Far from a solo release, Romantix Mixtape sees Winter supported by Joo Joo Ashworth on a variety of instruments, as well as guest appearances specific to various tracks. Idris Vicuña (AKA Eyedress) features on ‘nicotine’, but latest single ‘without you’ sees Soccer Mommy‘s Sophia Allison join on vocals duty. Again reimagined from Adult Romantix, the version is once more shorter than its twin but loses nothing in the cut. Both are undoubtedly dreamy in tone, but where the original emerges through a gauzy hiss and haze, the mixtape version is cleaner and more immediate. What results is a sound that’s able to dial up the intimacy while simultaneously heightening the sound, drawing the audience into a cinematic representation of love, loneliness and longing.

The city has turned a different shade
It feels so strange
Without you
All of the streets spell your name
It feels so strange
Without you

Watch the video below, directed and edited by Justin Kaminuma, with B-cam by Nate Colman:

Romantix Mixtape will be released on the 18th September via Winspear and you can pre-order it now from the Winspear Bandcamp page.

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The release of As Far As The Eye Can See is fast approaching, and Van Chamberlain are back with brand new track ‘Fantasy TBD’ to keep the momentum going. What might be the band’s most propulsive single to date, the song grapples with the long tail of a break-up, attempting to break free from the spell of a relationship that won’t quite let you go. “We felt like a song about breaking free needed to literally sound like breaking free, so we turned the ’67 Vibrolux up to ten and let the breakup of the amp reflect the breakup in the lyrics,” Chamberlain explains. “This might be the loudest song off the new record, and it also might be the most cathartic.”

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Cummings leaving no stone unturned in her exploration of her own dreams and dreads, no matter how hideous or provocative the result might be. Yet such honesty is less cheap provocation and more an attempt to regain agency within an otherwise restrictive existence, as though to describe the suffocating sensation of living in the plainest of terms is in some way lessen its hold.

With the album’s release on the horizon, Grace Cummings has returned with brand new single ‘Fake’ to further introduce the the tone. Again dialled into themes like the abuse of power, confinement and escape, the song opens in relatively spare fashion, little more than a piano line supporting Cumming’s distinctive vocals. But true to form it soon rises towards something desperate and fierce. The sense is that of a person struggling against the strictures placed upon them, or, more specifically, finally snapping having endured suffocating conditions for so long.

“Sometimes, being called a ‘good girl’ is a form of abuse. And you internalise it. You spend your whole life acting out this role, even though it makes you feel sick. Even though you know it is a form of control,” as Cummings continues. “I hate those words, ‘good girl’. So in this song, I just choke on the first letter. The second half of the song is about the other person’s remorse. This song was really difficult for me to write, to perform, to confess. But, the themes in ‘Fake’ are painfully ordinary for so many women.”

Watch the video below, directed by Tori Styles & Grace Cummings, filmed by Wild Rose Pictures and edited by Creepy Baby Productions:

Bloodhorse! is out on the 14th August via ATO Records and you can pre-order it now from the Grace Cummings Bandcamp page.

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The track was just the first of what promises to be a steady stream throughout the summer, and now Tough Old Bird have returned with its successor, ‘Shape of Our Love’. Continuing to display the newly electrified version of the project, the track sees the Corrigans and co. straddle the traditional and the contemporary, maintaining the narrative and emotional heft of classic folk while always striding forwards. With a central protagonist reflecting on their life, the mood is at once poignant and affirming, seeming to possess the kind of wisdom only earned through a life well lived yet in no way insulated from the raw tenderness such existence brings. “I brought a few things from my real life into this song—the moment I met my wife, the old house we live in and the little traces of everyone who inhabited the space before us,” Nathan Corrigan explains. “I think the character in the song is looking back over their life without judgment. It’s as if you could speak to the people who live in your house after you’re gone and say, ‘this is what I did and didn’t accomplish, here’s what I thought was important at the time.’”

