Official Press Release:
CHILL-POP ARTIST, SEREENA, RELEASES HER RENDITION OF “THE FIRST NOEL”
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – (6 Dec 2018) – Chill-Pop artist Sereena released her take on the
Christmas classic, The First Noel on Thursday, December 6.
Instead of releasing the song on a Friday to meet industry standards, Sereena made
the choice to release on December 6 in honor her late brother, Sam Barga, who will
have celebrated his 22nd birthday that day.
“I was a little nervous to release it on his birthday because I didn’t want to make it
about me, but after talking to my parents about this, they comforted me in saying it was
an honor and a way to celebrate Sam’s life on Earth,” says Sereena.
In this rendition of The First Noel, Sereena stays true to her chill-pop vibe without
abandoning the more traditional sounds of the holidays. Blending sleigh bells and
choir vocals along with some of her favorite electronic elements and R&B melodies,
this song just begs for a warm fireplace and a cold winter’s night.
Listen to the song here:
For interview requests and/or to post song on website, contact Management by Django or Sereena via email at sereenaelizabeth@gmail.com.
CONTACT:
MGMT: Management by Django
EMAIL: management@bydjango.com
FACEBOOK: @i.am.sereena
INSTAGRAM: @sereenasounds
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Review: Whitney Tai at LA’s Classiest Dive Bar
Whitney Tai in LA ‘s Classiest Dive Bar
Patrick O’Heffernan
Los Angeles was originally called “El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Ángeles del Río Porciúncula” by the “Los Pobladores” who displaced the native tribes and founded the city in 1781. Mercifully, over the centuries the name has changed to “Los Angeles”.
A lot more changed besides the name as LA grew and became a downtown concrete desert. But LA goes through periodic renaissances – vast Spanish farms and orchards, oil production, the rise of the movie industry, the concentration of the aircraft and defense plants. It is going through another renaissance now with high tech and social media companies moving in, bringing thousands of millennials and professionals downtown and dozens of apartment towers filling the skylines to house them. Consequently, every available street-facing space is being converted into a trendy restaurant, wine bar or hot music venue.
The building at 267 South Main Street made the conversion a half-century ago and the city is catching up. It is the home of the Five Star, a classic dive bar, but a classy one. Unlike many beer joints with a mic and a PA in the corner, the Five Star has good music stage, a superb sound system, and a skillful sound board operator. While still a dive bar, the Five Star’s hip clientele, and music-knowledgeable staff attracts talent far beyond garage bands.
Owner, Marc Cordova, and soundman Heath Waller told me that The Five Star Bar was originally built in 1910 and has a checkered past including serving as a speakeasy during Prohibition. The bar was bought by Cordova’s dad in 1971 and passed on to Marc, who passionately believes in quality sound and great rock and roll. He loves music and he and Waller will do what it takes to book it and make it sound great.
I was invited to a Five Star Bar night by Whitney Tai, the fast-rising dream pop singer with a gonzo voice and out of this world stage presentation. Originally from New York, I first saw her at LA’s prestigious Hotel Café and again in Hollywood ’s intimate Bar 20. So I was curious when she alerted me to a gig on a Wednesday night in a venue I had never heard of located in an aging building next to a parking lot in downtown LA. When WAZE told me “Your destination is on your left”, I saw nothing on the dark street that said “Five Star Bar”.
There were a handful of people in the Five Star when I walked in, some playing pool, some sitting at bar talking. The bartender, Angela, pulled me a tall one, chatted and then directed my questions about the bands to Waller who was playing pool. He told me the lineup on the poster was all he knew and the music would start in about an hour.
Sure enough, in about 30 minutes musicians and fans began trickling in too and soon the room was about full. Whitney Tai came in, introduced me to some of the band members, sound checks began and the kinda’ grungy 100+ year old venue started humming as the front pool table was moved aside to make room for cocktail tables and stools and more people crowded in.
By the time the first act, pop blues singer Sofia Zorian positioned herself behind the keyboard and let loose with her six-song solo set, which included the soon-to-be-released Common Boy and the just dropped You Got This All Wrong, the bar was full and rocking. Sofia instantly turned all heads to the stage and got people up and clapping with her swaying body, earworm beats and caressing voice. Saf Ro, the genre-fluid guitarist, singer/songwriter was up next and he took us through his two albums, 21Days 2 Recovery and Paper Tigers. He bent notes and mixing up tempos and forms in a set that pulled you in immediately and then got better and better. It was a tall cool drink of good ol’ rock and roll.
Saf Ro stepped back to let Whitney Tail take the stage, blending into the band she was assembling onstage. Moving into a vacant double keyboard setup was noted film composer and musician, Tim Janssens, playing a guest role for the night. As usual, Tai blew everyone away, taking full advantage of the Five Star’s sound system to belt, soar, sooth and seduce with her silk-glass voice and dreampop lyrics. She gave us a strong set of eight songs including the yet-to-be-released The Cure. Moving confidently in bike shorts, spaghetti string top, a baseball cap over her blue hair, and her trademark silver shoes, she gave one of the best performances I have seen.
