To celebrate the album’s birthday, it has been reissued on limited edition double LP, and Mason is also hitting the road. One of the support acts on the tour is our friend Jake Bellissimo, songwriter and head of Drunk With Love Records. To further celebrate Mason’s influence, Jake has organised a compilation of covers on Drunk With Love that will be sold in benefit of an LGBTQ refugee shelter in Berlin.

Titled Comfort in the Question Mark: Songs of Jordaan Mason, the compilation brings together nine artists with their own takes on some of Mason’s best songs. It plays like both a celebration of and an homage to an important figure in the DIY music and queer communities. “Their music was important for me coming to terms with my gender identity,” Bellissimo explains, “a feeling I’ve noticed that’s shared among many other queer people.”

Although the release comprises of covers of just one artist, there is still considerable diversity across its nine tracks. It begins with a piano cover of ‘wild dogs: divorce’ (from divorce lawyers i shaved my head) by Providence, RI songwriter visibilities, taking the hectic emotion of the original and smoothing its edges without losing any of the feeling.

Bluffs replace the accordion of ‘Pink’ with shimmering curtains of synths, while Zurich’s Debutante initially maintains the hushed intimacy of ‘Static’, just lonely guitar and subtle effects that crawl at the edges like anxious thoughts. But soon the track thuds into life with drum machine and grainy distortion. There’s plenty of lo-fi fuzz too on Kowareta‘s ‘Avalanche’, juxtaposing nicely with the aching clarity of ‘It Does Not Get Better’ by Lady Queen Paradise.

The final track belongs to Bellissimo, a beautifully simple take on ‘Why Fit?’, quiet guitar and stirring strings buoying the expressive vocals which deliver lines that sum up the ethos of the compilation and Jordaan Mason’s music in general.

So why do we still want to fit
when the world
just just just just
rejects us?

Comfort in the Question Mark: Songs of Jordaan Mason is out now and you can get it on a name-your-price basis from the Drunk With Love Records Bandcamp page.

Cover art by Ammy

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In the summer of 2017, Forrest and I bonded over worry. The result of supposedly teenage emotions regarding romance and progression, this worry inspired us to start embracing our impulse as opposed to burying it away as invalid. We began meeting every once in a while in front of a piano to catch up, talk about how things are going, and write songs, intending to write and record songs as they came, not allowing ourselves to edit the immediacy of our emotions.

Wertherlieder comprises of three originals and a take on a Charles Ives song, and promises to focus on the grand themes of “death, love, and the beauty that can happen in-between.” In preparation for the EP’s release, today we present a video for one of the tracks. ‘Selige Sehnsucht’ is a richly evocative piano-based song that sounds like it’s been beamed back from a bygone era. It’s minimal in terms of set-up, just piano and vocals, but there’s something maximal about it too, as if Moody and Bellissimo have poured every drop of syrupy feeling into it. Check out the video below:

Wertherlieder will be released on June 23rd. Head to the Drunk With Love Records website for more. Forrest Moody & Jake Bellissimo are playing two release shows, one in Berlin and one in Munich. Check the poster below for details!

Album artwork by Carinn Candelaria, header photo by John McDermott.

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As the first instalment of a new project with our friends at Drunk With Love Records, Krissanthemum recently filmed two alfresco sessions in Inwood, Manhattan, NYC. Both of the songs are from their previous album, Kaleidoscope Drive, and sees Lassiter strip back their complex pop sound to just acoustic guitar and their wonderfully expressive vocals.

Krissanthemum also has two shows planned to celebrate the release of A Fire Left Inside Me:

March 1st Saperstein Estate, New Jersey with Bluffs, johnnycola, and Noods
March 5th Knitting Factory, Brooklyn with Long Neck, Algebra II, and Jake Bellissimo

A Fire Left Inside Me on February 22nd. Pre-order it now via the Krissanthemum Bandcamp page.

Photo by Nora Evi Aresti

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Tracklisting:

Typhoon – Rorschach
Cloud – Two Hands Bound
Trust Fall – do it right
Wooing – In Colour
Tree House – Nonsense
Long Neck – Milky Way
Sara Renberg – Take the Summer Off
Special Moves – Half and Half
Lying Down – Betty and Barney
Pastel – Close
Monarch Mtn – Saint in Armor II
Doomking – I Laid the Prairies to Rest
vierzig skizzen – passwords
Old Robes – The Spider and the Spectator
Jeremy Squires – Gift
Bill Vuono – Think of Me (feat. Earl McVeigh)
Kraków Loves Adana – Rapture
Cool American – Focus
Bucolic – Blue Tree
There’s Talk – Give It Up
Airium + Double Honey – Concrete House Of Dreams And Pools
The Saxophones – Just You
Jelani Sei – LVNDR TWN
Why Dogs Why – Linus

You can find all of our monthly roundup mixes here, and be sure to stick around into March to see what musical goodies we’ll be sending your way. And, of course, please reach out on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram if you have something you think we should hear.

