FIVE FAVOURITES: bedbug

Developing from a lo-fi bedroom-pop solo project into a fully fledged indie rock band, LA based group bedbug shared their fourth album, pack your bags, the sun is growing, via Boston label Disposable America earlier this year.

Along with bandmates Owen Harrelson, Minerva Rodriguez, Meilyn Huq and Drew Cunningham, non-binary front-person Dylan Gamez Citron fleshed out bedbug’s new sound in the studio, and the result is an infectious blend of indie guitar riffs, confessional lyricism and surrealist storytelling, which marks their most “ambitious” work to date.

Having previously supported the likes of Japanese Breakfast, Grouper, Lomelda, Snail Mail, Strange Ranger, yourarmsaremycocoon and Frog, with their new fully fledged sound, bedbug are sure to capture the ears of a new set of fans.

We think one of the best ways to get to know a band is by asking what music inspired them to write in the first place. We caught up with Dylan to ask about their “Five Favourites” – five tracks that have inspired their songwriting techniques. Check out their choices below and scroll down to listen to bedbug’s latest single ‘halo on the interstate‘ at the end of this post…

1. Julia Brown – ‘Bloom’
This list is as much a list of my favorite songs as it is equivalently a list of my biggest inspirations when songwriting. So, it only makes sense to start here. This track is the closing track off of an album I can only describe as a modern opus, An Abundance of Strawberries. When I discovered this album (and consequently this song), I was slowly assembling an arsenal of songwriting and production elements that I felt would fit together and that I personally loved. Acoustic guitars, drum machines, synths, cassette warmth, vocals that aren’t overwhelming. Then I found this album. Honestly, at the time I couldn’t believe it existed, like it was just a perfect culmination of my favorite musical stuff. I still feel that way! And this final song sticks the landing like none other. Perfect track!

2. Modest Mouse – ‘Edit the Sad Parts’
I love discovering music, but in many ways I’m a victim of my own sentimentality. Most of the tracks on this list are high school discoveries. This track was my go-to reply to the all-to-common question “what is your favorite song” in high school. And yet, if you were to ask me why, I’m not sure I could explain it! Modest Mouse is still my favorite band (I have the tattoo to prove it), but I love dozens of their songs. It doesn’t have the best riffs (that would go to ‘Broke’ or ‘Talking Shit About A Pretty Sunset’) or lyrics (that’s ‘Bankrupt on Selling’). But I do think it’s the perfect snapshot of what I’d consider a perfect band. To me, this is the most “Modest Mouse” sounding song at all. Slightly emo, scrappy, full of youthful energy, it’s the perfect song to blast out of the car window on a visit to your hometown.

3. Cap’n Jazz – ‘Ooh Do I Love You’ (Acoustic)
When I was in high school, I discovered 90’s indie rock greats like Pavement, Built to Spill and Guided By Voices. My mind was blown (obviously). And then a few years passed. Nothing was scratching the same itch! Modern emo felt too whiny (though I still loved it at the time), indie rock was too produced and bombastic. Hardcore/punk was too angsty and angry for me. I wasn’t really pissed off, mostly anxious and lonely! Indie music in general was grandiose and trying really really hard. Stark contrast to the 90’s era. Fans of Cap’n Jazz can tell where I’m headed with this. A band of high school students, a single poorly recorded anthology record. Bursting with heart, full of beautiful imperfections and esoteric lyricism. And that’s all laid bare on the acoustic version of ‘Ooh Do I Love You’. Why couldn’t all emo be like this?

4. The Radio Dept – ‘Lost and Found’
Something I’m currently realizing, as I type is that every single one of these songs is an album closer. I’m not sure that’s a coincidence. Closer tracks fill the role of the final chapter of a good book, tying up loose ends and making the artist’s intent clearer. I love full albums, and the first Radio Dept album is one of my favorites of all time. I think this is the most beautiful track on it. I can’t think of another track that layers instrumentation to create such a gorgeous soundscape. The lyrics are sad but hopeful, lonely and sentimental. It’s really one of the most therapeutic songs for me.