When the “Los Pobladores” set up shop in the valley of the Río Porciúncula they had no idea that they were laying the groundwork for what would become the music capital of a new nation where even an old dive bar can deliver gold medal performances. But then again, maybe they did – after all, they brought the first guitars to America and we have not been the same since.
Patrick O’Heffernan Host, Music FridayLive!,
Whitney Tai https://www.whitneytaimusic.com/
Sofia Zorian http://www.sofiazorian.com/
Saf Ro https://www.safromusic.com/
Five Star Bar https://fivestarbardtla.com/
Blasting off at the Bardot with JØUR before the mid-term election
Blasting off at the Bardot with JØUR before the mid-term election.
Patrick O’Heffernan
(Hollywood) The Bardot was an unlikely launch pad for JØUR’s sonic blastoff Monday night, hours before Americans went to the polls to define the direction of their nation’s future. The club lives inside the storied Avalon Theater in the heart of Hollywood, upstairs from the main dance floor. Inside it is kind of an art deco/Moroccan lounge which claims a capacity of 300. It was obviously not designed as a music venue as the stage takes up the majority of the central floor space and the observation balcony is occupied by the sound and light board. When couches are in place in front of the stage for the Monday School Night showcases, fans have to crowd around on the sides with the overflow lining the stairs to the soundboard level and the over-overflow in the two adjacent bars.
But JØUR turned the Bardot into a West Coast Cape Canaveral, rocketing the audience into orbit with only her voice, keyboard and the terrific drumming of Alex Young. She filled the Bardot with a sound that shot you to a black hole on the dark side of the moon, swung you screaming around into the sun, pulled you back at the last moment and just when you thought you were safe, slides you into a nightmare. And it reminded you – whether she meant to or not – of the decision we all had to make the next day at the ballot box.
She performed seven songs from her just-released Chiaroscuro album and mesmerized the audience. She got liftoff with the first song, “Cut”, her voice soaring in impossibly high notes as she streamed images of machetes and cutthroats and dangerous love, she accelerated even higher into the trance dance of “Black Hole”, wailing Why not let the grave keep her dead?/You dig me up instead before settling into a hypnotic orbit with the more gentle, but equally caustic “One More Night”.
But orbiting allows you see an entire planet, and when JØUR looked down what she saw was a day-before-the-mid-term-election “Revolution”, a song that cried with prophetic urgency There’s a surge coming/I can feel the tension when I move, and then elevated into astral musical notes as she rolled out her close-up vision with a bloodcurdling aria:
They’re writing blood on the walls with wine/The thirst for power’s a sleeping giant
And he wakes up every time/ And when he does its always violent.
We get a break with “Hollow Horse” as she sways at the keyboard, steering her innocent passengers into the void where a memory lives so callous that she laments If hope had a flicker
You’d snuff it out. Alex Young’s drums pound like a terrified heart pumping its blood into the synth-world spreading out from her keyboard. We level off again and coast through her mind with “Slip Away”, mesmerized by her oscillating body and Young’s otherworldly percussion, bringing to mind the cosmic drums of Iron and Wine’s Elizabeth Goodfellow. But the respite is short as JØUR takes center stage and carefully begins a final descent into the world of “American Nightmare”, a stealthy song that entices you with her softer voice and collapsing body but terrifies you with the poignancy of its lyrics:
Don’t make me turn the lights out/I’m scared of what I’ll see
Don’t wanna fall asleep and have the American Dream/Stuck inside a nightmare
And I can’t even scream/What if I can’t wait up from this American Dream
Perhaps those are edgy lyrics for a woman born in Minneapolis, MN, who studied classical piano and voice as a child. Or they are the lyrics you would expect from a woman inspired by the American-Canadian indie-pop singer Feist and her album Metals. Either way, it is a testament to her innate talent that JØUR taught herself to control her voice and extend her range from the alluring to the commanding and use it so deftly as she evolved into the multi-medium artist she is today, telling her stories with dance, painting, graphic design, and photography and, of course, music.
Although she co-founded the Good Arts Collective in Minneapolis to empower and inspire other artists, I don’t know if JØUR meant her performance as a political comment. Maybe this is the solar system that revolves constantly in her songwriting mind. Either way, it worked. Despite the tight quarters, the uneven sound system, an unshielded loud-talking sound board operator, JØUR ushered us into her rocket ship, buckled us down, and gave us the ride of our lives.
Patrick O’Heffernan. Host, Music FridayLive!
Chiaroscuro available on Itunes, Spotify, Apple Music, Prime, Google Play and through her website.
