Taxi Gauche Indierock | Alternative 14 Items

Second LP from Annie Taylor who recorded 'Inner Smile' with uber-producer Ali Chant (known for his work with Yard Act, Katy J. Pearson, Aldous Harding, Sorry) in Bristol.

Following a much needed hiatus Harvey Rushmore & The Octopus release their third studio album, a heady mix of garage, psych and Krautrock. ‘Freedomspacecake’ is the band’s 46 minute dystopian and fuzz-soaked answer to a world tripping over one disaster to the next with the sting of the thrilling ride. The members of the band have known each other for over 15 years - Massimo Tondini and Jakob Läser, were former members of the band Navel – and as with fellow veterans of psych rock such as The Heads and Wooden Shjips they plough a tantalising locked groove.

On the heels of his breakout year, Swiss indie rocker Sam Himself - New Yorker by choice, ‘Fondue Western’ baritone by trade - prepares to release his debut album, Power Ballads. The Brooklyn-based songwriter, performer and multi-instrumentalist has been sounding the bell for his first LP with a number of singles.

Adult Books is the brainchild of Los Angeles-based writer and multi-instrumentalist Nick Winfrey. With the help of childhood friends Sina Salessi (drums) and Alex Galindo (guitar/synth), Winfrey crafts lyric-driven dark pop gems that recall the hook-heavy guitar work of Johnny Marr, the just-below-the-collar angst of Mission of Burma, and the doomsday bellow of early Echo and the Bunnymen.

There is a palpable mood at the heart of Canadian perennial Calvin Love’s work. Only once in a blue moon comes an artist that seems so familiar yet out of space. Love arrives as an enigma, a crooning, haunted voice.

Tracy Bryant first gained recognition in 2011 as founder and frontman of Los Angeles group Corners. The band became a staple of the underground L.A. music scene with their highly regarded live shows and three well-received releases. Corners toured the U.S. and Europe extensively before Bryant decided to end the band in early 2016 to fully focus on his solo endeavors.

On 23 February 2024 wildly creative free-form L.A. singer-songwriter and multi instrumentalist Laena Myers is set to release her highly anticipated debut solo album, ‘luv (Songs Of Yesterday)’. Released on Taxi Gauche Records, the 11-track collection is the first to feature the genre-spanning composer, in-demand session player/singer and classically trained violinist putting her own name to her recordings.

Formerly known as Laena Geronimo and L.M.I. / Laena Myers-Ionita, Laena is perhaps best known as lead singer, songwriter and guitarist of critically-acclaimed and internationally touring rockers Feels, but that is only the tip of the iceberg. She’s also known for her time as bassist for goth-punk band Numb.er as well as the Motown-inspired pop outfit The Like, and as the go-to-violinist for a myriad of artists from the L.A. music scene and beyond - contributing to released recordings by John Frusciante, Jhené Aiko, Ty Segall, Shannon Lay and The Allah Las to name a few.

Describing herself as “An awkward, shy kid who played in the Jr. Philharmonic Orchestra of California and wore headphones blasting NIN, The Velvet Underground and Sonic Youth all the time”, Laena cut her teeth in a busking band, performing purely improvised

material on street corners in Hollywood and spent the entirety of her young adulthood as a supporting player in countless L.A. bands - at times as many as five simultaneously, while working full time and sleeping in her car during lunch breaks.

Inspired as much by the soft weight of Hope Sandoval and Patsy Cline’s dramatic powers, Patti Smith’s poetic punk and Nico’s avant-garde musings as she is by contemporaries like Angel Olsen, Aldous Harding and Cate LeBon, her musical roots run deep. She is the daughter of American drummer Alan Myers (devo, Skyline Electric, Jean Paul Yamamoto) and Romanian singer/songwriter and visual artist Greta Ionita (Babooshka).

As a solo artist, Laena's punk background of guitar-based songwriting and swagger merges with her innovative classical/experimental roots and love for singing ballads, and this is shown throughout ‘luv (Songs Of Yesterday’), leading to a depth of emotion that cuts to the heart of even the most hardened, revealing a more tender side to her vocal and lyrical prowess over lush string arrangements.

The album’s opening track ‘luv’, with it’s only lyrics “When I say I’m in love you best believe I mean love L.U.V.” is a nod to The Shangri-Las and New York Dolls, and was used to evocatively soundtrack fashion brand CELINE’s Spring 2020 campaign. “Half the songs on the album are about relationships in which I thought I was in love - true love - but it turned out to be something else”, Laena explains, “so ‘luv (Songs of Yesterday)’ seemed a fitting title: sounded like love, looked like love, but it wasn’t real love.”

