On June 30, Orindal Records will release Triggered by Sunsets, the third full-length album by New Zealand-based dream pop/shoegaze DIY recording artist Young Moon.
Trevor Montgomery (formerly of Tarentel & Lazarus) has been writing & recording brooding ballads & blissful psychedelia as Young Moon for over a decade, programming vintage drum machines & atmospheric synths to accompany his mournful baritone. In an album review for music blog Consequence, music journalist describes Montgomery as "a singer/songwriter with a talent for lo-fi tracks, electronic
synthesizers, and genuine lyrics that explore love, life, and– fittingly
for his well-traveled voice– death."
I've been a fan of Young Moon since 2013, when I caught a live set at a little bar in Oakland, CA & picked up a vinyl copy of Navigated Like the Swan, the debut Young Moon album on Western Vinyl. That album lived on my turntable all through that winter. The music seemed to exist on a different plane, coming to me from both the future & the past. The songs were achingly beautiful, full of grief & hope, & I've carried them in my head ever since. Trevor & I kept in touch & we would occasionally run into each other in San Francisco until Trevor & his family relocated to Nelson, New Zealand in 2019. I was thrilled when Trevor emailed me some excellent new Young Moon recordings & I jumped at the chance to collaborate on a release.
Triggered by Sunsets is Montgomery's first Young Moon full length recording since relocating to New Zealand, & it's the Young Moon first release for Orindal Records. First single "Deep Ecology" is out now. Find "Deep Ecology" on your preferred streaming service HERE.
Triggered by Sunsets will be released on 160 gram "sea glass" color vinyl, classic black vinyl & digital formats on June 30. The album's cover was created by collage artist Rachel Anne Duffy. Pre-order your copy & read the album's bio by Matt Hellriegel & introductory poem by Jason Morris HERE.
Young Moon will return to the U.S. in July for a solo show at the Ivy Room in Oakland, CA, followed by a two week tour of the eastern U.S. with Advance Base. Catch Young Moon live & pick up your copy of Triggered by Sunsets from the merch table!
Read Lisa/Liza's track-by-track breakdown of the album for Deepest Currents HERE.
"Liza Victoria wends through fingerpicked folk, whispery Americana, and the odd psychedelic flourish on her latest as Lisa/Liza. The Portland, Maine, singer-songwriter made the album while 'working through heavy aspects of living with chronic illness,' writing in fleeting periods of health, she said in press materials. 'Music was a friend to me during this, and I know it will continue to be.'" - Pitchfork
"Stunning... as mesmerising as we’ve come to expect from the songwriter, all earthy and dimly lit; shadows dancing in the gloaming." - GoldFlakePaint
"Born out of the artist’s own personal experiences with pain and trauma, Breaking and Mending
aches with the often heavy weight of life itself. It’s a record of
introspection and inner reckoning; a collection of brutally honest
acoustic songs that capture the fragility of our own humanity. Dwelling
at the crossroads of tenderness and turbulence, Breaking and Mending
sheds light on a topic all too often kept in the darkness. Beautifully
vulnerable and breathtakingly raw, Lisa/Liza’s latest is, without a
doubt, her best work yet." - Atwood Magazine
"With Breaking and Mending, Lisa/Liza
captures the patience required in learning to live with suffering. Be it
borne of chronic illness or trauma or the slow weight of passing time.
But also the hope that there is reason to weather such conditions. A
faith retained through all challenges, much in the same way a tree
stands patient despite surely longing for its leaves through the cold of
the winter months. And in refusing to sterilize this picture of its
contradictions, Liza Victoria reclaims herself from flattening binaries
so that others might do so too. Illness and health, loneliness and love,
none of these things are simple. And the act of being yourself while
living through them is a not a linear process, but an act of breaking,
mending." - Various Small Flames
"With just her spectral guitar lines and keening vocals, Liza manages to paint an intricate portrait of struggle, loss and the strength to keep on going... Beautiful, tender and restorative." - For the Rabbits
Orindal lord Owen Ashworth is touring his electro-folk solo project, Advance Base, through the American South in May, previewing new songs & revisiting favorites from his 20+ year career. Don't miss these shows!
After months of manufacturing delays, human futures, the brilliant new album by Dear Nora, is finally available on vinyl!
Order your copy on "Skull" or classic black vinyl HERE.
"human futures retains everything that has made Dear Nora a cult hit—the playful lo-fi pop vibe, the offbeat observational lyrics that have come to mark later releases—but feels somehow more complete, more cohesive. Few artists capture twenty-first century life as well as Davidson, images of natural beauty sitting next to wry humour and deadpan observations of our ruined world." - Jon Doyle, Various Small Flames
Catch Dear Nora on tour & pick up a copy of human futures from the merch table!
