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RIGHT ARM RESOURCE UPDATE JESSE BARNETT [email protected] (508) 238-5654 www.rightarmresource.com www.facebook.com/rightarmresource 4/22/2020 “Shameika” The first single from Fetch The Bolt Cutters, one of the best-reviewed in a long time, out now rating: 10/10 #1 Most Added early, including KGSR, WRNR, KCMP, WFUV, KCSN, WFPK, KJAC, KTBG, KUTX, KVOQ, WAPS, WERS, WTMD, WYMS, Music Choice, WPYA... “A triumphant statement of self-discovery and solidarity. The best work of her career.” - White Reaper “Real Long Time” The second single from You Deserve Love, out now, following up the AAA and Alternative smash “Might Be Right” Early: WRLT, WXCT, KCSN, KVOQ, WAPS, KTSN “There were a lot of bits and pieces added in studio, like the bass and drum intro and the key lead in the chorus. We went for an Electric Light Orchestra vocal sound in the chorus, too. Most of it was recorded live.” - WR on the single Pearl Jam “Retrograde” The second single from Gigaton, out now Most Added early, including: SiriusXM Spectrum, WMMM, WRLT, WFUV, WPYA, KPND, WXPK, WXCT, KCSN, KTBG, KVOQ, WERS, KMMS, KOZT, KTAO, KTSN, WEHM, WFIV, WZLO... Release week: Top 5 Billboard 200 “Strong and loose, political and personal, Pearl Jam get the balance absolutely right.” - MOJO “In short, a triumph.” - Kerrang! Citizen Cope “Scared Of Heights” The first single from his forthcoming eighth Early: WRNR, WFUV, KPND, WCLX, WCNR, KJAC, WAPS, KLRR, KMMS, WEHM, WCLY, WFIV, WOCM, WBJB, WJCU, KRVM, KRCL, KSLU, WUKY... Clarence has been hosting “Quarantine With Cope” broadcasts A beautifully written, poignant song with lyrics that are perfect for : “Learning to fly when you’re scared of heights” Wild Rivers “I Do” The first single from their EP, Songs To Break Up To, at radio now and out 5/1 Early adds at WCLX, WFIV, KSMF and KUWR Produced by Skylar Wilson (Rayland Baxter; Justin Townes Earle; Joshua Hedley) The theme of the Toronto four-piece’s EP was inspired by co-lead vocalist/guitarist Khalid Yassein facing the dissolution of a long-term relationship in 2018 Orville Peck “Summertime” His new single, out now via Columbia New: WFIV, WUMB ON: WFUV, Music Choice, WNCW, KXCI, WCLX, WDVX... Acoustic video out On the song: “The reference to summertime in the song can be not necessarily a literal reference to the season, but could be a reference to a place or a time or a per- son. The song is very much about missing somebody, even though they might be right there next to you, or missing somewhere that may be just out of arm’s reach.” American Aquarium “The Luckier You Get” The first single from Lamentations, produced by Shooter Jennings, out 5/1 New: WCBE, KTSN, KFMG ON: WBJB, KROK, WCLY, WOCM, KNBA, WEXT, WCLX, WFIV, KRVM, WUSM, WHRV Scheduled for an extensive run of international tour dates “‘The Luckier You Get’ is a feel good song about appreciating hard work and the rewards that come along with it.” - The Boot Pretenders “The Buzz” From Hate For Sale, out 7/17 Mediabase 42*, BDS Monitored 26*, Indicator 18*, JBE Public 9*! New: KRML, KHUM ON: WRLT, WXPK, WQKL, WKLQ, WXPN, WFUV, KXT, KCSN, WYEP, Music Choice, WFPK, WZEW, WCLZ, WPYA, KPND, WEHM, WERS, KTBG, KRSH, WTMD, WCNR... All songs written by Chrissie Hynde and Pretenders guitarist James Walbourne Major summer tour scheduled with Journey Dixie Chicks “Gaslighter” The title track single from their upcoming album, out 5/1 Mediabase 49*! ON: KGSR, WRLT, Music Choice, WXPN, KCSN, WFPK, WPYA, WCNR, KVNA, KTBG, WAPS, KPIG, KTAO, WEXT, KTSN, KCLC, WCLY and more “The Dixie Chicks know that history has been good to the battles they’ve fought. So now they’re working on their own time, answering to no one.” - Pitchfork Perfume Genius “On The Floor” The first single from Set My Heart On Fire Immediately, out 5/15 BDS Monitored Debut 39*, JBE Tracks 51*, Public 38*! New: WRLT