“The overarching theme of the album is strength in vulnerability” Laena explains, “it’s a collection of songs that were too personal and dreamy for Feels, songs of haunted love, melancholy and hope, selected and woven together with instrumental segues and field recordings into a whole experience.”

The record’s first single, ‘Give ‘Em Hell’, written six months after her father passed away, is about keeping the flame alive and having the courage to believe in yourself. “We were very close” she says. “One night before I got on stage he stopped me and said “Give ‘em hell, kid”, and this phrase has become a mantra to me, to not hold back and give it my ALL. Many of these songs come from heavy times”, she continues, “but there is always the glimmer of a brighter tomorrow. Reach out when you need to, move through the gears and you’ll come out the other side.”

The songs contained in ‘luv (Songs Of Yesterday)’ are picked from over the course of a decade, written purely from a place of honest expression and filled with texture, depth, and meaning. They were recorded between tours mostly in sweltering summer bedrooms by friend and co-producer Scott Cornish (Angel Olsen, Big Thief, No Age), and mixed during the pandemic. The album features Laena’s vocals, guitar, bass, and violin playing and huge-sounding, lush string arrangements supplemented with drums and percussion by Nick Murray (Cate Le Bon, White Fence, Thee Oh Sees), synths by Jeff Fribourg (Numb.er, Froth), lap steel by Cole Berliner (Kamikaze Palm Tree), and sax by Gabe Flores (Grave Flowers Bongo Band), as well as field recordings — birds singing at daybreak, footsteps and bells making their way into a cave, the wind on a peak in Angeles National Forest.

Fomies is the result of the collaboration between four musicians who are also close friends hailing from the Vaud Riviera region. The band was formed in early 2017. During its initial phases, the group swiftly produced a self-made EP, which played a pivotal role in shaping their distinct artistic identity, characterized by a dynamic fusion of surf-punk and garage rock.

This is their fifth studio album on the Zurich based label Taxi Gauche, home to Annie Taylor, Sam Himself, Adult Books and Chloe Gallardo

Nyc-based Electric Cowboy Chillemi announces his sophomore, dark breakup album

Singing with an enigmatic allure, Chillemi’s style paints with broad strokes of cinematic themes. The solo project of Brian Chillemi (Rose Cologne, Junk Boys), his debut album With Woman was released in April 2021 on Swiss indie label Taxi Gauche Records. After moving to Los Angeles from his native home of New York City just months before the pandemic, Chillemi returned to Manhattan to put the finishing touches on this LP.

The sophomore album from NYC musician and singer-songwriter Kyle Avallone, is a collection of nostalgic meditations that take you out of the smoky bar and into the gray daylight of a seaside town. It is a cinematic dreamscape steeped in warm vocals, lush synthesizers, and sweeping steel guitars. Throughout the ten songs, tender narratives play like home movies on a living room wall, revealing little worlds and distilled memories.

Recorded at Studio G in Brooklyn with Jeff Berner (Psychic TV), Avallone reaches beyond the lo-fi sleaze of his 2020 debut, Last Minute Man, for a higher fidelity and grander sound palette. “After making a record by myself on an old four-track tape machine, it felt like a natural progression to go into a proper studio and play music with my friends". The core band consists of Mark Perro (The Men) on keys and Russell Hymowitz on bass, who both sing backing vocals, along with David Christian on drums. On several tunes, pedal steel played by Jon “Catfish” DeLorme (The Nude Party) dances around Avallone’s baritone voice, delivering a twang that is distinctively more New York than Nashville.

Inspired by the conversational storytelling of artists like Terry Allen and Lou Reed, Avallone was moved to capture the drama and mystery of his own life experiences. The characters we meet here are flawed. Mistakes are made and lies are told. Love is either lost or on the line. Dreams manifold as both echoes of the past and hopes for the future – the faded glow of childhood impressions in “Down the Hill”; the single mothers’ kitchen table reverie in “Going to the Beach”; the lament for summer’s end in “Vacant Sea”.

Second Second Coming', Mary Vision's sophomore LP, is a pastiche of many of Alex Fippinger's influences, from Lou Reed to Spacemen 3. It is an effort to maximalize the minimal, and to create sound that is at once layered and clear. With that, the lyrics also touch on many subjects with an overarching general thesis: the exploration of self and culture under duress. The album allows you to tune into these explorations via different sonic sounds. You'll find the pop sound in the first single, 'Fantasy (Ba Ba Ba)', for instance, right before you find yourself indulged in the psychedelic swirl of 'Love Drone'.

