Ugly Duckling Presse presents RENT PARTY!

I was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine and grew up in the suburbs of Massachusetts. I never sang in public until I moved to Austin, Texas where I started playing in the doorway of an abandoned bar near the corner of 6th and Congress. My music is about people that bring you to the brink of joy and despair and about having epiphanies in the most ordinary places. THE NEW YORKER: Alina Simone, a Ukrainian-born singer with a potent and ethereal voice, writes wistful songs laced with spare guitar playing that have a Cat Power-like quality. MAGNET: The six songs on this beautiful debut obsess over capturing minute physical details. sulfur lights glare down on a romance as it unfolds in a parked car ("Louisiana Song"), and white church spires pierce the sky behind the local pawnshop where lovers converge ("Cash America Pawn"). The instrumentation -- spare guitar and cello with minimal drums -- leaves Simone's aching Rebecca Gates-meets-Chan Marshall voice exposed and vulnerable. PITCHFORK: Simone rejects the generically folksy strum that keeps many talented singers stuck on the coffee-shop circuit, choosing instead to wrap her smoldering voice around dark, fractured arrangements that tremble on the verge of vanishing entirely


UNNATURAL WAYS is the power trio of Ava Mendoza (guitar), Dominique Leone (synths), and Nick Tamburro (drums, percussion). The group marries the intense energy of free jazz to instantly memorable tunes. Unpretentious and visceral, their music winds its way through free jazz, structurally complex metal, and warped, noisy blues.

"A visceral and insightful exploration into the [jazz] form, with as much grit, blood and bile as a Lightning Bolt album. While the tracks might start off with some kind of form, Mendoza has a unique talent of being able to deconstruct this as she plays, devolving the sounds into noise and grinding emotion." --Boomkat