ON: KCMP, WFUV, Music Choice, KXT, WYEP, WFPK, WPYA, KTBG, KUTX, KVOQ, WEHM, KCSN, WYMS, WTMD, KJAC, WNRN, WAPS, WBDB, WCNR, KVYN... 90+ million US artist streams! “The ambition and eccentricity are broader than ever.” - NY Times Tame Impala tour scheduled The Grahams “Kids Like Us” The title track single from their new album, out now New: KFMG ON: KRSH, KRML, KVYN, WCBE, WFIV, KHUM, KBAC, WCLX, KSMF, KKAL, WFHB, KDNK, KLRR, MPBC, KPIG, KRVM, KAXE, KUWR, KVNF... The final album produced by Richard Swift “A complete 180 from their pre- vious releases, which were steeped in more Americana, bluegrass-y acoustics, Kids is orchestrated, more bombastic, and electric” - American G. Love “Diggin’ Roots” (feat. Ron Artis II) The second single from The Juice, produced by Keb’ Mo’ BDS Indicator #29, JBE Tracks 52*! New: WMVY ON: KJAC, WYEP, KPND, WCNR, KRSH, WCLX, KMTN, KRML, KSUT, WFIV, WOCM, KYSL, WVOD, KCLC, KMMS, KBAC, KROK, WCLY, WCBE, WZLO... “Every song in Juice earns its keep.” - American Songwriter Running livestreams this month to benefit staff at his regular venues Trevor Hall “Put Down What You Are Carrying” (feat. Brett Dennen) Their new single, out now New: KROK ON: KYSL, KLRR, WFIV, WBJB, WCLX, KRSH, WTYD, KNBA, KRML, KDTR, KUWR Touring together in August and September: 8/28 Miami FL, 8/29 St. Petersburg FL, 8/30 Daytona Beach FL, 9/1 Atlanta GA, 9/3 St. Louis MO, 9/4 Chicago IL, 9/6 Omaha NE, 9/8 Cleveland OH, 9/9 Detroit MI, 9/16 Philadelphia PA, 9/18 Silver Spring MD... Pokey LaFarge “End Of My Rope” The first single from Rock Bottom Rhapsody, out now JBE Public 40* New: KEXP, KTSN, KXCI ON: WRLT, KCMP, Music Choice, WRSI, WFPK, KJAC, WAPS, WNRN, WJCU, WNCW, KNBA, WCBE, XM Loft, WEXT, KPIG, WMVY, KSMF, KBAC, WUKY, WUSM, KSLU... “LaFarge’s first new album in over three years... brings and rock ‘n’ roll together in a way that feels fresh.” - Paste ZZ Ward “Break Her Heart” The first single from her upcoming album Mediabase 24*, BDS Monitored 32*, Indicator #26! ON: KINK, KGSR, WMMM, KRVB, Music Choice, WRLT, KCSN, WPYA, WWCT, WKLQ, WCLZ, WAPS, WFPK... On the song: “No matter how much you try to change for someone else... you can’t... you can only be what you are, and if they don’t see the beauty in that than F***em’!!!” Katie Pruitt “Expectations” The title track from her new album, out now Mediabase 30*, BDS Monitored 23*, Indicator 19*, JBE Public 17*! New: WHRV ON: KGSR, WXRV, WRLT, WFUV, WXPN, KCSN, Music Choice, WXPK, KTHX, WCLZ, WPYA, KJAC, WTMD, KXT, WFPK, WYEP, KTBG, WAPS, WNCS... “There’s something wonderfully nostalgic about Expectations... rustles up the timeless, infinite feeling of being young and limitless” - Rolling Stone “Oh Yeah” The new single from Father Of All..., out now Mediabase 25*, BDS Monitored #22, Indicator #34! #1 Rock and Alternative!! ON: KGSR, WRNR, WXRV, WMMM, KCMP, KRVB, WXPK, KCSN, WFPK, WWCT, WNCS, WXCT, KPND, WZEW, WKLQ, WAPS, WQKL, WEHM, WCNR... TV: Ellen, The Late Late Show, GMA First week: #1 Billboard album sales, #4 on the Top 200! Big summer tour Kaleo “I Want More” The first AAA single from their forthcoming album Mediabase 8*, BDS Monitored 10*, Indicator #11, JBE Public #41! ON: WXRT, KBCO, SiriusXM Spectrum, KGSR, KINK, WXRV, KCMP, WRLT, WMMM, CIDR, KTHX, WXPK, WQKL, WKLQ, KRVB, Music Choice, KXT, WYEP, WCLZ, WNCS, WTMD, WPYA, KPND, WFPK, KJAC, KTBG... Extensive 2020 national tour schedule scheduled Pete Yorn “I Wanna Be The One” The follow up to the top 5 single “Calm Down” from Caretakers Mediabase 27*, BDS Monitored Debut 27*! New: WXRV, WNCS, KVNA, WXCT, WXPK, KTSN ON: KINK, KGSR, WMMM, WRNR, WRLT, KCSN, WPYA, WQKL, Music Choice, KXT, WZEW, WAPS, WWCT, KYMK, WKLQ, WFPK, KVYN, KJAC, KVOQ, WNRN, WTMD, WCNR... Live IG performances every night Lyric video and interview premiered on Space.com Rolling Stone looks closely at Dixie Chicks’ “Gaslighter” “‘What a lie-lie-lie-lie,’ sings in “Gaslighter,” the long-awaited first piece of new music that the Dixie Chicks have released since the George W. Bush administration. Maines has hinted that the group’s upcoming album will chronicle her 2019 divorce, and the new single clears up any ambiguity. The thinly-veiled autobiographical sing-along, which was produced by , is one part righteous indignation and one part post mid-life crisis emancipation, with a pulsing drum beat that’s sure to make “Gaslighter” the anthemic centerpiece of the group’s comeback. In the video, and have their hands on Natalie Maines, who’s sitting on a stool spilling personal details: “We moved to California and we followed your dreams,” she sings. “I believed in the promises you made to me.” “Gaslighter” conjures Dixie Chicks standbys like “” and “,” songs that turn the group’s own personal tur- moils into layered pop texts. The trio’s “Gaslighter” video, with its unsubtle political and historical imagery, uses Maines’ travails as a template for decades of personal and collective national pain. The Dixie Chicks’ latest demands are that the gaslighters of the world listen to the harm they’ve caused. “I’m your mirror,” Maines sings at last, “Standing here until you can see how/You broke me.” - Rolling Stone, 3/4/2020 Pitchfork grants the elusive perfect 10 rating to Fiona Apple “It happens to most of us at an early age: the realization that life will not follow a straight line on the path towards fulfillment. Instead, life spirals. The game is rigged, power corrupts, and society is, in a word, bullshit. Art can expose the lies. The early music of Fiona Apple was so much about grand betrayals by inadequate men and the patriarchal world. Did it teach you to hate yourself? Did it teach you to bury your pain, to let it calcify, to build a gate around your heart that quiets the reaches of your one and only voice? Fetch the bolt cutters. Fiona Apple’s fifth record is unbound. No music has ever sounded quite like it. Apple recorded Fetch the Bolt Cutters both in and with her Venice Beach home, banging on its walls, stomping on its ground. Self-reliance is its rule, curiosity is its key. Fetch the Bolt Cutters seems to almost completely turn the volume down on music history, while it cranks up raw, real life—handclaps, chants, and other makeshift percussion, in harmony with space, echoes, whispers, screams, breathing, jokes, so-called mis- takes, and dog barks. (At least five dogs are credited: Mercy, Maddie, Leo, Little, and Alfie.) All of this debris orbits around the core of Apple’s music: her voice, her piano, and most of all her words, which have always been her primary instrument. It creates a wild symphony of the everyday. In the past, Apple has said was her god, and she wrote lyrics and melodies on par with the finest pop songs ever recorded. But Fetch the Bolt Cutters feels more conceptually akin to the revolutionary risk-taking of saint Yoko Ono—a woman who once wrote, “I like to fight the establishment by using methods that are so far removed from establishment-type thinking that the establishment doesn’t know how to fight back.” Fetch the Bolt Cutters does something similar. It contains practically no conventional pop forms. Taken together, the notes of its found percussion and rattling blues are liberationist. Apple was moving towards all of this with 2012’s The Idler Wheel. Even after the fury and eloquence of her initial three-album run—manifestos from a voice of dis- enchantment who knew even as a teenager that she was “too smart” for the world—Idler Wheel still felt like a breakthrough. It was the first Apple record to realize the breadth of her potential in the ecstatic reach of the music itself. On the corporeal “Daredevil,” she sang of “gashes” that gave her “lift.” But on Fetch the Bolt Cutters she calls the gashes out by name: “bullies,” “it