THE SECRET BEACH UNVEILS NEW SINGLE, ANNOUNCES UPCOMING LP

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THE SECRET BEACH, THE NEW PROJECT FROM MICAH ERENBERG, ANNOUNCES SONGS FROM THE SECRET BEACH LP OUT AUGUST 24, 2022 VIA VICTORY POOL RECORDS

Photo Credit : Little Jack Films  // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

The Secret Beach is the moniker used by Micah Erenberg whose refreshingly plainspoken candour has become a dominant through-line in the singer / songwriter’s ever-expanding catalogue. Whether releasing records under his own name or lending his talents as a producer, Erenberg exists in a constant whirlpool of creation. Out August 24, 2022 via Victory Pool Records, Erenberg’s latest offering, Songs From The Secret Beach, finds beauty in the mundanity of daily life. Produced by Erenberg, and mixed by revered producer/engineer Rob Schnapf (Kurt Vile, Beck, Cass Mccombs), this collection is at once an exercise in restraint, as well as an arrestingly lush exploration of sonic possibility.

Today, Erenberg is sharing the album track, “Miss You”, a song about “feeling lonely despite being surrounded by constant stimulation,” he says. “At the time of writing it, I was at a transitional point of my life where I was changing a lot but the world around me was staying the same. In the song I talk about playing old songs that I don’t want to play anymore, going to parties that were always the same (terrible), empty nesters having nothing to do but think about their children’s body modifications… that type of thing. The latter half of the song reflects on the fact that I was really just thinking about these things because I was bored and looking for entertainment from the things in front of me. In actuality what I really needed was someone to spend quality time with again.”“It’s a cool tune because it has a positive energy with a dark twist. The jangly guitars and driving drums are met with chordal juxtapositions, and the overall mix of the song is dark and warm.This is one of the songs that Rob Schnapf mixed. He’s made some of my all time favourite records. I gave him very little to work with and when he came back with the first mix it blew my mind.”For the video, Erenberg had asked Little Jack Films to make it with the only instruction: “for him to do whatever he wanted. The first thing he came back to me with was this crazy VHS video of cats watching their owners leave for a weekend trip… It sounds kind of odd, but it feels so nostalgic and fun. When I watch it I feel like I understand those cats so well… It's crazy!”

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MORE ABOUT SONGS FROM THE SECRET BEACH
The wisdom of this record exists between the cracks. There is nuance that could easily be overlooked. However, Songs From The Secret Beach takes a courageous and uninhibited stab at honesty. Of his process, Erenberg states, "A lot of music inherently mimics other music. It’s just natural because there is so much music out there. It’s impossible not to be inspired and shaped by the music you hear, so I try to draw more of my inspiration from non-musical things; physical experiences, conversations, feelings, sensations, and inner reflections, in an attempt to achieve some form of genuine originality.” This exercise is clearly displayed on the track "God Is", where Erenberg offers Lennon-esq narratives of the co-existence of god and man in raw

glamor-less situations. Similarly, on the title track, Erenberg delivers a juxtaposition between a blissfully playful arrangement, and a whimsically disguised commentary on the fragility of human existence. This is a common place practice for the singer-songwriter, who seamlessly manoeuvres between carefree melodicism and heavy subject matter.

WATCH / SHARE / BUY / STREAM “LAST TIME WE LOVE” HERE
SHARE / BUY / STREAM “SONG FOR MY SISTER” HERE

Since the release of his 2016 debut, Erenberg has toured extensively in support of his solo pursuits. Previously signed to the now defunct Canadian indie label Sleepless Records (Michael Rault, July Talk) for his well-regarded 2019 release Love Is Gonna Find You, Erenberg’s brand of unabashed lyrical honesty, and vulnerable talk-like delivery has earned admiration from audiences across North America and Europe.