5. Brave Little Abacus – ‘Orange Blue With Stripes’
This song is really lightning in a bottle to me. The songwriting process for that whole record feels elusive and mysterious, like the songs emerged fully formed out of the ether. How in the world is there lyrical interplay between the vocals and pre-recorded samples from Malcolm in the Middle? Do the repeating lyrical motifs mean anything? Typically, I’m not one to overanalyze a metaphor, I certainly have my fair share of abstraction in lyricism. However, something about the writing on this record begs to be interpreted. And I hope it never is! The mystery is so much more fun. And all of those unresolved melodies and lyrics culminate in ‘Orange, Blue With Stripes’. It was a really special song to me as a teenager, and only became more special at my final show in Boston before I moved. Thanks, Adam.

Thanks to Dylan for sharing their favourites with us!

Listen to bedbug’s latest single ‘halo on the interstate’ below

Follow bedbug on bandcamp, Spotify, X & Instagram

Photo Credit: Dustin J Watson

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Five Favourites: Death Valley Girls

Having been big fans of LA’s Death Valley Girls for a few years now, I’m super excited to hear that they will be announcing their new album, Islands In The Sky, at the end of the month. Our second taster from the upcoming release (following 2021’s ‘It’s All Really Kind Of Amazing’) comes in the form of truly dreamy new single, ‘Sunday‘. Oozing a glistening, ethereal splendour, ‘Sunday’ offers a sweeping slice of anthemic, soul-strewn psych-rock. Building with a fizzing energy, it harks back to the psychedelic sounds of the ’70s California scene, whilst showcasing the bands’ ability to create something that is utterly unique. A beautifully immersive trip into the cosmic world of Death Valley Girls.

We think one of the best ways to get to know a band is by asking what music inspires them. So, to celebrate the release of the upcoming album, we caught up with Death Valley Girls’ front woman Bonnie Bloomgarden to ask about the music that has inspired her the most. So, read about her five favourite ever albums, and check out the wonderfully trippy new video for ‘Sunday’ below!

Alice Coltrane – Journey in Satchidananda
Did you know music is allowed to sound like this? And has the ability to affect your entire existence? To reframe your view of consciousness and reality. To massage your light, and your soul with in. To feed you, the you inside your body!! To take your earth body, gently lie it down, turn it off for the time being, and lead your spirit to a journey in the astral realm?? It is, it can, and with Alice Coltrane it often does! 

Otis Redding – Pain in My Heart
Wow, I could not imagine my world with out this record. I cry every time I listen to ‘These Arms of Mine’ – chills go down my spine and I remember I am alive, and it’s good ‘cause I getta feel things like this. His voice is epic, on the top ten most important voices of all time to me. It’s hard to imagine what a break up would feel like with out this record – I wouldn’t know, cause I’ve never tried!

Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath
Without pause, even for a fraction of an instant, my all time favourite album is Black Sabbath’s first record. Up until the point I miraculously chose Black Sabbath from a stack of nearly 50 rock and roll records my cousin gave to me, I had only heard soft music. I am forever grateful to all the music I’ve heard, but I had primarily listened to what I know now to be goofy in the scope of my current taste. Like for my first ten years, I exclusively heard show tunes, Billy Joel, vocal jazz, and the Indigo Girls. Before that was all piano, orchestral, and acoustic guitar driven music. To hear electric guitar, in all its evil glory, by the God that is Tony Iommi, for the first time!! Can you imagine at ten how deviant that felt! Also, for the first time to truly understand instrumentation. Getting to know each and every single note by those master musicians! I can not imagine where I would be, or what I would think a great bass line, or guitar riff, or vocal melody, or drum part is, if not for that divine record.
Black Sabbath!! Black Sabbath!! Black Sabbath!!

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ISXnYu-Or4w

Ronnie Spector – Unfinished Business
First of all, the concept of being the original bad girl of rock and roll could not have been any more exciting to me as a kid! I love Ronnie, and what she stood for, and how she stood for it – way back when, when it was practically impossible to do so. Her voice, her wickedness, her unapologetic nuances and phrasing, mixed with her immaculate harmonies… Oh my goodness. She also was considered one of the boys, and got to tour with the Stones and Beatles, what career highlights! RIP Ronnie!!