Song Review: Mary Moore – Hesitant Kiss
Indie folk/rock artist Mary Moore relocated to Nashville, Tennessee in 2017 after graduating from college, to pursue her music career full time. In June 2018, her debut single, “The Sinner”, was released garnering 2K streams and receiving airplay on WNRN and BMR radio.
While attending the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Mary was the music director for The Virginia Belles, an award-winning female acapella group. Growing up, she sang in choirs, acapella groups, school musicals, and was the lead singer in a classic-rock cover band, in her hometown of Richmond, Virginia. Mary also loves to play trumpet, French horn, guitar, and piano.
Mary is known for being able to connect with people from all walks of life with her storytelling lyrics and for captivating stages. Her powerhouse vocals have been compared to Brandi Carlile, Adele, and their sweet, quirkiness with Regina Spektor.
In December, Mary will be recording three new singles and will release them separately in the first half of 2019. She is recording them with Collin Pastore who has worked with Lucy Dacus and Illuminati Hotties. The songs will be more “out of the box” with the instrumentation and Mary is excited to play with different sounds to achieve this.
“Hesitant Kiss”, her second single, was released on November 1, 2018. Mary wrote the indie-rock song after a phone call made her believe the other person wasn’t being honest about being happy in their relationship. The conversation gave her inspiration for writing the first lyrics of the song when the other person hesitated, not finishing their sentence, and as a result, “Don’t stop in the middle of your sentence” was born.
The song’s intro has an upbeat melody of keys and heavy drums that saunters along just enough to affix itself permanently in your head. But it is Mary’s vocals that take center stage and garner your full attention when they make their entrance. The strength of her voice is controlled and sultry but has an impassioned silkiness that is equally commanding as it glides over the mellow soundscape of a warm, fuzzy guitar.
There is an absence of climactic tension leading up the chorus, but Mary lands a potent vocal knockout as she launches into it with her powerhouse vocals. You can really feel the conviction and the passion with each word; the hard emphasis on the word kiss and her elongated “s” on the end cleverly adds a touch of unspoken emotion that drives her point home.
After the dressing down of her lover in the chorus, you feel Mary shift back emotionally to her serene vocal approach from the intro as she betrays a little more of her feelings. There is a pronounced emphasis on the persuasive lyrics such as a distinctive growly emphasis on the word “hurt”, and at the very end of the next chorus, she exerts a notable catch in her voice that permeates a subtle ache in the words “feel it”.
Between the last two rounds of the chorus toward the end of the song, is a clever detour. At this point, you anticipate that this verse will again revert back to her soothing, velvety voice. At first, Mary’s vocals do just that, as she confesses what she really wants is their love and for them to love her. But her vocals make a gradual climb until her robust voice soars at the end when she admits she already knows their answer.
From here, the song heads into the last chorus with Mary’s tenacious vocals keeping score. The instruments fade away as she comes down from her fervent vocal mountaintop, leaving her to finish with a heartfelt acapella of “for you to feel it too”.
“Hesitant Kiss” is for those times when you don’t want to continue in a relationship where the other person isn’t really happy being in it and can’t be honest about how they really feel.
Very Highly Recommended. Mary Moore’s dynamic vocals combined with her gift for songwriting makes her a force to be reckoned with. “Hesitant Kiss” takes a personal experience and relates it to us in an authentic and captivating piece of storytelling. Mary should not only be on your watch list but on everyone’s must-hear playlist right now. There will be high anticipation early next year when she individually releases her trio of new singles.
Buy “Hesitant Kiss” on all major platforms (direct links): iTunes, Amazon, GooglePlay
Stream it here on Spotify
Check out Mary’s Artist Page: https://www.marymooremusic.com/
Follow Mary on Social Media:
Instagram: @marymooremusic
Facebook: marymooremusic
Soundcloud: Mary Moore
Music Video Review: Late Slip – “Never Understand”
Late Slip has released an entertaining music video for the single “Never Understand” off their debut EP, Other Men.
The concept was created by the video’s director, Nicolai Schuemann and filmed on location in New York City in April 2018. The video opens with Chelsea (Late Slip guitarist/vocalist) seeing a large plush lonely looking dog that is sitting by itself on a park bench. After she befriends the dog, the two run off hand-in-paw and blissfully ignoring the “No Dogs Allowed” sign, have some fun on the swings.
The action on the swings is filmed from the front, not from the side as you would expect. This technique gives you a front row seat to observe the two new friends sharing the moment. The shot creates a kind of 3D effect that makes you flinch or want to duck when the legs of Chelsea and the dog fly at you in a chopped slow motion.
