in the mirror, watching old footage of himself, literally lecturing himself is so relatable. Let’s hope it doesn’t take another five years for Taglieri to release more music, especially if it’s going to sound like this.
John also hosts The Sunday Storytellers Series, a weekly TV show about songwriting and the ‘why’ of why songwriters write. It’s not a typical interview show, but more of a casual conversation on the art and reasons for writing. Guests have included Pat McGee, Corey Glover (Living Colour), Reb Beach (Winger), Pete Riley (Edwin McCain Band) and many more. The show goes out to approximately 100 Million households and has a weekly viewership of roughly 75k-85k on The Plymouth Rock TV Channel on Roku, Distro TV, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV and on all mobile devices.
Isolation, post-industrialization, and internet addiction might just be the millennial generation’s drugs, sex, or rock and roll. Yew Haiku, the moniker for singer-songwriter Fuschia Smith, doesn’t want to be another dancing pallbearer. With her 3-song EP release Psy and Cygnet, she has chosen to focus more on storytelling than production, teaming up with one half of Lannds, producer Brian Squillace, for the acousti-pop tracks.
Yew Haiki Shares:
This is a song about the cruel reality check that follows any kind of projection or idolization, whether through love or consumerism.
Equally inspired by baroque folk and bedroom pop, Yew Haiku felt her own production sound was too reminiscent of ambient or environmental music genres to pair with recurring internal narratives. Looped tape hiss be damned, one gets the feeling the narration of human frustration and hope is more than a superficial pastime but stay tuned.
Ski Team is the solo project of Lucie Lozinski, an independent songwriter, singer, producer, and guitarist based in Brooklyn. Her music is most defined by vulnerability, both in songwriting and performance.
“Ski Team was supposed to be me and my brother (two ‘Skis), but he already had a band,” according to Lozinski. “So now it’s me and any friends I pick up along the way.” She cites a long list of influences, including Jeff Tweedy, Beck, The New Pornographers, Gorillaz, Sufjan Stevens, and pop divas like Rihanna and Beyonce—but her main influence was singing in church. “Spirituals like Amazing Grace or Swing Low, Sweet Chariot are the main way I learned to sing—improvising each time, finding new harmonies and layers, inspired by the spirit and the moment.”
In 2019, Lozinski met producer Bobby Renz in San Francisco. The pair recorded Ski Team’s first non-bedroom production, Don’t Give Up (Yet), at Different Fur Records in the Mission District. Lozinski caught the attention of Los Angeles producer Scott Seiver through a Tenacious D concert, where Seiver was playing drums. After the show, she sent a demo on Instagram. A few months and voice memo exchanges later, Lozinski teamed up with Seiver and Timothy Young to create full-blown indie pop single Knicks Suck.
Modern Mystery 
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