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The album, In My Dreams: Songs of Bill Vuono is a personal project. Bill Vuono is Bellissimo’s great-grandfather, who wrote songs “back when you had to sell sheet music to sell songs,” producing a series of 78s before stopping his writing career to raise a family. Several years ago, Bellissimo inherited the records and became invested in the music,  covering ‘Think of Me’ on the first Gay Angel album places i’ll eat, people i’ll meet, before several of tracks appeared on their epic floral project. To celebrate the third anniversary of Drunk With Love Records, Bellissimo decided to revisit the records and curate an album of their favourite songs, a Best of Bill Vuono, and plans to release it as an album accompanied with modern covers, featuring the likes of Emperor X, Devon Mello, Karen Walker (of The New Tarot) and Bellissimo themself.

In My Dreams will be released this month, and Drunk With Love have put out a video of the first single in preparation. Check out the video below. It uses footage from the wedding of Jake Bellisssimo’s grandmother Rachel, and features Bill Vuono playing the piano, set to one of his songs, ‘Think of Me’. The song captures Vuono’s 1940’s style perfectly, the gentle piano supporting vocals that quaver with love and emotion, feelings that if anything seem advanced when beamed 70 years into the future.

“In my dreams
I see a face sleep can’t erase”

As the project is such a special, personal endeavour, we decided to speak with Jake Bellissimo and their grandmother Rachel in order to get a better understanding of the music and the man behind it.

Have you always been aware that your great-grandfather / father was a musician? When was the first time you heard his music?

Jake: I can’t remember exactly when I learned he was a musician, but my grandmother shared a CD of his recordings when I was in high school and later gave me the original 78s. I don’t think I really processed/appreciated the music until I started playing the songs, after which I covered “Think of Me” on the first gay angel album (places i’ll eat, people i’ll meet).

Rachel: My father used to play them on the piano, in fact. Growing up I would sing them in exchange for a quarter, which I would then take to the park to spend on a Creamsicle ice cream.

Rachel, how do you feel when listening to them? Do they bring back specific memories? Does the voice you hear have a resemblance to the man you remember?

Rachel: Well, he never sang his songs, but on the album in places you can hear his voice in the background. These songs in general make me sad—years ago I couldn’t listen to them, but as time goes by I enjoy listening to them and they remind me of him. In the song “Dreaming at the Keyboard”, I can hear my brother Irving talking with my father in the background.

Jake, you never met him, so the closest you get to him as a person is listening to these recordings. How do they make you feel?

Jake: It’s weird, because I feel a connection to him through his music, despite having never met him. His songwriting, and the way he (and his wife, Barbara, who wrote lyrics sometimes) made songs all resonate with me. When I first heard his music I was surprised at how similarly I aligned with it despite starting my own songwriting with no prior knowledge of it.

How has his music influenced your own?

Jake: I started diving deeper and deeper into the recordings (about 1.5hrs worth) when I was making the 100 piece album floral, and I’m sure that influence was running through. There are also two songs that were just put on the album (‘I Have a Flower’ and ‘Dreaming at the Keyboard’) after unsuccessful tries to re-record them.

Why do you feel that now is the right time to release Bill’s music? What about them do you think appeals to a twenty-first century audience?

Jake: Drunk With Love Records was started with Bill’s music in mind, that it would be published when the time was right. Since over the past few years DWL has come to represent a celebration of emotion in many facets, beginning with a connection between the melodrama in modern emo music and early 20th century pop, it’s always made sense. I also think it’s a shame how long-lasting these songs feel as opposed to how few people knew of them, so to publish them for the first time is a pleasure. And, based on the people who have talked to me about him when I cover his songs at shows, it seems that other people want to hear them as well.

How do you feel about Jake re-releasing Bill’s music to a modern audience?

Rachel: I’m thrilled that Jake is releasing these songs, as now that they’re published people have an opportunity to hear Bill Vuono’s music, giving (at last) his songs a chance to live on.

Would you like to say something about the covers album? How did you recruit the bands? And how did they choose which songs to cover?

Jake: All songs on the covers album are either artists who are associated with Drunk With Love or close friends. The songs were chosen through a list I gave that included all of the songs on the album plus some outtakes ranging from songs to lyrics without music to just abandoned song titles. The goal was to not just re-record the songs but re-interpret them, so I feel grateful to have such wonderful musicians and friends as collaborators who more than added beauty to this release with their covers.

