Ballsy – Joe Millionaire
The new solo project of Isabelle Banos, who you might know as the synth-bassist of Caveboy, Ballsy looks to the nineties for its amped up emotions—from grunge to the golden age of pop punk. As new single ‘Joe Millionaire’ highlights, such intensity and energy is central to the venture. A song about the climate emergency which typifies the way Banos uses songs to take on the biggest problems of our time with youthful defiance and optimism. “There are really positive and motivating things happening behind the scenes that the news won’t cover because it isn’t click bait,” they explain, “but we CAN save our planet if we keep fighting.”
Bnny – Good Stuff
Back in 2022 we wrote about Bnny, the recording project of Chicago-based artist Jessica Viscius. The single ‘I’m Just Fine‘ showed “what appears to be a mundane encounter is transformed into something else.” Namely, a study of heartbreak and denial presented with the most minimal of details. The title of new album, One Million Love Songs, coming this April on Fire Talk, suggests something brighter this time around and single ‘Good Stuff’ appears to deliver with one of Bnny’s most upbeat songs to date. Though beneath the surface lingers the spectre of something darker. “It’s a breakup song,” as Viscius explains, “but it’s hopeful, optimistic even. Or perhaps it’s just the denial, hoping things will be different next time, hoping that love can save you.”
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One Million Love Songs will be released via Fire Talk on 5th April. Pre-order from the Bnny Bandcamp page.
Empty Heaven – End Times!
Laughing, the forthcoming album from San Antonio‘s Empty Heaven, sees something of a change for the band. They describe their previous record Getting the Blues as like trying “to squeeze blood from a turnip,” with a nightmarish labyrinthine narrative brought to life in painstaking detail, with the band having to fight for every second set down. By comparison, Laughing stemmed from a period in which it felt there were too many ideas in the world, leaving Empty Heaven to mine as much of this rich seam as possible. With its frenzied narrator, lead single ‘End Times!’ very much feels like a product of such process. A manic vision of the encroaching apocalypse delivered with a zeal which leaves you wondering if you are listening to a prophet or paranoid crank.
Lola Wild – Get Up
With debut EP coming soon via Tip Top Recordings, Lola Wild has released single ‘Get Up’, a single which shows an artist who owes as much to classics like Roy Orbison as contemporaries Sharon Van Etten and The Beths. “This track is an ode to my little youth,” Wild explains. “Like most young people, you do and say what you thought at the time was necessary to block out certain aspects of life, I guess. Eventually it just got to the point where I needed to get up, move on and sort my stuff out.” But more than a broad brushstroke picture of a past time, the song delves deeper to reveal the patchwork of concerns and anxieties which so often make up young life. A style “influenced by my obsession with the sad clown paradox,” as Wild continues, “the contradiction between outward appearance and internal emotions, hiding true feelings behind a facade of happiness.”
‘Get up’ is out now via Tip Top Records.
Malice K – Radio
Having recently signed with Jagjaguwar, Olympia-born, Brooklyn based artist Malice K has shared single ‘Radio’ as a preview of what’s coming next. Co-produced by Strange Ranger‘s Issac Eiger, the song offers a picture of a singular artist pushing themselves to a new level. Where searching emotion and detached cool co-exist without any sense of contradiction, and the strange line between agency and fate keep the narrator uncertain of how exactly to view their own sorry state. Watch the video directed by Johann Rashid below:
‘Radio’ is out now via streaming services.
Old Amica – Everyone We Know
Comprising of five songs originally written and recorded twelve years ago for their debut Debris, it’s not quite correct to refer to the forthcoming EP by Swedish duo Old Amica “new.” Titled Debris Sides, the EP takes songs the band say were “hiding on slowly disintegrating hard drives until now,” and finally unveils them to the world, resulting in a slightly uncanny blend of old and new. Built almost entirely from a melange of recorded and sampled voices, lead single ‘Everyone We Know’ is suitably strange. Old Amica describe it as “a song about being followed and the intensifying paranoia,” and the song invites the listener into this headspace as the enveloping sound builds.
Debris Sides is due for release on 16th February.
Olin Janusz – The Throat
Dark and elegant and brooding, ‘The Throat’ is the lead single from Please Leave Quietly, the debut album from London-born, Boston-based songwriter Olin Janusz. The record, a joint release from Stellar Frequencies, Araki Records and Candlepin Records, sits at an intense and individual intersection of chamber folk and slowcore. Janusz’s work often presents with a weary melancholy, something derived from both “the primordial struggle of working class upbringing and his own poor decisions,” and ‘The Throat’ disperses this emotion into its various component parts—tenderness, fatalism and patient attention. Watch Joan Sabatier’s Bergman-esque video below:
Please Leave Quietly will be released on 5th April via Stellar Frequencies, Araki Records and Candlepin Records. In the meantime you can get ‘The Throat’ as a digital single from the Stellar Frequencies Bandcamp page.
Still Corners – The Dream
The title of Dream Talk, the forthcoming album from Still Corners, speaks not only to the sound of the record but the creative process which brought it into being. “I had tapped into something new,” Tessa Murray explains of writing/recording the songs, “and the way it came out was quite hypnotic, like a transitional state between wakefulness and sleep.” Latest single ‘The Dream’ pushes into the oneiric depths of this style, taking inspiration from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream to weave something rooted in narrative yet unrooted in waking reality. What the band describe as an investigation of “the Mystery of the Repeating Dream.” The song comes complete with a video filmed by Darcie Thompson and directed by Murray and Hughes themselves which sees the duo weave a whole cozy crime-style narrative around this mystery.
Dream Talk is out on the 5th April via Wrecking Light Records and you can pre-order it now.
Surf Party, USA – Barrel
With a new self-titled album pencilled for release this spring, Surf Party, USA have shared the appropriately titled ‘Barrel’ to whet the appetite as to the approaching waves. The project sees Ben Weinman (Bones Forever, Boys Go To Jupiter) and Nate Hollander (Boots Deatherage, One Hour Photo) draw on their childhoods in California to create a sun-baked, salt-encrusted sound. One which allows them to, in their own words, “write humorously and to touch on themes they likely wouldn’t in their more “serious” endeavors—joy, friendship, peace, drinking beer, and, of course, surfing.” But don’t underestimate the scope of forthcoming record, a concept album looking to do more with the genre than anyone might expect. The epic ‘Barrel’ is convincing proof Surf Party, USA are going to ride this promise all the way to the shore.