WATCH / SHARE “THE SECRET BEACH” HERE
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SONGS FROM THE SECRET BEACH TRACKLIST
01 The Secret Beach
02 Song For My Sister
03 Miss You
04 God Is
05 Promise You
06 No Time To Lose
07 How Can I Find My Way
08 Oops, Too Bad
09 Last Time We Love
10 How Many Times

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PHARIS & JASON ROMERO CELEBRATE LP RELEASE WITH NEW MINI-DOC

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TELL ‘EM YOU WERE GOLD, THE NEW LP FROM JUNO AWARD WINNERS PHARIS & JASON ROMERO, OUT JUNE 17, 2022 VIA SMITHSONIAN FOLKWAYS RECORDINGS

"Their retro country-folk offerings are spry, warm and pleasing." The Globe & Mail, The Big 10 Albums of Summer 2022

If you could imagine the soundtrack for restoring an old barn by hand in British Columbia, it would sound an awful lot like ‘Souvenir’ by Pharis & Jason Romero.” Americana UK

PRE-ORDER TELL ‘EM YOU WERE GOLD HERE

Photo Credit : Patrick King // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

This Friday, Pharis and Jason Romero—whose old-time, country-folk, and early roots music has made them three-time JUNO Award and seven-time Canadian Folk Music Award winners— will share their new album, Tell ’Em You Were Gold. Today, the duo are celebrating the new LP with a sneak peak behind the scenes of the making of the album and life on their homestead in Horsefly, BC.

Also, Pharis and Jason are sharing another track from the album, “Rolling Mills”, a song originally from the singing of George Landers.

WATCH / SHARE TELL EM’ YOU WERE GOLD - BEHIND THE SCENES MINI-DOC

MORE ABOUT TELL ‘EM YOU WERE GOLD
It’s Pharis and Jason’s seventh album as a duo, and the first since 2020’s Bet on Love, which won praise from the BBC, NPR, and American Songwriter who said, “To call Bet on Love anything other than masterful would be a disservice.” 

Tell ’Em You Were Gold was written and recorded in an old barn on the couple’s homestead in Horsefly, British Columbia. The barn had long been run down, and between building banjos, adventuring outdoors, and loving up their two kids, Pharis and Jason restored the building themselves, milling their own spruce, hoisting beams, and rebuilding a roof originally covered in tin printing plates. “The music made on this record was made in the spirit of that working transformation and in the spirit of the history that old barn contains,” they write in the album’s liner notes. And while the intimacy of the old building does make its way onto the record in the form of crackling stoves and tapping feet, the sense of ease that glows from the album’s center gives it the warmth of a hearth in a cold BC winter. Like many albums recorded in the past couple of years, Tell ʼEm You Were Gold is an at-home record, one where the performers’ sense of being at home with one another is obvious in their effortless interplay.

WATCH / SHARE “CANNOT CHANGE IT ALL” HERE

WATCH / SHARE “OLD BILL’S TUNE” HERE

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Making things by hand comes naturally to the pair: Jason has long been a highly regarded banjo-maker whose designs expand the instrument’s expressive range while respecting both its mechanical history and the music it’s frequently been used to make. When setting out to write and record Tell ʼEm You Were Gold, the duo created something where the depth and brilliance of Jason's banjos would shine on each song, where each of the instrument’s distinct personalities could be showcased through the repertoire. Jason plays seven different banjos on the album, and Pharis plays one gourd banjo guitar—all handmade by Jason in his shop. Each banjo on this record started with an idea of a sound, a feeling, or an aesthetic, and each one makes Jason play and feel a different way. They were even given names reflecting their individual character and identity: Papillon, Big Blue, Clara, Birdie, Mother, Bella, Gourdo, and The Beast.

