Leslie Ken Chu

4 weeks ago | northerntransmissions.com | Charles Brownstein |Leslie Ken Chu

Successful artists often confess that they feel like they’re getting away with something by being able to play music, act, or tell jokes for a living. Given that Dan Bejar has been making music as Destroyer for almost 30 years, it’s timely of the Vancouver artist to release an album called Dan’s Boogie, with the operative word “boogie” referring to a hustle or scam. Accordingly, a tense wariness – paranoia, even – pervades Dan’s Boogie, Bejar’s fourteenth Destroyer full-length to date.

4 weeks ago | northerntransmissions.com | Charles Brownstein |Leslie Ken Chu

“All I want is to be beautiful.” So Cole Haden confesses on “Departures,” a hypnotic and alluring standout from Pirouette, the sophomore album by shapeshifting Brooklyn rockers Model/Actriz, due April 25 via True Panther and Dirty Hit. Such an admission doesn’t come easily to most people, but that kind of emotional openness defines Pirouette. Often, aspirational beauty carries a history of—leads to a reckoning with—shame.

1 month ago | northerntransmissions.com | Charles Brownstein |Leslie Ken Chu

The making of Bria Salmena’s Big Dog came with a lot of novel experiences for the Los Angeles-based artist. After gaining a wealth of experience in various other projects, among them Toronto post-punk band FRIGS, Orville Peck’s backing band, and EBM duo God’s Mom, Big Dog marks her solo debut. The album also marks the first time she’s released music under her own name. With that came the task of being more truthful to herself than ever.

1 month ago | northerntransmissions.com | Charles Brownstein |Leslie Ken Chu

Bria Salmena has already lived a robust music life. After sparking buzz in Toronto post-punk outfit FRIGS, she joined Orville Peck’s band as a singer. Last spring, she and her closest friend and collaborator, former FRIGS and Peck bandmate Duncan Hay Jennings, left the country music star gig, but not before Salmena and Jennings released a pair of Cuntry Covers EPs where they gave Americana songs a dreamy gothic makeover.

1 month ago | northerntransmissions.com | Charles Brownstein |Leslie Ken Chu

Like many long relationships, This Side of the Island, Hamilton Leithauser’s fourth solo album and follow-up to 2020’s The Loves of Your Life, was a work in progress. For eight years, the Walkman singer toiled alone in an attempt to get the songs just right. Upon running into Aaron Dessner at a music festival, he received and accepted the National multi-instrumentalist and Taylor Swift producer’s invitation to a recording getaway at his Long Pond Studio in New York’s Hudson Valley.