girls,” “wannabes,” and, above all, toxic masculinity. Apple said, in a recent profile in , that she worried she’d constructed “a record that can’t be made into a record,” but that shakiness was merely a symptom of a feat of total abandon. The whole album flies. The opening song, “I Want You to Love Me” seems to offer a thesis for the meaning of life: to love, to connect, to get “back in the pulse.” She sings, scats, lightly raps—and proceeds to curl her voice into an extended-vocal contortion à la Yoko or Meredith Monk, over a Reichian piano loop, signaling an avant-garde inclination. Apple sings about time and meaninglessness, and how “while I’m in this body I want somebody to want.” She sings about knowing that one day she will die. The song echoes the beautiful open letter she wrote in 2012 about her dog, Janet, who was then dying: “I know that I will feel the most overwhelming knowledge of her [...] in the last moments.” Apple reportedly “tapped” on a box containing Janet’s bones during the recording of the album. There is a tendency among , as they get older, to refine—to use fewer words to allow for easier melodies. But to refine is to reel back, to withdraw. Apple does the opposite, reimagining her music to accommodate even more words, more of herself: “You’ve got to get what you want/How you want it/But so do I,” she sings on “Drumset,” grasping at every self-determined syllable. A number of Fetch the Bolt Cutters’ rough-hewn tracks sound like they might collapse at any moment, only to pick themselves up with a smirk of cool relief. The incantatory “Relay” includes a fluttering ambient noise jam recalling no one so much as O.G. punk band the Slits. Across four distinct movements, the madcap “For Her” pivots from a cabaret tune to a march to a swooping blues ballad to a one-woman choir of antagonizing angels. It is the definition of uncompromising. Apple’s indictments of men are also cutting as ever—“Your face ignites a fuse to my patience,” goes “Cosmonauts”—but her vulnerabilities are more daring, too. In a single word, her voice can dive from a ragged scream to a whisper so intimate that it barely exists outside of her. Fetch the Bolt Cutters can threaten the status quo and it can be outrageously funny, often at once. The long-reigning queen of self-isolation proclaims, “I told you I didn’t want to go to this dinner,” to open a song called “Under the Table,” as in: “Kick me under the table all you want/I won’t shut up.” “Rack of His” turns the experience of, well, getting played by a musician, into something hysterically subversive: “Check out that rack of his/Look at that row of guitar necks,” she daydreams, before cutting to the quick: “I thought you would wail on me like you wail on them.” And on “Relay,” after listing off a series of things she resents about an ex, she offers a critique of our hyper-socially-mediated world so savage it practically demands a standing ovation: “I resent you for presenting your life like a fucking propaganda brochure.” With her humor comes a playfulness that is still genuinely disarming to hear from a woman who wrote a song about herself and titled it “Sullen Girl.” The title track, and the album’s peak, is a work of musical bildungsroman, like a teenage girl’s diary, detailing the futility of fighting your way through a friendship, crying, and the secret power of a song. Apple sings of how the cool girls in school damaged her self-esteem, how the strength of your mind does not guarantee the fortitude of your heart. The energy centers of the song are reversed—the verses slink with gravity, the choruses are steadied and light. “Fetch the bolt cutters,” Apple sings like a spell, “I’ve been in here too long.” She has always strung words together like armor, but “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” feels designed to protect us. However you interpret it, the line, the