When I occasionally ventured out
I would tend to avoid the crowds
Mostly sat and watched the clouds floating above
The first time her eyes met mine
I was lifted out of space and time
Try as I may, I could not define the shape of our love

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The song, the first new music from Kristina Moore’s project since 2023 full-length Alone with the Sound the Mind Makes, was a fitting first taste of an album written in the aftermath of injury, Moore penning the record on a borrowed Casio Privia weighted keyboard after surgery on a severed tendon in her middle finger left her unable to play guitar. The period was a kind of liminal space between trauma and health, a time in which everything is slightly strange and the future remains uncertain. “‘Zone 2’ is an anatomical term used to describe the area between the distal palmar crease to the middle of the finger in which a flexor tendon injury can occur,” she explains. “Because of the increased risk of complications and generally unpredictable post-op outcome, it is also referred to as ‘No Man’s Land’.”

With the album set for release this September, koleżanka has returned with new single ‘Levers and Pulleys’. Described by the artist on social media as the record’s “flagship track,” the song is rather more threadbare than its predecessor, stripped back to the harsh and tender truths as demanded by the limitations at its point of origin. “The core of the song was written within the first week of my injury,” the post continues. “I wrote and performed the treble and bass cleft piano at the end with just my right hand on the original demo. It was grueling to learn with both later on, and felt like it became an essential full circle part of my recovery.” The result, like ‘Lessons in Textiles’ before it, plays like recovery unfolding in real time. A process not necessarily as joyous nor neatly linear as we might hope, rather something won hour by hour, day by day as the cells replicate and repair themselves, and the body relearns the world according to its new shape.

learning anatomy
levers and pulleys
and articulations between ends and beginnings
beautiful machinery
broken hand a hand is fixing
trim the threads against your seams
a new line in your topography
back to the drawing board again
I thought I’d written it all down
its all rewritten soon

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“‘Bed of Quiet’ is an over-thinker’s anthem.” as Josaleigh Pollett describes. “A song for the sleepless, and the hours spent playing and replaying scenarios on a loop in your brain where there is no right decision, digging for a yes or a no in a mountain of perhaps.” This style means the single is in many ways a microcosm of the album itself, attempting to reach through noise in order to hear better, or else be better heard, and the slightly surreal tone indicates the full difficulty of the endeavour. Because, despite our better efforts, such matters rarely stay within rational boundaries, our thoughts whirling away as though imbued with strange lives of their own. “We wanted the production to feel like it belonged in the middle of the night, when you’re not quite yet dreaming, but suspended above your body like a projected film of the last few week’s events you can’t stop watching, playing too loud for sleeping.”

Photo by P.J. Guinto, album art images by Lonny Starsky, layout design and art by Helvetica Blanc

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It could be tempting to view such efforts with pessimism. This prolific artist, releasing record after record, still covering new ground in search of a solution to the problem. Only to assume such a position would be to a) underestimate the achievements of Calhoun’s work to date, and b) misunderstand the reason the search is perpetual in the first place. It is not that there is no answer out there, more the answer needs to be continual. Rarely are we so lucky as to get a blinding light along the road to Damascus. The path to comfort and contentment is more like a thirst to be sated. We must constantly go to the well.

With this in mind, Jason Calhoun’s latest album, revelations of divine love, could be read as both a continuation of his ongoing project and a metacommentary on its purpose. Coming next month via Dear Life Records, the album takes its title from the collected works of Julian of Norwich, using the wisdom of the fourteenth-century anchoress as the catalyst for a meditation on what it means to find contentment. “Julian of Norwich says ‘All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well’,” Calhoun explains. “These days, I’ve been having my doubts that this is true. As no solution to the issue at hand, I look for the revelations of divine love in my life, and I find them—in my partner asleep on the floor in our studio, my survival of a social interaction with a stranger, being bad at chess.” None of these things can flip a switch and change a life, few will necessarily count for much a week or month away, but this steady accumulation of ephemeral moments is what sustains a life. Gives it colour and warmth and, ultimately, meaning.