DEAR NORA (SOLO) TOUR DATES
March 31, 2023- Queens, NY @ Sundown Bar w/ Jane Lai April 2, 2023- Washington, DC @ Comet Ping Pong w/ Berra April 3, 2023- Philadelphia, PA @ Imperfect Gallery w/ Opal Eskar (Karl Blau project!), Birdie Busch April 4, 2023- Northampton, MA @ Parlor Room w/ bobbie April 5, 2023- Brattleboro, VT @ Epsilon Spires w/ Footings April 6, 2023- Burlington, VT @ Radio Bean April 7, 2023- Montreal, QC @ Diving Bell Social Club w/ The Castle April 8, 2023- Cambridge, MA @ Gallery 263
"With just her spectral guitar lines and keening vocals, Liza manages to paint an intricate portrait of struggle, loss and the strength to keep on going... Beautiful, tender and restorative." - For the Rabbits
"Under the moniker Lisa/Liza, Portland, Maine songwriter Liza Victoria makes what we have previously described as 'deliberate, unhurried songs made in the image of nature’s patient rhythms […] that examine how surrounding landscapes are tied to our most intimate emotions and memories.' In April, Victoria returns with Breaking and Mending, her first full-length since 2020’s excellent Shelter of a Song, again on Orindal Records. Written while working through chronic illness and the heavy legacy of past trauma, the record captures what Victoria describes as her 'emotional landscape in the last two years,' and lead single ‘Held Together’ introduces these themes with tender beauty. Constructed of picked guitar and softly crooning vocals, its a song about weathering changing seasons of an internal nature, about holding on for metaphorical buds of spring." - Various Small Flames
On April 28, Orindal Records will release Breaking and Mending, the latest tender treasury of stripped-down psych folk from Portland, Maine’s Lisa/Liza. Breaking and Mending’s lead single, “Held Together”, premiered on Post-Trash & is now streaming everywhere.
Post- Trash's Dan Goldin writes:
“The record’s lead single is “Held Together,” a song that reads like a personal recollection, a letter to self, a gentle reminder to stay afloat even as things are tough. There’s a whole world out there, changing seasons, growth and bloom, and feelings that will eventually come and go. The soft acoustic guitar is played with undeniable emotion, with strums alternating between gentle touches and more immediate finger picking. It’s beautiful in the way that all Lisa/Liza songs are. We all struggle, but we’re not alone. Victoria’s voice is your favorite blanket, her words a dissociation from troubles, deciding instead to focus on the beauty of her surroundings, to put her mind at ease. It’s a welcome respite.”
Breaking and Mending is available on Irish Setter color vinyl, black vinyl & digital formats. Vinyl orders ship in early April. Pre-order your copy HERE.
LISA/LIZA ON TOUR
April 11, 2023- Chatanooga, TN @ The Woodshop (w/ Joe Chang)
April 12, 2023- Atlanta, GA @ 529 (w/ Joe Chang, Annie Leeth & Perdy Slow)
April 13, 2023- Athens, GA @ Buvez (w/ Joe Chang)
April 14, 2023- Greenville, SC @ Inchoate Art Gallery (w/ Joe Chang, Shane Parish + John Kiran Fernandes Duo & Annie Leeth)
April 15, 2023- Columbia, SC @ The Addition (w/ Joe Chang & Marshall Brown)
April 16, 2023- Asheville, NC @ Static Age (w/ Joe Chang, Natalie Jane Hill & Sinai Vessel)
Ducks, an intimate album of solo 4-track recordings by Vancouver, BC singer, songwriter & multi-instrumentalist Nicholas Krgovich, is out today! Find it on your favorite streaming service here HERE & purchase a vinyl LP & download HERE.