The writing experience was one initially based in home recordings. Alex Fippinger would manifest these recordings in his Brooklyn apartment and show them to the 7-piece band who always added a flavor not imagined by Alex himself. Yukary Morishima, who played bass on the record, is very prominent throughout. Aaron Peart found himself to be an integral piece to the writing as well, providing a specific flavor to the songs via lead guitar. Jack Dawson played keys for the first time on a Mary Vision record, adding a playful vibe that Mary Vision fans haven't heard before. Guido Colzani added drums that are full, yet simple, giving the simple song structures a meaningful foundation. Max Braun held it down on the rhythm guitar, the crux of the songs. Mark Perro was a utility man, adding major guitar licks throughout as

well as playing harmonium and providing next level backup vocals. Paul Blackwell engineered and produced this record to where it is now. From the opening chords of 'Window Pane' all the way to the come down of 'Riding Into the Sun', the album is a novel, an unforgettable night out on the town that you won't forget. If a record could have a character-arc, 'Second Second Coming' would be the textbook example.

Defamator is the long-time-coming debut project of 24-year-old Chloe Gallardo.

It tells a story of betrayal in love and friendship and the painful reality of overcoming love lost and former heartbreak.

Drawing influences from artists such as Broadcast, Grouper & My Bloody Valentine Gallardo adds her own haunting, folk-style vocals and hyper-specific lyrics to create a sonic unique to her. A style

that she describes in her words as “dark shoegaze bedroom indie pop”.

Album opener “Bloodline” epitomises this bittersweet modus operandi. 15 seconds into its dainty

acoustic strum , Gallardo adamantly sulks “I’m fucked up” - the salvo of a lyric about feeling like a

family disappointment. As the track lifts up into a cascading gaze-pop rush, recalling the likes

of Bachelor and Snail Mail, we’re blessed with a pristine elegance that belies the song’s raging core.

“I have always written music this way.”, she says of this fundamental contradiction. “It’s funny

because I try so hard to write darker-sounding songs and they always come out way too pretty. So,

I’ve resorted to writing the most gut-wrenching and intense lyrics to compensate.”

Written mostly during peak-pandemic times in Gallardo’s bedroom - (“you can hear how scared and

alone I was.”) - the songs that made their way onto Defamator arose from a concerted period of

healing. Drawing from the teachings of therapy, the songwriting process gave her the means to

channel some deeply entrenched emotional scars.

This venting of anger is implicit throughout the record. The album’s title - Gallardo’s own neologism - uses the concepts of “defamation” and “defamatory speech” to innovate a kind of pejorative accusation. As a result, it is like we are actively listening to Gallardo forcefully take

command of her past. Of the title track she explains: “The song Defamator is about someone who spoke untruthful things about me in order to manipulate me and the way people perceived me and I felt that was an underlying theme in most of the album.”

Recorded at Jazzcat Studios in Long Beach California with Jonny Bell (Hanni El Khatib, Adult

Books, etc.) Defamator marks Gallardo’s first time in a “legitimate recording studio”. And it shows.

Bell’s production is vital moving part here. There’s more stripped back affairs - ‘There Will Be

Blood”; ”The Way’ - songs which gently seethe and purr like Grouper’s spectral dream-pop;

Gallardo’s fluttering folk-ish voice gloriously pushed to forefront.

The ten-track LP marks the latest collaboration of "Swiss born Gotham bred" (spin) indie rocker Sam Koechlin with his longtime producer / "Second Beatle" Daniel Schlett (Iggy Pop; The War on Drugs) and mastering engineer Greg Calbi and features Chris Egan (Solange; Blood Orange) on drums and Josh "jd" Werner (Ghostface Killah; CocoRosie) on bass. Singles Golden Days (Sept 16) and Never Let Me Go (July 22), the album's title track, offer a taste of what to expect from the "King Of Tears’" (Radiotélévision Suisse) sophomore effort: a soundtrack for the first day after what looked like the last, fueled by the madness of a rapidly accelerating career trajectory, the thrill of touring with his band again, and the promise of a reopening world whose studios, stages and dance floors we get to share again at long last. In 2021, Sam released his debut album Power Ballads, a largely home-recorded yet “well-crafted set of atmospheric post-punk” (kexp) to international acclaim. To promote his upcoming second LP, Sam recently announced the first leg of his European tour in early 2023, confirming stops in Berlin, Vienna, Hamburg and Zurich, with many more to follow (incl. a New York showcase in December and string of US dates this spring). Meanwhile, the two-time Swiss Music Award nominee closed out a busy 2022, which saw him playing dozens of shows in and around Switzerland, completing his first German tour in addition to recording his new LP at producer Schlett's Strange Weather Studio in Brooklyn, with his second collaboration with the Basel Symphony Orchestra and a mini-run with Icelandic songwriter Ásgeir.