Their adventures, however, are only beginning as they run around New York City matching the backdrop of the energetic beat of “Never Understand”. The song’s melancholy lyrics lament about being in love but your lover doesn’t reciprocate and instead runs away, leaving you wondering why they would treat you so badly. This invariably can also apply between friends where one thinks it’s best to leave the friendship even if the other person doesn’t want it to end. It casts a prophetic feeling over the story of Chelsea and the dog.
Chelsea and her dog buddy enjoy a friendly arm-wrestling contest on a cement chess-board and then exit the park. They take a stroll down a deserted residential street hand-in-paw to the Niagra Bar. Here, they take a moment to admire the famous mural in memory of Joe Strummer (co-founder/lead vocalist/guitarist of the Clash) on an outside wall of the bar. The mural’s vibrant colors of Joe’s portrait really pop through the use of a fishbowl lens.
Continuing on their way, Chelsea and the dog are enthusiastically greeted on the street by dogs and their owners out for a walk. The unscripted encounters are hilarious as the dogs check out the really tall dog that stands on two feet. One large poodle grabs or bites the big plush dog on the nose in an apparent attempt to defend its owners.
Chelsea and the dog do a little yoga, play ping pong with their hands (and paws), and enjoy a cup of coffee in a cafe where again they ignore the sign that says no dogs allowed, check out the outside food markets, dance, and ignore the strange looks that people give them. They’re in their own little world of happiness where no one exists but them.
An argument at a skateboard park threatens to derail their whole adventure, but in a scene that is touching and warm, the dog ends the standoff and they grab each other in a big, plushy hug. A sweet lesson learned that arguments can ruin a good time and its best to make up and move on. They dance, take in the scenery, and then ride on the subway where you can see people holding conversations and not paying any attention to them.
There is a wonderful time-lapsed photography scene where Chelsea and the dog are sitting down and leaning against each other. The traffic and people on the street are whizzing by but time stands still for the exhausted looking Chelsea and her friend.
The adventure ends with a view of the Brooklyn Bridge where the two friends realize they must part ways. The sadness emanates from them both as they look into each other’s eyes and hug fiercely. The parting shot of them as they wave goodbye brings the full circle of the song, showing how it feels to watch your friend that you love being with just leave.
The video effectively captures the message of “Never Understand” from the viewpoint of a newly formed friendship. You can actually feel the highs, lows, and the eventual unforeseen end of it. The song’s melody will have you dancing but the video will capture your heart.
The video was filmed by Mauro Fernandez and stars actor Adriel Irizarry as The Dog. Music/Lyrics by Chelsea Nenni. Vocals: Chelsea Nenni Guitar, Bass: Aaron Araki Drums, Additional Percussion: Cian Riordan
Q&A with Chelsea Nenni
I recently interviewed Chelsea Nenni, vocalist for Late Slip, via email to learn more about the video.
What is the concept of the video for your song “Never Understand”?
I meet this sad little dog in the park and befriend him. We spend the rest of our time running around New York City having adventures. We have a fight at one point (in front of the Lower East Side skate park), but then we make up and keep having fun. At the end, we know it’s best to go our separate ways, so he leaves. I’m sad about it, but happy we met.
How did you come up with the concept?
The director, Nicolai Scheumann, came up with the concept and approached me with the idea to make the music video. It was fun to let someone else take the lead for a change! He did an amazing job.
Where was the video filmed? Why did you pick each of those locations?
It was filmed mostly in the East Village and Lower East Side of Manhattan and also a bit by the Brooklyn Bridge. The director chose these locations ahead of time and I’m so glad he did. The East Village is my favorite neighborhood in New York City — it’s where I called home while I was living in New York.
In the video, you stop to look at the famous mural dedicated to the memory of Joe Strummer located on the outside wall of the Niagra Bar. Why did you include that in the video? Does it hold a special meaning for you?
I love the Clash very much and that mural of Joe Strummer has always been one of my favorite things about living in the East Village. The mural wasn’t originally supposed to be in the video but I asked the director if we could include it and he said yes. 🙂
There are a couple of funny scenes of people’s dogs taking an interest in The Dog. What other kinds of reactions did you experience from people when you were filming?
Oh man, people’s reactions were so hilarious. The video shoot took all day, so the giant dog and I were walking around New York City together for eight hours. We met a lot of real dogs, there was a hug from a little kid, tons of people taking pictures, and plenty of high fives.
What do you want people to come away with after watching the video?
I just want everyone to see how beautiful New York City is and how cool dogs are. Even though Late Slip is LA-based again, New York will always be very, very special to me. I’m so glad I got to shoot two killer music videos while living there.
Purchase Other Men EP on major platforms including Bandcamp, iTunes, Google Play , Amazon and Apple Music. Grab a CD of Other Men available at Late Slip shows and on Bandcamp.
For show information and more, check out Late Slip’s website.
Follow Late Slip on social media:
Twitter: @lateslip
Instagram: lateslip
Facebook: lateslipmusic
Soundcloud: lateslip