"Nicholas Krgovich’s new album, Ducks, explores the rich experience of solitude, and the many quiet revelations that are available in even the most mundane moments. Each of the album’s eleven songs presents a closely-observed vignette of simply being alive and sentient in such moments: Krgovich describes himself mailing a letter, waking up on a hot day, combing the beach for shells, mowing the lawn, and noticing his own thoughts and feelings about these activities along the way. The album’s vibe of radical presence is emphasized both lyrically and in its production. Each song has a kind of meditative quality, a pulse that guides the ear down a straight path, moving while somehow also staying rooted in place. Airy guitar noodling drifts above simple percussion, often consisting of just a couple of sounds. An egg shaker comes in and out with great precision. The surprising chord progressions that characterize much of Krgovich’s previous music are here as well, and this combination—unexpected harmonic changes on top of the other elements’ regularity—feels like a wordless evocation of the lyrics’ theme: that there are revelations to be found even within the regular and daily. We can always be surprised by ourselves and/in the world." - Marianna Ritchey
"Perhaps that’s the joy of Nicholas Krgovich’s music, he takes the view
out your window and shines new light upon it, he highlights the beauty
and the sadness, the tough past and the bright future we have to believe
is coming around every corner." -
For the Rabbits
Ducks, an intimate album of solo 4-track recordings by Vancouver, BC singer, songwriter & multi-instrumentalist Nicholas Krgovich (No Kids, P:ano, Mount Eerie, Dear Nora, Shabason & Krgovich), will be released by Orindal Records on March 10, 2023. Ducks’ breezy, melancholic tunes describe Krgovich's day-to-day in charmingly mundane detail over clever pop arrangements reminiscent of Yo La Tengo at their gentlest & The Beach Boys’ Smiley Smile.Ducks is Nicholas Krgovich's first album for Orindal since 2015's On Cahuenga. We're so pleased to be working with him again!
Ducks' lead-off track & first single, "Front Stoop #2", is now streaming everywhere.
Nicholas Krgovich on "Front Stoop #2":
Made up this song in a "end of the bed with an acoustic guitar preparing
for a coffee shop open mic nite" spirit! Takes about as long to listen
to as it did to come up with - my feelings in September 2019 after a
summer of forest fires and a very trippy biblical end times western
hemlock looper moth infestation... Enjoy :-)
Read Marianna Ritchey's essay on Ducks & pre-order the album on vinyl & digital formats HERE.
(Photo of Nicholas Krgovich by Greg Campanile)
To celebrate the release of Ducks, Nicholas Krgovich is embarking on a brief tour of the western United States with his old pal & Orindal labelmate Advance Base. You won't want to miss these two live!
Asheville, NC indie rock legends-in-the-making Wednesday released their epic covers collection, Mowing the Leaves Instead of Piling 'em Up, on cassette & digital formats last year, & Pitchfork named the album one of the Best Rock Albums of 2022! Now, by popular demand, Orindal Records will release a vinyl edition of Mowing the Leaves Instead of Piling 'em Up on March 3, 2023!!
This new edition of 1000 super high quality, 160 gram vinyl LPs were pressed by Smashed Plastic in Chicago, IL & come packaged in extra heavyweight photo jackets with double-sided, full color,
11x11 mini-poster inserts. LPs come in two colorways: pilsner yellow translucent vinyl (600 copies) or classic black vinyl (400 copies).
"The follow-up to 2021’s excellent Twin Plagues, it’s the type of collection that, in a lesser band’s hands, might feel like a stopgap release: a low-stakes way of shaking off the jitters after a breakthrough. Instead, Mowing the Leaves feels crucial to Wednesday’s evolution, running through their influences—classic country, 1990s alt-rock and shoegaze, 2000s alt-country—to illustrate what the band draws on to create its signature blend."
Orindal Records recording artists Dan Wriggins, Claire Cronin & Advance Base are bringing two intimate evenings of solo singer/songwriter sets to Chicago & Iowa City for the big April Fools Day weekend. Tickets are on sale now!
Saturday, April 1- Chicago, IL @ Hungry Brain (9PM, 21+)
Sunday, April 2 Iowa City, IA @ PS1 (7:30PM, all ages)
(Flyer illustrations & lettering by Claire Cronin)
Tucson, AZ singer, songwriter, ambient composer & experimental filmmaker Karima Walker is bringing her immersive, multimedia live show to Texas for a week of dates with some of the Lone Star State's best indie/Americana artists. Don't miss Karima Walker (& friends) live!
Karima Walker's New Year Texas Tour
January 20, 2023- Austin, TX @ Cactus Cafe (free show w/ Jordan Moser & Will Johnson)
January 21, 2023- San Antonio, TX @ Presa House (w/ Little Mazarn)
January 22, 2023- Galveston, TX @ Galveston Artist Residency (w/ Little Mazarn)
January 25, 2023- Lockhart, TX @ Arts + Craft (w/ Alex Dupree)
January 27, 2023- Dallas, TX @ The Wild Detectives (w/ Alex Dupree)
January 28, 2023- Austin, TX @ Sagebrush (w/ Twain & Julian Neel)
The Orindal webstore will be closed while I'm away on tour with Advance Base. Today is the last day that I'll be shipping orders before I close up the shop until December 10. You'll still be able to place orders & receive digital downloads, but no physical orders will ship until December 12.
As always, many Orindal titles are available via mail order from our distributor The Business.