WATCH / SHARE “SOUVENIR” HERE

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Nearly half of Tell ’Em You Were Gold’s 16 songs are in the public domain, but the duo make sure to note whose versions have informed their own. The duo’s take on “Train on the Island” takes inspiration from the work of Tom Sauber and Mark Graham, among others, but Jason’s delicate touch—he plays three-finger style with no picks on the song—makes his virtuosity feel gentle and companionable, and contributes to the track’s incredible warmth. On opener “Souvenir”, he lays back, following the lead of Pharis’ guitar, allowing her rhythms to pull him forward as she sings about time well spent. Jason fluidly moves between various banjo styles, displaying mastery of clawhammer and three-finger picking styles and various alternate tunings. 

Pharis’ lyrics shine with wisdom that’s hard won and love that’s kindly offered. “We’re always older than yesterday, but I don’t change and you won’t stay,” she sings in “Sour Queen”. The song is a showcase for her voice, too: She pushes it higher, nearly breaking it into a yodel while Jason chases the melody downward behind her. Pharis grew up in rural British Columbia singing in her family’s folk-country band, playing in the creek, and falling for ’60s folk revival and bluegrass records, and throughout Tell ’Em You Were Gold, she sings with a sweetness that never feels like affectation. Her voice is clear, bright, and informed by the sadness of a song like “Black Guard Mary” without succumbing to it. In “Cannot Change It All”, she sings an ode to the possibility of a better world with an open-eyed view of just how difficult that world will be to achieve; she carries that knowledge in her tone, never expressing it with words, but in the shadow of heartbreak that flickers through the song. 

But what shines through Tell ’Em You Were Gold the brightest is the sense of joy that Pharis and Jason have playing with one another and with their friends. They’re joined by fiddlers Grace Forrest and Trent Freeman, pedal steel player Marc Jenkins, bassist Patrick Metzger, and John Reischman on mandolin. You can hear it in the way Jenkins’ pedal steel slides like liquid among the wiry picking of “The Dose”, or in the contented exhales of “SS Radiant”, a sweet solo banjo meditation dedicated to the duo’s son Sy. Even “Been All Around This World”, a rambling song Pharis and Jason each sang before they met and sing together here, feels quiet, at rest, like it’s arrived—like they’ve been around the world, but they’re here now, and there’s no place they’d rather be than at home together.

PRE-ORDER TELL ‘EM YOU WERE GOLD HERE

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TELL ‘EM YOU WERE GOLD TRACKLIST
01 Souvenir
02 Cold Shout
03 Rolling Mills
04 Sour Queen
05 Pale Morning
06 Trains On The Island
07 Lady On The Green
08 Cannot Change It All
09 The Dose
10 SS Radiant
11 Been All Around This World
12 Black Guard Mary
13 Going To Town
14 Going Across The Sea
15 Five Mils From Town
16 Old Bill’s Tune

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JULIA JACKLIN RELEASE NEW SINGLE / VIDEO, “I WAS NEON”

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JULIA JACKLIN NEW LP, PRE PLEASURE, PRODUCED BY MARCUS PAQUIN AND RECORDED WITH  MEMBERS OF THE WEATHER STATION, OUT AUGUST 26 VIA POLYVINYL

WORLD TOUR BEGINS THIS AUGUST WITH STOPS IN TORONTO, MONTREAL, AND VANCOUVER

PRE-ORDER PRE PLEASURE HERE

“The arrangement is sparse — drum machine, echoing stabs of piano — to spotlight Jacklin’s storytelling, but a subtle unease creeps in when she gets to the haunting chorus” - The New York Times

"The single opens with the dense patter of a drumkit, as Jacklin’s lush vocals enter." - Rolling Stone

“Fans of Tamara Lindeman and her folk-rock outfit the Weather Station will cock an ear toward the Australian singer-songwriter Julia Jacklin. She shares Weather Station bassist Ben Whiteley and guitarist Will Kidman on her latest album, which was produced by Montrealer Marcus Paquin of Arcade Fire and the National pedigree. The elite string arranger Owen Pallett is also on board.”  The Globe and Mail, ‘The Big 10 Albums of Summer 2022’