You can find more info on the Drunk With Love website and pre-order In My Dreams: The Songs of Bill Vuono now via the Drunk With Love Records Bandcamp page. Each album comes with a super cool calling card from the late 1800s/early 1900s

It’s worth noting that 50% of all proceeds will be donated to the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America and the other 50% to Bill’s family for the preservation and storage of related mementos and sheet music. So what are you waiting for?

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Sparse guitar and piano act as a backdrop to Scheltinga’s vocals, producing songs as quiet and unassuming as they are heartfelt and melodious. Most are short and sweet, all offering a different take on the basic blueprint. Take for example ‘Clown’, which begins with delicate finger-picked guitar and breathy vocals, before spiking in peaks of passion.

“The night saw the candles
The evening, dry
She holds her dreams so tight
But we are not asleep”

‘Master’ introduces piano and skittering percussion, sounding part age-old folk song, part stripped down jazz track, like a languorous tune being played from the corner of a smoky cafe. ‘Tomorrow’ is tautly emotional, dealing with being separated from a loved one (“You’ve got to go, got a plane to board, headed home”), and another great example of how Scheltinga creates real feeling using minimal ingredients. If you’re still not sold, try the opening track ‘I’ve Come To Know You Well’, which is perhaps the most sparse and delicate on the record.

As Drunk With Love describe in their bio of Maud Scheltinga: “Over the past couple of years, Maud has interpreted and re-interpreted the world around her by means of her songs, which act as short stories. Listening to her music feels like listening to a bookshop owner taking different (but equally beloved) books off the shelf and dazzling you with short and direct anecdotes that offer you a peek inside.”

This literary theme is continued in the very special CD package put together by Drunk With Love. The music will come in a second hand book, with spaces carved out for sheet music and the CD. You can order it now from Drunk With Love Records, or digitally form the Maud Scheltinga Bandcamp page.

Maud Scheltinga is currently on a European tour with Jake Bellissimo. There are several dates left, so go check them out if you’re in The Netherlands or Germany!

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Jame’s debut album as kitchen, titled town, will be released early next year on Drunk With Love Records, a partnership that arose due to a mutual appreciation between Jame the DWL’s Jake Bellissimo. Despite the name change, the main features of his music remain, although thematically things are a little different. The label describe it thusly, “[the music of kitchen] feels reactionary, instead of looking at life events directly… [it] focuses on the moments in-between”. The album sounds very much intimate and personal, inspired by the day-to-day life of coming of age in Rochester, New York. As Jame described to us,

“Everything I write is about people I know and being upset about relationships with my friends. The weather is a big influence too and really affects my productivity. Everything is an influence in some way probably.”

Today we’re really happy to unveil the first single from the album. ‘November Prayer’ opens with gently strummed acoustic guitar and a plaintive piano line, all enveloped in a soft hissy fuzz. Jame’s vocals are understated but sincere as he sings:

“All I need is a fog machine
all eyes away from me
Find my way out

All I need snow on the dead brown leaves
cold that won’t let me be
hold my heart down”

There’s also a moment of beauty just past the minute mark, when a great warm drone swells, giving the whole thing a deep texture, and hinting at a nostalgic poignancy despite the slow and downbeat atmosphere. Envelop yourself below:

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Jake was kind enough to answer some questions about the release and let us premiere a brand new video for the track ‘Memento Mori’, made in collaboration with Marta Tiesenga. Watch Tiesenga’s animation below and then read what Jake had to say.

The video for ‘Memento Mori’ was made in collaboration with Marta Tiesenga. Why did you choose to make a video for this song? And how do you think it complements the music?
Marta is a good pal, great artist, and composer (also a recent signee to Drunk With Love–more on that some other time). We had been talking about collaborating on something for a while, and when I was putting together Piece of Ivy I let Marta choose which song to do a video for and ‘Memento Mori’ came up. It’s the song that has the most specific imagery (time and place) for me, so I think the animation suits it well.

The press release says that Piece of Ivy takes inspiration from travelling and states of flux. Would you say this upheaval is the main theme of the album? Was this necessary to create a blank slate after the mammoth floral project?
Yeah, I would say so. Releasing floral last summer coincided with me dropping things and moving to Berlin, so all of these events coming together at once put me in a state of worry over what to do next. Creating a blank slate was the next logical step, both musically and life-wise, so I decided to try taking away the moniker again as a way to be more honest with myself.

How did it feel to make songs without the gay angel ensemble? Was it a good feeling to strip things right back?
I think it has been a good exercise and has forced me to be more practical about exactly which sounds I want, how to achieve that, etc. The songwriting is the same, though, as gay angel was always more of a solo project and later calling in specific musicians to record certain parts. Naturally it feels different than being able to shove 20 people into a small room at once to record a song, but there are still musicians from the gay angel ensemble on Piece of Ivy (and the music I’ve recorded since floral), so I haven’t really felt like they’ve left.

