Dig These Discs :: Grace Potter, Ivy Levan, Emily West, Never Shout Never, Dillon Francis

Singer Ivy Levan comes off her North American Tour and performances at Pride Indianapolis and Pride LA with her new debut album "No Good." American indie rock band Never Shout Never from Missouri drops their sixth full-length album. Los Angeles-based artist Dillon Francis releases his slim EP, teaming up with today's most skilled musical artists, including Calvin Harris and Skrillex. After five albums with the Nocturnals, Grace Potter moves on to her first solo album in 13 years, "Midnight." And "America's Got Talent" finalist Emily West forwards her debut album, a mix of popular cover songs, and four of her own original songs, including her first single, "Bitter."

"No Good" (Ivy Levan)

Singer Ivy Levan comes off her North American Tour and performances at Pride Indianapolis and Pride LA with her new debut album "No Good." And it's a misnomer, because this newcomer is doing good stuff with her collection of 11 tracks. Among them is "Killing You," a duet with Sting. The success of her first single, the catchy pop anthem "Biscuit," led to her singing the theme song for the summer blockbuster comedy "Spy," starring Melissa McCarthy. The cut "Who Can You Trust" comes with a clever video. She sings out loud and proud from the start in her single "The Dame Says," with its stutter-chorus, "make money money make money," and lyrics like, "you see I got my cake and I fucking ate it too/ I'm grade A steak, you ain't nothing but dog food." Her title track is heartrending as she sings, "Your love your love, makes me no good." Her R&B cut "Champagne Taste" champions her humble beginnings, singing, "Champagne taste with a Bud Light budget, I know you love it!" Her "Like a Glove" is more of a Taylor Swift pop song, as is the track "27 Club" with its promise, "Everyone's going to know me when I die." She promises that "what goes around comes around" in "Best Damn Thing," one of the few tracks that showcases Levan's vocal range. She slows things down in the moody "Misery" and gets an old punk sound in the bass guitar-fueled track "Killing You." "Johnny Boy" is a classic old-school telephone call lament about the loss of innocent love. She finishes it with another sad love song, "It Ain't Easy." Levan is off to a great start with "No Good."
(Cherrytree Records)

"Midnight" (Grace Potter)

After five albums with the Nocturnals, Grace Potter moves on to her first solo album in 13 years, "Midnight." "In a lot of ways, the Nocturnals are a safety net and a beautiful, beautiful blanket," Potter told Paste Magazine. "All the life and music we've woven makes it so much more than a name on a marquee. But I realized the Nocturnals aren't me, but a part of me... so it's natural to want to grow." In her solo album, this talented blues singer shares her litany of heartbreak, unfaithful lovers, and remorse. She moves through a wide swath of styles, from hippie to Southern rock, New Wave to funk. She kicks things off with "Hot to the Touch," singing about a smoking hot romance: "forgive me if I'm not myself tonight, my body's in a battle with my mind." She works the catchy hooks in the anthem, "Alive Tonight," a great dance song. She wants to cheat with you, but can't because she likes "Your Girl" too much, in this tune about fidelity. She runs down the scales in the excellent, countrified "Empty Heart," and goes for the John Lennon circa "Walls and Bridges" sound in "The Miner." She switches it up to a disco maven sound for the fun and flirty track, "Delirious" and gets cagey in the look-mom-we-did-it pop tune "What We've Become." Electronic synths pair with electric guitars in the hard rocking "Instigators," with Potter singing, "Raise up your arms, hold up the sky its time to cross over shoulder to shoulder." Things verge on the stalker-ish in her sultry obsession song, "Biggest Fan." The closest she comes to a slow rock song is her evenly paced "Low" and the rustic "Nobody's Born With a Broken Heart," about a man who walked out on his wife and son, and seeks redemption through music. Potter caps off the album with "Let You Go." She hits the road with a seven-piece band this fall, to see how fans will respond to her solo act.
(Hollywood Records)

"All for You" (Emily West)