Iggy Pop – The Idiot
What an amazing story and collaboration! Only this type of decadence and decay could have been created by Bowie and Iggy trying to get clean from drugs in Berlin. We are so lucky for this type of art. Something that seems as though it could have just as easily never made it to the light of day. And yet, it did. And it is pure, raw, unadulterated fun, mixed with the suffering they must have been feeling between their realities. Very grateful for these two, and their collaborations!! 


Must add as all time greatest influences:

  1. Tina Turner 
  2. Aretha Franklin 
  3. Sister Rosetta Tharpe
  4. Lightning Hopkins

Massive thanks to Bonnie for sharing her Five Favourites (and more!) with us! Watch the new video, directed by Arturo Baston, here:

Islands In The Sky, the upcoming new album from Death Valley Girls, is set for release on 24th February via Suicide Squeeze Records – pre-order here. And catch Death Valley Girls live when they’re over in the UK later month – more info here.

Photo Credit: Neto Velasco

mariangelicalaneLeave a comment

New Track: Death Valley Girls – ‘Sunday’

Having been big fans of LA’s Death Valley Girls for a few years now, I’m super excited to hear that they will be announcing their new album at the end of next month. Our second taster from the upcoming release (following 2021’s ‘It’s All Really Kind Of Amazing’) comes in the form of truly dreamy new single, ‘Sunday‘.

Oozing a glistening, ethereal splendour, ‘Sunday’ offers a sweeping slice of anthemic, soul-strewn psych-rock. Building with a fizzing energy, it harks back to the psychedelic sounds of the ’70s California scene, whilst showcasing the bands’ ability to create something that is utterly unique. Reflecting on the process of addressing your pain and being honest with yourself, it’s a beautifully immersive trip into the cosmic world of Death Valley Girls; stepping away from some of their previous scuzz-filled post-punk offerings, but no less stirring. So, bathe in ‘Sunday’s blissful haze as Bonnie Bloomgarden’s distinctive impassioned vocals ripple throughout this uplifting shimmering soundscape.

Of the track, Bloomgarden expands:

“Recently I realized I have been numbing, medicating, intellectualizing, and avoiding my pain and feelings for most of my life. Over the past few years I learned you have to feel and move through your feelings or they get stuck, and then you become a vessel or container for all the feelings you are trying to avoid! If you acknowledge, feel, and process them, you get to release and move them out of you! This song is to honor that process! Feel your feelings, be so sad you wanna cry forever, and then move on, you gotta keep moving!”

‘Sunday’ is accompanied by a wonderfully trippy, animated, Alice-In-Wonderland-inspired video, directed by Arturo Baston. Watch here:

Islands In The Sky, the upcoming new album from Death Valley Girls, is set for release on 24th February via Suicide Squeeze Records – pre-order here. And catch Death Valley Girls live when they’re over in the UK next month – more info here.

Mari Lane
@marimindles

Photo Credit: Neto Velasco

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Introducing Interview: Red Ribbon

Following the release of last year’s album Planet X, and 2018’s Dark Party, LA based artist Red Ribbon is now heading over to our shores for her first ever UK tour. With a London date planned at The Victoria a week today on 19th October with support from GIHE fave, Ailsa Tully, we can’t wait to witness her captivating sounds live. If gritty, ethereal soundscapes and sweeping celestial vocals, interwoven with a twinkling folk-strewn musicality, are your thing then you should definitely join us there!

Prior to her setting out on tour, we caught up with Red Ribbon to find out about what inspires her, the influences behind her latest album, the power of fear and more… Have a read!

Hi Red Ribbon! Welcome to Get In Her Ears! Can you tell us a bit about yourself? 
Thank you so much! I am currently based out of Los Angeles. I’m originally from the Pacific Northwest, but had a bit of a transient upbringing and moved around the United States growing up.  That has given me a dual perspective of both knowing how to get along with all kinds of people, yet always sort of feeling like an outsider everywhere. I always have a soft spot for underdogs.

