The Big Takeover

There is no substitute for good songwriting. Forget all the studio gimmicks, the clever tricks, and zeitgeist-driven sonic fashion statements; if there isn’t a good song at the heart of what you are doing, then you are, as the saying goes, trying to get blood out of a stone.

If there is a gritty and hard-earned side to a lot of music that comes to us under the broad term Americana, then Lisa Michelle Anderson is found at the opposite end of that spectrum, a place built more of dreamstate sonics and finessed folk, where the rock and roll grooves sit way back in the mix and wheret he country influence is more a felt vibe than a heard reality. All of this comes to perfect fruition on her latest single, “California Dreamin’.

A dance track that is tricky to dance to? Who would do such a thing? Well, that is the sort of boundaries we find Leyla Romanova pushing, the sort of comfortable conventions that she creatively challenges. (Okay, it’s not that you can’t dance to it; it is just that you have to waltz around utilizing a clever extra shuffle step or pause to keep up with the beat…I know, I tried.) But then, she has never gone for the obvious, and that is why I love her work.

If you can’t find a decent pop-punk hiding out in the back-streets and garages of the Pacific Northwest, then you might as well give up. And while Jerkazoid might seem the obvious band to find crawling out of Portland,Oregon’s grassroots scene, what makes them so appealing is their sense of musical history.

Back in the day, the gothic sound was a sort of two-pronged attack. On the one hand, you had the formative digital experiments in darkwave dance sound; on the other, the guitar bands, more traditional rock poses with a penchant for all things dark. The great thing about Noir Addiction is that they neatly encompass both worlds…and more.

SUBSCRIBE NOW Shop our Big Takeover store for back issues, t-shirts & CDs Follow The Big Takeover The M.O. of saxophonist Ivo Perelman is to gather a duo or group of like-minded improvisers in a room, turn on the tape recorder, and see what happens. Perelman uses the same method on Triacontagon, a confab with guitarist/composer Elliott Sharp and percussionist Cyro Baptiste, but the results are little like anything he’s recorded before.

Founded in 2012, Beat:Cancer is a volunteer-run UK charity uniting the industrial and alternative electronic music community through releases, club nights, concerts and festivals. It raises funds for ethical cancer research, treatment and care projects, supporting people affected by cancer while staying true to its grassroots origins.

XANIMAL’s “The Awakening” does not rush toward its release. The Austin electronic collective, made up of Claude McCan, Noëlle Hampton, and Ken Christensen, build the single slowly, letting the synths, tablas, and vocals settle into a humid, late-night atmosphere before the beat fully takes shape. Featuring Nagavalli, the track moves away from the brighter synth-pop pulse of “Love Axis” and into something darker, softer, and more immersive. The vocals are what first pull the song into its own space.

Soft Science’s “Spinning” arrives as the first single from Sand, the Sacramento band’s fifth album, due September 4 via Shelflife Records in North America and Spinout Nuggets in the UK. The track sits naturally in the band’s dream pop and shoegaze world, with Katie Haley’s soft vocal line cutting through layered guitars, bass, drums, and synth textures. Soft Science stay within a familiar lane here, but they give the song enough motion and melodic shine to make that familiarity feel immediate.

Jah Wobble and Tian Qiyi do not approach “Strawberry Fields Forever” like a sacred object that needs to be kept behind glass. The single arrives ahead of Mystic Liverpool: The Beatles’ Psychedelic Psongbook, out August 14 via Cherry Red Records and 30 Hertz, and it treats one of The Beatles’ most familiar psychedelic songs as material that can still be pushed into a stranger room.