Abigail Lapell – Land Of Plenty
A few weeks ago we wrote about Stolen Time, the upcoming album by Abigail Lapell on Outside Music, an album “built on solid 70s folk rock foundations while retaining the freedom to get experimental and expansive.” Ahead of its release, Lapell has unveiled new single ‘Land of Plenty’, a track that explores themes of escape and refuge to evoke both history and the contemporary moment. Lapell’s own family fled the Holocaust to North America, and the song’s mournful clarity plays like a hymn offered to those seeking their own safety and place to belong. Check out the video by Sam Tudor below:
Stolen Time is out via Outside Music on the 22nd April and you can pre-order it now.
Constellation Myths – Young Lions (Constantines Cover)
Massachusetts trio Constellation Myths are hard at work on a follow-up to last year’s debut Everything and Time, but found a moment to record a take on the Constantines classic, ‘Young Lions’. The Constellation Myths version strips the taut menace from the original in favour of a half-paced country tone. What was gruff fervour is recast as wistful reflection, though the track is no less emotive as a consequence. Listen to the cover below:
Drench Fries – Out My Window
The recording project of Seattle-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Levi Nattrass, Drench Fries made a splash back in 2019 with EP Ballad Salad, a record which combined retro pop polish with a folk rock twang. Ahead of follow-up Being Silver which arrives later this month, Nattras has unveiled the single ‘Out My Window’, a track which builds upon the previous release to realise its fond examination of friendship and love. Think classic country regret made hazy by the sea mist of the West Coast, with dollops of indie rock fuzz and playful pop synths adding an idiosyncratic charm.
If I need you would you come through, if I called would you pick up?
When the going gets a-rough I’m tired of trying my luck
Six white horses on the hillside, seven ravens in the sky
coming towards me as I turn away and try to insist
on leaving tonight
Emma Geiger – Flock
Ahead of a new EP Haven on Ghost Mountain Records this spring, Durham, North Carolina-based songwriter Emma Geiger has unveiled her latest single, ‘Flock’. Written at dawn amid the aftermath of a relationship and cross country move, the song’s gentle rhythm embraces the strange halfway quality of crepuscular light. The fleeting moment between night and day that carries its own inherent stillness. Geiger’s vocals emerge within this space neither soft or stark, their tone caught somewhere between hesitant and assured in their reflective mood, though always swelling with the promise of change.
Haven is out via Ghost Mountain Records on the 1st April and you can pre-order it from the Emma Geiger Bandcamp page.
Jess Williamson – Texas Blue
Now based in LA, but a Texas native, Jess Williamson‘s latest release is an ode to her home state. A two song cover EP, Texas Blue features a take on Townes van Zandt’s ‘Loretta’ and the ‘Texas River Song’, a traditional song of unknown origin which Townes also made his own. Williamson is joined by Ben Schwab (guitar, bass and organ) and Noah Jeffries (mandolin and fiddle) to flesh out both tracks into timeless folk songs, and in doing so, as the press release puts it “reckons with a state, and state of mind, that feels so close but so far away, and breaks a spell that these songs, and Texas’s big, starry skies, have held over her for so long.”
Mousey – Pudding and Pie
Based in Christchurch, Mousey is the recording project of Sarena Close. Described as “the cold, damaged heart” at the centre of the record, ‘Pudding and Pie’ closes the book on a toxic friendship with all the ups and downs such a process entails. Over six minutes the track shifts from quiet fury to racing energy and back again, the elastic rhythm relaxing outward before snapping to taut attention and eventually rising into a big spacey crescendo. “I think this song is the longest because the torture this person put me through meant there was so much emotional fuel to burn and so much to say,” Close explains. Little could survive such a burning, a wound cauterised in the heat and light.
I won’t be your patsy schmuck
I won’t be your spitting cup
I won’t be your dumping truck
Flags up, don’t push me no more
I’m tired, I’m tired
Steven Lambke – Every Lover Knows
Speaking of Constantines, their very own Steven Lambke has a a brand new solo record Volcano, Volcano coming later this spring on You’ve Changed Records. Described by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson as “an invitation, an exploration of potential, an opportunity for listening and thinking and relating that holds space for otherwise thinking and shared meaning-making,” the album feels like the essence of Lambke’s career distilled into a collection of songs. A record built on trust, community and experimentation, fuelled by those small, fleeting moments of joy amid an otherwise difficult world. Lead single ‘Every Lover Knows’ introduces the style, acknowledging ever-present hardships but bursting with life.
The truth is
every truth is tested
by the world
until it’s busted, twisted, or frayed,
as every lover knows
Young Prisms – Outside Air
Later this month, San Francisco‘s shoegaze outfit Young Prisms return with Drifter, their first record in a decade on Fire Talk Records. Latest single ‘Outside Air’ shows a band transcending the throwback pastiche of the genre and realising a sound fully their own. Described as a song about “about the struggles and difficulties in modern marriage, monogamy, and parenting at a young age,” the track draws on the Californian wildfires that blazed during recording to evoke the suffocating damage resentment can wreak within a relationship. But in reflecting on these truths, the oppressive forces are challenged by a commitment to perseverance and quiet improvement. Check out the video directed by Gio Betteo below:
Drifter is out on the 25th March via Fire Talk Records and you can pre-order it now from the Young Prisms Bandcamp page.