song, and the album speak the language of transcendence. In 1996, on “The Child Is Gone,” Apple alluded to how the world can disconnect us from our- selves: “I’m a stranger to myself.” On “Fetch the Bolt Cutters,” Apple narrates this experience, reclaims it, and resists it—a revolt against the very idea of being controlled. Fetch the Bolt Cutters includes Apple’s first songs discernibly addressed to other women. “Shameika” also chronicles her formative years by way of a pep talk to herself and an ode to the middle-school classmate who emboldened her with only a few fleeting words: “Shameika said I had potential.” The torchy barroom burner “Ladies” is an anti-jealousy anthem and it is pure comic genius. “Ladies! Ladies! Ladies! Ladies!” Apple toasts, imploring the new girlfriend of her ex-boyfriend to “please be my guest!” to whatever she may have left in the back of his kitchen cupboards and bathroom cabinets: “There’s a dress in the closet/Don’t get rid of it/You look good in it/I didn’t fit in it/It was never mine/It belonged to the ex-wife of another ex of mine.” Fetch the Bolt Cutters is full of audacious scenes like this, where Apple narrates, in vivid detail, experiences we just don’t typically hear in songs. This is all in keeping with the feminist reckoning that has swept through culture in a post-#MeToo society. But Fetch the Bolt Cutters is never didactic, even on (the potentially triggering) “For Her,” which Apple wrote in the wake of the shameful Supreme Court confirmation hearings. For an artist whose early career existed under an all-seeing male eye, Apple wrote the song “Newspaper” from an unmistakable female gaze. In its lyrics, she feels “close” to another woman due to their shared past with an abusive man, as she observes his cruelty and lies . It’s a nuanced way of addressing a systemic problem. “It’s a shame because you and I didn’t get a witness,” she sings, but this song makes us all one, as do the brutal lyrics of “For Her.” “You know you should know but you don’t know what you did,” she sings, and later: “You raped me in the same bed your daughter was born in.” This is another side of Fiona Apple. It is not easy to sing along. But it demands that you listen. She calls men out for refusing to show weakness, for treating their wives badly, for needing women to clean up their messes. Where The Idler Wheel explored a form of self-interrogation—“I’m too hard to know,” she crooned—on Fetch the Bolt Cutters, she unapologetically indicts the world around her. And she rejects its oppressive logic in every note. The very sound of Fetch the Bolt Cutters dismantles patriarchal ideas: professionalism, smoothness, competition, perfection—aesthetic standards that are tools of capitalism, used to warp our senses of self. Where someone else might erase a mistake—“Oh fuck it!” she chuckles on “On I Go”—she leaves it in. Where someone might put a bridge, she puts clatter. Where she once sang, “Hunger hurts but starving works,” here, in the devouring chorus of “Heavy Balloon,” she screams: “I spread like strawberries/I climb like peas and beans.” There is nothing top-down about the sound of Fetch the Bolt Cutters. “She wanted to start from the ground,” her guitarist David Garza told The New Yorker. “For her, the ground is rhythm.” There’s considerable power in how Apple entertains so many of these wild, inexhaustible impulses. “Don’t you, don’t you, don’t you, don’t you shush me!” she chips back on “Under the Table.” She will not be silenced. That’s patently clear from the start of Fetch the Bolt Cutters. In gnarled breaths on its opening song—feet on the ground and mind as her might—Apple articulates exactly what she wants: “Blast the music! Bang it! Bite it! Bruise it!” It’s not pretty. It’s free.” - Pitchfork, 4/17/2020 Coming up in May: Michael Franti, Matt Costa and more RIGHT ARM RESOURCE WEEKLY UPDATE - 4/22/2020