"First single “Lydia Wears A Cross” is a slow-building number. It starts with Jacklin singing over a rickety drum-machine, but by the time it’s over, we get strings and synths and drums coming in from every angle." - Stereogum  

"Led by piano pounding over a simple drum machine beat, the song patiently builds on synth and a the slow spiral of a distorted guitar. It’s all just a platform for Jacklin’s captivating melodies as she sings of “a seven-year-old Jesus Christ Superstar fanatic attending catholic school trying to figure out which way is up.” - Consequence 

Photo Credit: Nick Mckk // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Julia Jacklin is back with a new album out this August, and it’s a welcome return with critics and fans alike preparing for yet another devastatingly powerful record. PRE PLEASURE set for release on August 26 via Polyvinyl Record Co. Recorded in Montreal with co-producer Marcus Paquin (The Weather Station, The National), PRE PLEASURE finds Jacklin teamed with her Canada-based touring band, bassist Ben Whiteley and guitarist Will Kidman, both of Canadian folk outfit The Weather Station. It also introduces drummer Laurie Torres, saxophonist Adam Kinner and string arrangements by Owen Pallett (Arcade Fire) recorded by a full orchestra in Prague.

Out today, Jacklin’s new single “I Was Neon” feels like an instant classic. Driven by steady guitars and rhythm section, sonically the track is a rock-pop anthem with Jacklin asking, ‘Am I going to lose myself again?’.

“I Was Neon” arrives today with a video directed by Jacklin who says she first wrote the song for “a band called rattlesnack, a short-lived much loved 2019 side project that I played drums in. I rewrote it for my album in Montreal, during a time when I was desperately longing for a version of myself that I feared was gone forever. I was thinking of this song when I made the album cover, this song is the album cover really.”

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MORE ABOUT PRE PLEASURE
“A lot of the time I feel like I need to do all the work before I can enjoy my life,” says Julia Jacklin of her third album, PRE PLEASURE. “Whether that’s work on songs or sex, friendships, or my relationship with my family – I think if I work on them long and hard enough, eventually I’ll get to sit around and really enjoy them. But that’s not how anything works is it. It’s all an ongoing process.”

The binary of casual crisis is a powerful force in Julia Jacklin’s music. Since releasing her debut album Don’t Let the Kids Win in 2016, the Melbourne-via-Blue Mountains singer/songwriter has carved out a fearsome reputation as a direct lyricist, willing to excavate the parameters of intimacy and agency in songs both stark and raw, loose, and playful. If her folky 2016 debut Don’t Let the Kids Win announced those intentions, and the startling 2019 follow-up Crushing drew in listeners uncomfortably close, PRE PLEASURE is the sound of Jacklin gently loosening her grip.

Conceived upon returning home at the end of a mammoth Crushing world tour, and finished in a frantic few months of recording in Montreal (“The songs on this record took either three years to write or three minutes”), PRE PLEASURE sees Jacklin expanding beyond her signature sound, while conjuring the ripples and faultlines caused by unreliable communication.

WATCH / SHARE “LYDIA WEARS A CROSS” HERE
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Stirring piano-led opener ‘Lydia Wears A Cross’ channels the underage confusion of being told religion is profound, despite only feeling it during the spectacle of its pageantry. The gentle pulse of “Love, Try Not To Let Go” and dreamy strings of “Ignore Tenderness” betray an interrogation of consent and emotional injury (‘beneath the sheets you’re just a cave / a plastic bucket, or a grave / who said you’re not what you get / you are what you gave away’). The stark “Less Of A Stranger” picks at the generational thread of a mother/daughter relationship, while the hymnal “Too In Love To Die” and loose jam of “Be Careful With Yourself” equate true love with the fear of losing it. Gorgeous string-drenched closer “End Of A Friendship” offers a grand gesture of post-communication – an effort to bestow fireworks on a friendship that’s fizzled out.