What are your plans for the future? Are the days of Gay Angel over for good? Do you plan on making more solo records?
I’m currently working on a more large scale album under my real name that will be out next year on Drunk With Love, and Piece of Ivy has kind of played a role in setting up a clean slate for the music on this full-length. That doesn’t mean gay angel is dead, though; in fact, I originally intended to release the next album in January, but then things got more complicated, so the finished version has just been sitting on my hard drive for a while. I’ll be sharing more details about that in the near future, but just need the time to be right.

You can buy Piece of Ivy on 7″ lathe-cut vinyl or a name-your-price download from Drunk With Love Records.

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Here’s what Ryder had to say about the album, as well as the brand new song ‘coca-cola purgatory’, peach pit‘s opening track.

Hi Ryder, thanks for speaking with us. How are things at the moment? You’re about to release an EP, Peach Pit. What can people expect from the record?

All is well. [peach pit is] six quiet songs. I’m not sure, I think it’s pretty honest.

As the blurb on the Drunk with Love Records Bandcamp attests, the lyrics on peach pit often comprise of seemingly mundane observations which add up to form an almost poetic sense of pace and time. Was this intentional? And what images do these songs conjure for you upon reflection?

No, that’s not intentional. The point is not to glorify the mundane, in fact none of this is mundane to me. All of it’s very meaningful. It’s hard to imagine hearing peach pit with other ears but I think that the listener hears that I derive meaning from these things. Maybe without understanding why, and that’s totally okay. That might have the effect that you mentioned. For me these songs conjure the moments in which they were conceived, they’re really nothing more than a means to document something that I feel. I know exactly what they’re about. The more interesting question I think, at least for me, is what images they conjure for others.

Your bio introduces you as a jazz bassist, but Peach Pit isn’t exactly a jazz album. Was it fun to make something different and more personal? And did you formal training impact upon these songs in any way?

I hesitate to say that it’s more personal. I’m not sure I’d say it was fun either. Finishing a song is always gratifying but each of them expresses a very particular sentiment. I think “Coca-Cola purgatory” is pretty fun. I don’t know, sometimes it’s really hard. And yes, in the sense that on every song except “hand me downs” I think I only used the bottom four strings of the guitar. I’m not really a guitarist.

Who or what do you consider the main influences on your work (be they musical or otherwise)?

That depends on the era from which a particular song comes, and certainly I’ve got some new ones, but during these last two years, Jeff Tweedy, Angel Olsen, Deerhoof, Chris Weisman. All my friends who make art/music.

How did your relationship with Drunk with Love Records come about?

Jake Bellissimo and I used to go to school together and for a time I lived above him. Sometimes I’d go sing my songs to him. We like each other’s music. Right now we’re both living in Europe and a small tour of Germany was a good excuse for me to get on board officially and put together this first album for drunk with love.

6. What can we expect from you after your début release? Do you have any further releases in the pipeline?

No further releases in the pipeline as far as I can see, but that’s not very far. The way that I write is so sporadic it’s hard to say. I think whatever comes next will probably be of a similar nature; a collection of songs that I have written over a couple years while occupying myself mainly with other things.

7. Finally, could you recommend 4 or 5 artists that you’ve been into lately?

Lately I’ve been checking out Muddy Waters, The First Miles Quintet, some Prokofiev. Mostly I’m checking out french public talk radio.

peach pit is due for release on Drunk With Love Records later this month. You can pre-order it now on lathe-cut 7″ vinyl or as a name-your-price download. Eaton is also joining Jake Bellissimo on a tour of Germany around the time of release. Check out the dates below.

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That release proved to be the Gay Angel project’s swansong, but that doesn’t mean that Bellissimo has stopped creating. After a few months break to return to writing again, he is back with new music under his own name and is prepping a release at the end of the month. It will be called Piece of Ivy and we’re lucky enough to be able to share with you the first single.

The title track is a gentle indie pop song, like late morning sunshine with strummed acoustic guitar and good-natured vocals. The lyrics tell of a life transplanted into a new environment, of adapting to change eventually using the analogy of a piece of ivy taken inside:

“Piece of ivy why
are you the one who’s growing up in size
forget your life
cut from your branch and placed onto the
table in my room was that too soon
I kinda like how you look from across the room
growing roots”

Piece of Ivy will be released as a lathe cut 7″ record on the 31st of March on Drunk With Love Records. The release marks the first of a new era for Drunk With Love Records, what Bellissimo describes as a shift in focus “from a cathartic art project to a more serious record label”. So be sure to stay tuned to their brand new website for news of future releases, as well as the Jake Bellissimo website for all his updates.

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