Paws— Bash Out Infectious

PAWS bash out infectious, lo-fi, garage pop-rock that can quickly shift from cute melancholia to an unnerving territorial roar. On top of the pulsating fuzzy noise the three-piece produce, sit dreamy melodies that bare the bones of their author. Lyrical topics slide between sarcastic self-analysis and, onto more so than often, brutal home truths. Phil, the band's resident lyricist sums the album's themes;  "All of the lyrics are pretty much a documentation of the past 2 years. A lot of crazy things have happened in our lives - some good, some horrific. I'd like to say that there is a strong feeling of positivity and hope running throughout this record, light piercing through some distinctly dark times. We're playing in this band to keep going and stay alive."

PAWS rose out of the demise of a living room recording project, that after losing a member, was renamed and redirected into a raw nerve of DIY punk/garage that's vibrant yet familiar and built on the traditions of English pop from Buzzcocks to Yuck. The band has spent its tenure opening for the likes of No Age, Wavves, Happy Birthday, The Babies, Harlem, Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti and Black Lips and that DIY spirit pops up in the fact that they've done so in spaces as diverse as bathrooms, skate parks and a particularly difficult show on the top of a double-decker bus.

True to its name, Cokefloat! is, as the band puts it, "like a sugar high...with the sugar comedown." Recorded with Rory Attwell (of Test Icicles) at Lightship95, a floating recording studio located on a boat moored at Trinity Buoy Warf in East London, the album has managed to capture the punch of the band's live shows. Listeners can practically hear the energy vibrate out of the speakers and feel the band's smiles radiate through the ruckus with their stories about love, insecurities, self-alienation and paranoia. Wrapped in artwork designed by comic artist and friend of the band Jessica Penfold, the album is the perfect audio allegory for its namesake. Slurp it up. Feel the buzz.

http://soundcloud.com/fatcatrecords/paws-miss-american-bookworm/

The Lion The Beast The Beat

The Lion The Beast The Beat, Grace Potter & The Nocturnals' fourth studio album for Hollywood Records, will be released on June 12th. The musically powerful and conceptually dazzling work was produced by Jim Scott (Tom Petty, Wilco, the Tedeschi Trucks Band’s 2012 Grammy winner Revelator) and Potter at Scott’s studio PLYRZ in Santa Clarita, CA, with the exception of "Loneliest Soul," which was produced by Dan Auerbach and engineered by Collin Dupuis at Easy Eye Sounds in Nashville, TN. 

David Campbell (Beck, My Morning Jacket, Jackson Browne) arranged and conducted the strings on the album. The album was mixed by fellow Vermonter and Grammy award winner Rich Costey (Foo Fighters, TV on the Radio, Bruce Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball) and mastered by Grammy award winner Bob Ludwig (David Bowie, Rolling Stones, Radiohead, Foo Fighters). The first single from The Lion The Beast The Beat  is "Never Go Back," written by Dan Auerbach and Grace Potter & The Nocturnals. The track went to radio on March 23rd for an April 9th impact date. GPN's debut performance of "Never Go Back" is set for April 5th on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. A companion video for the track will be shot in Los Angeles in April. 

"I think there’s a Lion and a Beast within all of us— as humans. There's also true goodness, and the appearance of goodness…" says Grace. "Maybe I’ve watched too much Mad Men, but I'm in love with the idea of a story with no heroes and no villains. I've never really even dipped my toes in the whole 'concept album' thing but these themes just kept creeping into all the new songs and I didn’t fight it. I decided to embrace it."

Among the song titles are Stars, The Divide, Steady, Parachute Heart, Never Go Back, and Loneliest Soul, both co-written with Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, and the title track The Lion The Beast The Beat. 

"Each song stands upright on its own, but these songs really belong to this album. The way we’ve always made records is to put together a list of 30 or so songs, pick the best ones, throw them together and hope it congeals. I didn’t wanna do that this time. I came up with the track order before we recorded so we could really bring you in and out of these songs like scenes in a movie. I want to bring the listener into our weird fantasy and keep them there."

Norah Jones— Little Broken Hearts

Norah Jones is unveiling something new at South By Southwest— again. Ten years after she shook Austin and the entire music world with "Come Away With Me," the 25 million-selling debut she released just weeks before the 2002 conference and festival, she returned to play her entire new album "Little Broken Hearts" at La Zona Rosa in Austin on Saturday night. "It seemed to make sense to come back to my new record," Jones explained. "I'm just going to play the new record. I'm not even going to play any old songs because it's South By Southwest. It doesn't seem wrong to me to do it that way. It's fun. This is a festival. It's for new bands but it's also just for new stuff, so it feels right to do the new record."

The stylish yet deeply emotional and introspective collaboration with Danger Mouse is due to be released on Tuesday, May 1st. In a brief interview on Friday, Jones described "Little Broken Hearts" as a concept album of sorts that examines a difficult breakup. She said she and Danger Mouse, the producer whose given name is Brian Burton, wrote most of the songs as a team, working out lyrics and the instrumentation together. It's something of a departure for Jones and yet another step in her evolution away from the jazz of the Grammy-winning tune "Come Away With Me."

Jones came back to SXSW in 2006 with her side project The Little Willies, a group that she played two shows with on Thursday. The experience performing as a solo artist will be a little less discombobulating this time around. "It was kind of crazy," Jones said. "I remember 10 years ago when I came... and it was insane. It was like we were doing four shows a day or something. I don't know. It felt very strange, but it was fun."