“I care so much about the people around me, so much it makes me want to sleep forever, it feels so overwhelming” says Jacklin. “I wasn’t raised in an environment where language was used to express love and care, part of my songwriting process is me trying to rectify that, force myself to put words to those feelings”

READ MORE ABOUT JULIA JACKLIN IN THE FULL BIO HERE

PRE-ORDER PRE PLEASURE HERE

MORE PRAISE FOR JULIA JACKLIN

"The Australian singer seems to effortlessly evoke heartbreak with every incisive line she lulls with passion and vulnerability" - Uproxx

"On the new track, Jacklin carefully lays out a scene's rough sketch through first-person narration before filling in the lines with existential depth." - FLOOD 

"I’d be a believer / If it was all just song and dance,” she insists over an indistinct guitar riff, unable to feel a connection to her spirituality except through the transportive power of performance. Live drums and synths kick in unexpectedly as the song builds, and Jacklin vocalizes wordlessly through its climax, as if finally finding the transcendence she was seeking." - Paste

WORLD TOUR DATES
08/26 - Stanford, CA @ Frost Amphitheater - Here and There Festival
08/27 - Pasadena, CA @ This Ain’t No Picnic Festival
09/09 - Austin, TX @ Mohawk #09/10 - Dallas, TX @ The Studio at The Factory #
09/12 - Nashville, TN @ The Basement East #
09/13 - Atlanta, GA @ Terminal West #
09/15 - Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club #
09/16 - Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel #
09/17 - Philadelphia, PA @ Underground Arts #
09/18 - Boston, MA @ Paradise Rock Club #
09/20 - Montreal, QC @ Corona Theatre $
09/21 - Toronto, ON @ Phoenix Concert Theatre $
09/22 - Grand Rapids, MI @ Calvin University $
09/23 - Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall $
09/24 - Minneapolis, MN @ Fine Line $
09/26 - Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theater $
09/27 - Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge $
09/29 - Vancouver, BC @ Commodore Ballroom $
09/30 - Seattle, WA @ The Crocodile $
10/02 - Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall $
10/04 - San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore $
10/05 - Solana Beach, CA @ Belly Up Tavern $
10/07 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda Theatre $
10/08 - Phoenix, AZ @ Crescent Ballroom $
11/03 - Dublin, Ireland @ Vicar Street &
11/05 - Glasgow, Scotland @ SWG3 TV Studio &
11/06 - Manchester, UK @ The Ritz &
11/07 - Birmingham, UK @ The Mill &
11/09 - Bristol, UK @ SWX &
11/10 - Brighton, UK @ Chalk &
11/11 - London, UK @ Roundhouse &
11/13 - Paris, France @ La Maroquinerie &
11/14 - Antwerp, Belgium @ Trix Club &
11/15 - Cologne, Germany @ Club Bahnhof Ehrenfeld &
11/17 - Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Paradiso &
11/18 - Hamburg, Germany @ Knust &
11/20 - Oslo, Norway @ Parkteatret &
11/21 - Stockholm, Sweden @ Slaktkyrkan &
11/22 - Copenhagen, Denmark @ Dr Koncerthuset &
11/24 - Berlin, Germany @ Columbia Theatre &
11/25 - Munich, Germany @ Strom &
11/26 - Zurich, Switzerland @ Plaza &
11/27 - Milan, Italy @ Magnolia &
11/29 - Barcelona, Spain @ Apolo &
11/30 - Madrid, Spain @ SalaMon &
12/01 - Lisbon, Portugal @ Lav &

# w/ Kara Jackson
$ w/ Katy Kirby
& w/ Erin Rae

PRE PLEASURE TRACKLISTING
01. Lydia Wears A Cross
02. Love, Try Not To Let Go
03. Ignore Tenderness
04. I Was Neon
05. Too In Love To Die
06. Less Of A Stranger
07. Moviegoer
08. Magic
09. Be Careful With Yourself
10. End Of A Friendship

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