"America's Got Talent" finalist Emily West forwards her debut album, a mix of popular cover songs, and four of her own original songs, including the first single, "Bitter." West sings, "The battle was over the blood never dried the gate was left open and so were my eyes/ Bitter, yeah that's me these days." She wrote the other three with K.S. Rhoads, commenting that "Battles" was inspired by a quote about how "everyone you meet is fighting a battle." Over the acoustic guitar, her voice rises and falls like an angel. Her track "Glorianna" is a song she wrote with the hopes that an operatic voice like Andrea Bocelli would sing it. And "Fallin'" evokes Billie Holiday, old-school songs, with a tragic turn at the end, as she sings, "Home in the kitchen and lonely cleaning up the place, he's out drinking in a bar/ Oh my friends ask me how I got these bruises on my face, I say it's from fallin' fallin' fallin' hard." It's an excellent piano-accompanied torch song. West sings her first "Talent" audition song, "Sea of Love," and her second audition song, Roy Orbison's 1989 hit, "You Got It." The hippie track "Nights in White Satin" by The Moody Blues is mellifluous, and West makes Sia's "Chandelier" her own with a slow, moody interpretation. She gives a gospel turn to Usher and David Guetta's "Without You" and gets help from Cyndi Lauper for the evergreen "True Colors." She joined Lauper onstage in December at her "Home for the Holidays" benefit concert at the Beacon Theatre in New York. West recently headlined a multi-city tour, and will hit the road again in September.
(Portrait Records/Sony Music Masterworks)

"Black Cat" (Never Shout Never)

American indie rock band Never Shout Never from Missouri drops their sixth full-length album with Christofer "The Shout" Drew Ingle as front man. They launched the album with the anthem, "Hey! We OK" in June, with quips like, "We're fucking priceless, baby!" They dropped the bass/electronic cut "Boom!" on the Vans Warped Tour 2015 Compilation CD. They make great use of percussives of varied types in the self-effacing cut "Fone Tag," singing, "Guess I never thought you'd go for a loser like me." Ukulele pairs well with cracks from the clave in the track "Red Balloon" and he's got "a $10 hotel room, cheap bottle of suds" in "Happy New Year." They rock in the love song "Post Surrealism" and rely on the bass drum to move the list along in "Black Cat." "My heart is pure and my soul is clean," sings Ingle in "Peace Song," about be sent off to war, with a fine ukulele accompaniment. The tables turn in the hard-rocking "WooHoo," and finish strong with the twisted love song, "All Is Love" as Ingle sings "You know I love you; just tough to love myself."
(Sire)

"This Mix Tap Is Fire" (Dillon Francis)

Los Angeles-based artist Dillon Francis drops his slim EP today, with seven tracks that make up, "This Mix Tape Is Fire." Francis finds success by teaming up with today's most skilled musical artists, including Calvin Harris on his track "What's Your Name" and Skrillex on "Bun Up the Dance." Francis gets down with his moombahton sound in the first cut, "Bruk Bruk (I Need Your Lovin)." This EP of electronic music throws in everything but the kitchen sink, from bells to chimes to percussives. "I want a little fire/ give me the light," chime out male vocals in the beginning of "Bun Up the Dance," with Skrillex, which give way to female vocals chipping out the title, over skillful scratching and layers of drums and sirens. It's one of the most bass-driven tracks on the release, and one of the strongest. A close second is Francis and Bro Safari's "Pull It." The effects are unusual, even if it doesn't build up to much of a break. By way of a love song, Francis has "Coming Over," featuring James Hershey singing, "All I can think about is coming over." This slowed-down cut straddles the line between club music and pop. Chromeo, of "Jealous" fame, chimes in on the R&B influenced "Lies," elevating it into something better than its parts as he warns, "Don't let me lie to you." Francis finishes the EP with "I Can't Take It (Party Favor Remix)" with pounding beats and a wild synthesizer and a spoken word intro that will remind you of that old "SNL" "Sprockets" sketch featuring German dance music lover Dieter. Although I wouldn't necessarily categorize this mix tape as "fire," I will concede that does indeed send up a few sparks.
(Sony Music)