Are you able to tell us a bit about how and why you initially started creating music? 
I was in the grade school choir and band as a little kid.  There was also an acoustic guitar and a piano in my home growing up, so I’d play around on those when I was small. Nothing exceptional, just kid stuff. I don’t think anybody really saw musical potential in me or anything, but I was always drawn to it. What really got me going was when I studied classical violin when I was about eighteen.  I began busking alone in San Francisco, and that is when I realized I loved to perform as a musician, and that I could do it as a job. Sort of in conjunction with that, I began messing around on the electric guitar to write songs, and yeah, I was hooked.

We love your beautifully twinkling sounds , but who would you say are your main musical influences?
Elliott Smith, The Velvet Underground, The Pacific Northwest’s underground DIY music scene…

You released your Planet X album last year. Are you able to tell us a bit about what inspired it and the themes running throughout it?
I recorded the album mostly in Brooklyn January of 2020, right before things really shut down. A few tracks were also recorded in Tornillo Texas (along the Mexican border) and in Seattle Washington, where I was living at the time. I was very influenced by touring my first studio record, Dark Party. Me and my band had the chance to do some lengthy touring in 2019. There was a knowing that we all had going into recording – the American political climate was reaching a fever pitch of horror. I think we knew perhaps something was going to break – though I don’t think any of us imagined how it would play out exactly. I built the visual world of that record as an escape from the disasters of 2020 and 2021. It was my place to go to, colourful and strange.

You’re coming over to the UK this month for a little tour (including a London date with GIHE fave Ailsa Tully), which is super exciting! What can fans expect from your live shows?
I am so excited! This is my first solo tour and my first UK tour. Really I’m looking at this as a tour surrounding the album I’m working on now. I am taking some of the songs from this tour into the studio when I get back to Los Angeles.  I will also be playing some of my favourite songs from my previous albums of course!

And have there been any gigs you’ve played in the past that stand out as particular highlights for you?
I love playing in unusual places, under a freeway with a generator for example! But I think these upcoming shows will be some of my favourite ever, because I am afraid of them, haha. I know that sounds funny, but there is power in becoming the fear! You know, I am travelling very far, and alone. It is fairly dangerous. Sometimes that is exactly what music needs. It’s really about the ‘X Factor’ – the unexplainable magic vibe – that makes a show killer. A little danger is good.

How do you feel the industry is for new artists at the moment? And do you feel much has changed over the last few years in its treatment of female and queer/LGBTQ+  artists? 
There is a song by Gillian Welch called ‘Everything is Free’ that I think sums up things better than I can.

As we’re a new music focused site, are there any other upcoming artists you’re loving right now that you’d recommend we check out?
Absolutely!  I’ve been really loving the tracks that Cold Mega has been putting out – ‘Swinging the Dog’ is so good. Also some of my most favourite musicians and collaborators, Sheridan Riley and Abbey Blackwell have formed the new rhythm section for the Canadian band Alvvays, and the new record they put out is honestly a triumph. I am so proud of them. My former label mates Momma are also absolutely crushing it right now, they have been hitting the road hard the past few months and I think the world is noticing.

Aside from the tour, what does the rest of the year have in store for Red Ribbon? 
I am close to finishing my next record in Los Angeles. I have been working on it since March of this year. This is a different approach for me.  More of a long-game approach versus you know, seven days in a row at the studio or whatever. Though admittedly musicians always are most excited by their current work, in my opinion it is the best stuff I have ever done. I can’t wait to share these songs with you! The world is opening up again. I didn’t get to tour my last album Planet X much, since it was released during the pandemic. Personally, I didn’t have the desire to be the first back out on the road. But with this tour, and with this new record, I am finally ready. I am relentless in my drive to just keep going.

Massive thanks to Red Ribbon for answering our questions!

If you’re London based, catch her live at The Victoria in Dalston on 19th October – tickets here.

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