The result is unsurprisingly intimate, if still shot through with the very sense of restlessness that drives its creation, meaning Calhoun’s picture is far more complex than a simple catalogue of sentimental charms. Consider the latest single ‘what we deserve’. An embodiment of the concision and curiosity which marks the record, the song clocks in barely over a minute yet is pulled in every direction by colourful lines of synths and below that a pounding drum which persists undistracted, ensuring the force of these flourishes is limited. As though for all the small delights we find before ourselves, the beat of something larger will always sound behind us. “‘what we deserve’ is perhaps the most simultaneously playful and relentless I get on this record, Calhoun explains. “The title comes from existential thoughts about daily joys against the backdrop of global politics […] Something I’ve been thinking about a lot is whether we deserve the mess we’re in and whether we’re in it due to our own callow joys.”

Watch the track’s accompanying video, courtesy of Calhoun’s dog and a Go Pro camera:

revelations of divine love will be released on the 7th August via Dear Life Records and you can pre-order it now from the Jason Calhoun Bandcamp page.

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First single ‘cowboy bebop & eric’s trip’ gave a glimpse of this strange phoenix’s initial lift from the flames. What we labelled “a characteristically off-the-wall and hyperactive slice of electronic (anti-)pop that comes with all the playfulness and intensity of its predecessors,” the track found Wood attempting (and, according to him, failing) to write a jangly, guitar-centred pop song and instead end up with “a glitchy mess” of which he was nevertheless proud. applied communications made its name charting its own unique path, and this has not changed in the intervening years. Decades have passed, life has gone on, yet still this irrepressible creativity has persisted.

With the album on the horizon, applied communications has returned with new single ‘return of jafar’. Crafted from the trademark synths, the song sits in the sweet spot between unapologetic nostalgia and contemporary neurosis, its tone unafraid of self-deprecation yet so bright and bouncy that it seems to simultaneously conquer it. Comparisons for something so idiosyncratic are more or less a non-starter, but if you imagine the centre of a Venn diagram consisting of early Casiotone For the Painfully Alone, Emperor X and Dan Deacon, you might be getting halfway close to the vibe.

applied communications bites the big one will be released on the 25th September via Rare Noodles and Bar/None Records and you can pre-order it via the applied communications Bandcamp page.

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Now David James Allen has returned with brand new single ‘Dukes Up (Since You’ve Been Gone)’. Taking some inspiration from Frederick Knight’s ‘I’ve Been Lonely (For So Long)’, the track adopts a sunny tone for what is essentially a statement of defiance. A vow to confront life’s struggles head on, standing on your own two feet, fists raised and ready for anything. The sound is suitably rich and assured, with layers of guitars, bass, drums and electric piano, alongside organ from Andrew Ivens, building into something of a buoyant momentum. “On the surface, ‘Dukes Up (Since You’ve Been Gone)’ sounds like a breakup song, but I think of it more as a departure song,” Allen explains. “It’s not about any one person. It’s about those moments in life when someone you’ve relied on is suddenly gone, and you’re forced to learn how to navigate the world on your own.”

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Make no mistake, WATERBODIES is far from a solo endeavour. Charlotte Greve enlisted Shahzad Ismaily to produce the record, as well as a vast ensemble of collaborators (including KHORIKOS and the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra) to bring the sound to life. This diversity matches the record’s spirit as outlined above, allowing Greve the space and plasticity to eschew the usual expectations around stylistic consistency in order to accomplish her vision. “With WATERBODIES, I hope to invite the audience to experience the music as if walking through a film,” says Charlotte Greve. “Contrasting scenes unfold one after another, yet remain connected by a common thread.”

With the release set for early this autumn, Greve has shared new single ‘Membranes’. The song considers the multitudes which exist within any one person, and how this array of dimensions is shaped and grown by our immediate surroundings. The bright and curious sound, based around syncopated vocals and drum machine beats, flickers like a disco ball in uneven light, as though with every twist and turn, Greve shows a slightly different face to herself, each just as vivid and shining as the last. “‘Membranes’ is a song about the challenge of carrying several hearts in one breast and wanting to feed them all,” as she continues. “As a kid, I lived like a chameleon, changing my clothing, language and behavior, depending on who I was spending time with and where. The older I grew, the bigger the wish to combine all the different shapes and forms, both in my character as well as in my music. Let them all live alongside each other—the picture of the semi permeable membrane captured this desirable way of living for me.”

Photo by Annika Nagel

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