FEATURED ON COVERAMA COMPILATION ALBUM
OUT MAY 20 VIA THE CONFIDENCE EMPERORS

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THE DRAKE UNDERGROUND IN TORONTO ON MAY 21
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Toronto, ON – May 6, 2022 – Today, iconic Canadian band, Martha and the Muffins, release an inventive cover of The English Beat's eponymous classic, Save It For Later. The song was the catalyst for the album it is featured on. Coverama is a compilation filled with creative, fun and innovative renditions of classic pop and indie rock songs. It will be released via Popguru Sound & Vision's boutique label, The Confidence Emperors, on May 20. Initially created and pitched for Netflix series, Sex Education, the duo brainstormed with Popguru Founder, Graham Stairs, and their version sparked a new endeavour. It arrives with an amazing multimedia stop motion visual self-directed by the group - listen to Save It For Later and watch the video here.

Under The Cover - what inspired the track:
"We originally recorded Save It For Later at the suggestion of a UK music supervisor to pitch for the trailer of a Netflix series. Between Martha’s vocal arrangements and our guitars and keyboards, there are a lot of additional little hooks that didn’t exist in the original that we think makes our version almost like an early Martha and the Muffins song." says Martha and the Muffins. "We hope we've captured and translated the free-wheeling spirit of the Beat’s original song in our version." 

As for the video, the group prefaces, "don’t ask us what it all means!" Martha and the Muffins wanted to avoid a performance video, and instead decided to make it a colourful and interesting collage. So, they collected a lot of little objects from around the house and also grabbed random images from the Internet, working intuitively.

Martha and the Muffins became known for their own signature track, Echo Beach. The song, from their 1980 album, Metro Music,  has been streamed 31,355,707 times on Spotify, and won a JUNO for Single of the Year. Echo Beach was a top ten hit in Canada, the UK, Australia and Germany, making an international cultural impact as well: there is a venue named Echo Beach in Toronto, there was a UK television series called Echo Beach in the UK, there is a German record label called Echo Beach, there are resorts in Australia and Bali named Echo Beach and there is an Irish show horse called Echo Beach. 
 
Martha and the Muffins toured the UK opening for Roxy Music. Daniel Lanois co-produced three albums for Martha and the Muffins. As the songwriter for Echo Beach, Mark Gane received a special SOCAN award in 2015 representing 100,000 plus spins on Canadian radio.  

In the series so far, we’ve heard John Orpheus cover Radiohead’s House Of Cards,  Alex Exists take on David Essex’s Rock On and Juliana Eye just shared her stunning rendition of Blondie’s Dreaming, and Sam Casey delivers a powerful cover of Etta James' I'd Rather Go Blind. The songs on Coverama include interpretations by Toronto artist/producer, UK-based pop singer-songwriter, Chloe Kay; Will Whitwham (leader of The Wilderness of Manitoba), Ghost Caravan, and indie pop duo, TANDM. Stay tuned for more music on the way.

While Coverama will see its release on May 20, celebrations will follow the next day (Saturday, May 21) at The Drake Underground in Toronto. John Orpheus, Alex Exists, Sam Casey, Ghost Caravan, TANDM, and Juliana Eye will take to the stage to share their  eclectic renditions with live energy. Find all info and tickets here. 

About Martha and the Muffins
Described by UK critics as “one of the most innovative of their era” and that “even to this day they sound brave and fresh”, Martha and the Muffins returned in 2010 with Delicate, their first new studio album in eighteen years on their own Muffin Music label. The album was five years in the making and mixed by David Bottrill (Peter Gabriel, David Sylvian, Robert Fripp). The songs range from the horn-inflected, Drive, and the anthemic groove of Mess to the perceptive, Life’s Too Short To Long For Something Else, and Love Began With Eve, a song that Daniel Lanois stated was “one of the most beautiful, original songs I’ve ever heard.”

Martha and the Muffins emerged from the early punk/new wave/art pop scene in 1977 which was centered around various clubs along Toronto's Queen Street West and the Ontario College of Art, where several members of the band were students. The band was the first Canadian band to sign to a UK label and recorded their first album, Metro Music at The Manor Studio near Oxford, England. After Echo Beach became a top ten single around the world in 1980 and earned them a Juno for Single of the Year, Martha and the Muffins toured extensively in Britain, Europe and North America. Since then, the band has released seven studio albums, three of which they co-produced with Daniel Lanois (U2, Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel). The songs they worked on together included the groundbreaking singles, Women Around The World At Work, Danseparc, Black Stations/White Stations, Come Out And Dance and Cooling The Medium. 
 
Martha Johnson and Mark Gane spent much of the '90's scoring music for various television and film projects. In addition, Universal Music Canada has reissued several Martha and the Muffins albums on CD, including Metro Music, Trance And Dance, This Is The Ice Age and the CD compilation Icon while the band itself has reissued their albums Danseparc, Mystery Walk, The World Is A Ball and Modern Lullaby.
 
More recently, Martha Johnson and Mark Gane, founding members of Martha and the Muffins, have gone into their extensive archives to select 12 rare singles, B-sides and unreleased tracks for Marthology: In And Outtakes. The album was released on November 5, 2021 and spans 35 years of recordings, including the 30th anniversary version of Echo Beach , previously limited releases of Summer Of Song, Big Day and Do you Ever Wonder?, as well as never heard before songs and alternative versions of album cuts. For the band’s global audience as well as the uninitiated, Marthology: In And Outtakes, offers a behind the scenes glimpse of the original and diverse avenues of Martha and Mark’s songwriting which has defined Martha and the Muffins as a groundbreaking band since its formation.

DOWNLOAD - Save It For Later Single Art
DOWNLOAD - Martha and the Muffins Press Photo
DOWNLOAD - Coverama Artwork

DOWNLOAD - Coverama Album Release Celebration Image Assets

About Popguru Sound & Vision:
Founded in 1998 by A&R maverick Graham Stairs, Popguru Sound & Vision is a fully integrated music company that makes a difference. Its core business is artist management, but, as a diversified company, Popguru is involved in music publishing, two record label imprints and providing music for film, television and other media.

Prior to starting his own company, Stairs was a partner in Intrepid management and did A&R for Intrepid Records, Latitude Records and EMI Music Canada. He was involved with such seminal Canadian artists as Martha and the Muffins, the Rheostatics, National Velvet, Chalk Circle, Damhnait Doyle and Sandbox. He was also behind the soundtrack album for the film, Highway 61, and the Bruce Cockburn tribute album that gave the Barenaked Ladies their first national hit with Lovers In A Dangerous Time. To this day, it is still one of the most played songs on Canadian radio. More recently, Stairs did A&R for True North Records where he signed Catherine MacLellan, Hunter Valentine and Australian band, the Audreys. 

The strength of any company is its artists and repertoire. Popguru subscribes to the philosophy of building a community and long-term careers for its artists. The company’s mandate is to develop content for the Canadian and international marketplaces. The business model uses diversification as a strategy to create and monetize content for the existing and next generation uses of music. Since reactivating Popguru in 2009, Stairs has signed Martha and the Muffins, Odario, Grand Analog, the Wilderness of Manitoba, John Orpheus, Ghost Caravan, producer/songwriter, Mike Schlosser, and Sam Casey for management. Stairs’ vision of the interdependencies between record labels, music publishers, management companies and licensing agencies is the reason that Popguru organizes all of them within the same company. This is Popguru’s response to the needs of artists today and into the future.