Fast forward a little under two years and Just Cause are at it again. Just Cause Vol. 2 takes the blueprint of the original and expands upon it. There are over double the number of contributing artists, with an impressive total of sixty three songs from all corners of our current musical moment. Many of the artists have featured on these very pages (some multiple times), including the likes of Ben Seretan, Caitlin Pasko, Erika Dohi, hemlock, Mal Devisa, Michael Cormier-O’Leary, Nico Hedley, Pleasure Systems and Sam Wenc. There’s such a mix of genres, feelings and styles that there truly is something for everyone, and the minimum donation of $10 is brilliant value in anyone’s book.

But of course the compilation is about more than music. It is again raising money for another vital cause. All proceeds of Just Cause Vol. 2 go to the Immigrant Defense Project, who work tirelessly to fight the mass imprisonment and deportation of immigrants in the US. As their mission statement puts it: “IDP has remained steadfast in fighting for fairness and justice for all immigrants caught at the intersection of the racially biased U.S. criminal and immigration systems. IDP fights to end the current era of unprecedented mass criminalization, detention and deportation through a multipronged strategy including advocacy, litigation, legal advice and training, community defense, grassroots alliances, and strategic communications.”

Just Cause Vol. 2 is out now and available via Bandcamp.

Cover art by Aldrin Regina Valdez

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A pair of tracks from Mox bookend the album, an act we’ve described previously as “follow[ing] in the lineage of Alex G, combining boundless creativity with tangible emotion.” Opener ‘Scared’ sets the tone, displaying combination of bruising heft and emotional tenderness, while closer ‘Leaving’ is more restrained and slow building, allowing the warmth of the project more room to shine.

The offerings from Christina’s Trip opt for a more shoegaze-adjacent style, though again the interplay between heaviness and light is an important element. Take ‘F.B.A.T.’ with its mix of shimmer and scuzz and no small amount of energy. Or the squally ‘Sweep Me’, which embraces the chaos of its sound to culminate in a mood almost buoyant.

The songs from Natasha Sandworms are cleaner in style yet just as infectious, be it the retro indie pop bounce of ‘Bird of My Life’ or gradual unfurling of ‘Perfect Feeling’. There’s a wistfulness to both songs, though rather than being stuck looking backwards in self-reflection, they manage to chart a course forward, however uncertain or bittersweet the awaiting future might prove to be.

Lucky Three is out now via Cherub Dream Records and available from Bandcamp.

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“Each begins with a poem, written last spring during a tumultuous period that left me spinning with no center,” Elliott explains. “Through the practice of sonically circling and weaving in each new line, I reached this trance state, constructing a new axis within myself. My aim is to extend that sonic embrace outward now, inviting audiences into a shared space of resonance and presence.” The songs employ a certain minimalism, especially in their beginnings, though as a means rather than an end. As though by stripping down the present into an ascetic simplicity, Old Man of the Woods is able to push through into another world entirely. ‘Don’t Touch, I’m Shedding’ is a good example, its hushed, swirling sound first playing as a kind of clearing, but at some point switches towards the opposite, repopulating the new space so that it might become an ecosystem of its own.

Whether this process is spiritual, ecological or personal is left unclear, or more specifically, Elliott blurs any boundaries between such categories into insignificance. Indeed, this could be said to be the core mission of Cape Perpetua, and even the Old Man of the Woods project as a whole. An attempt to recharge the natural with its ethereal potential, and to reconsider the human interior as its own fertile space. The accompanying videos further ground these ideas, the often surreal footage quite literally superimposing ecological environments with imagery of religious belief. The result, much like the symbols of cathedrals, stained glass and solemn chants which Elliott draws upon, feels like its own contribution to an age old project. The ongoing ritual desire to recreate the sense of wonder which we sense around us, be it pertaining to God or His green world.

Cape Perpetua is out now and available from the Old Man of the Woods Bandcamp page.

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Single ‘Man’s World’ occupied the angry end of this spectrum, railing against the patriarchal structures of society and the cruelties and violence it too often imparts on women. Which is not to say there’s no playfulness in the song, Cat Clyde’s distinctive blend of emotive folk rock and boisterous rockabilly creating a sound that’s able to convey more than one mood simultaneously. This nuance and depth is what marks Mud Blood Bone, matching the ambition of its thematic concerns, always shifting, changing and making space for more than one emotion.

Take the difference between the wistful, crepuscular folk number ‘Dark Blue’ and racing catharsis of ‘Wanna Ride’, not to mention the cool bluesy swagger of ‘Hold My Hand’. Then there’s ‘My Love’, a cover of Marty Robbins’s 1960 classic which sweeps and flows like some grand landscape of its own. “I heard the original Marty Robbins version of this song in 2023. Hearing it felt like a great clue in my search for meaning in love,” Clyde explains of the latter. “It reminded me of the love that surrounds me in the natural world, and how it all lives within me as well. That love is accessible to me in every tree I touch, in every bird song I hear, in all the places I go, in the earth below me, the sky above me—it’s all a mirror to the love that lives within me, the love from my ancestors, from my past lives, my gods and my guides and beyond.”

But while this stylistic variety might appear scattershot on first glance, spend any amount of time within the record and an internal logic begins to emerge. A cyclical pattern which rejects linearity to mirror nature itself, Cat Clyde finding both energy and solace within the peaks and troughs of organic life. Which is how the hectic, mischievous personality of penultimate track ‘Press Down’ can lead into the slow croon of ‘Another Time’. There are times for frantic, joyful motion, others for reflection, periods of dieback and growth. A sentiment brought to life in a single elegant verse of the album’s closing track. “Hold me close now baby / Press your cheek to mine / Pull me deep into the dream / So I can live inside,” Clyde sings, “Like a flower in springtime / That must bloom and die.”

Mud Blood Bone is out now via Concord Records and you can get it from the Cat Clyde Bandcamp page.

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The EP’s title, repurposed from a line said by Elinor to Marianne in Jane Austen’s Sense & Sensibility (“Had I not been bound to silence I could have produced proof enough of a broken heart even for you”), forms the basis of this mission. “Lifting the idea out of the romantic context in which Austen was writing,” we wrote in our preview back in January:

Cormier-O’Leary uses Proof Enough to explore the innate desire to communicate and evidence one’s feelings within a familial setting. That is, to not only display our emotions to those around us, but to prove their validity and depth. The family unit is tight yet hierarchical, bound by figures of authority, though no one version of its life, be that exterior or interior, is more true than any other. Everything, spoken and unspoken, holds an equal significance. Only in the whole can we come to see reality.

Opener ‘Marilyn’ embodies the speculative, narrative-based style Michael Cormier-O’Leary adopts across the release, “blending,” as we continued, “fiction and autobiography to fully capture the cross-generational dynamics at play.” The titular five-year-old protagonist draws new worlds as a way to escape family life, not only evoking a distinctly youthful experience but also holding up a mirror in which older generations might recognise their own deep-seated desires. For adults also long find respite from everyday existence, even if the wish takes a different form from that of their children. The result sees Cormier-O’Leary expertly delineate the gap in understanding between the generations which persists despite shared commonalities. “It’s a story about a five-year-old named Marilyn who escapes into her crayon drawings to block out the noise of her home life and her parents’ desire but inability to do the same,” he explains. “In the song’s outro, there are two restated melodies that oscillate back and forth chromatically, suggesting a family unit out of sync or at least having a particularly bad day.”

This willingness to span the generations continues across Proof Enough, and forms a key part of its compassionate tone. The first song Cormier-O’Leary wrote for the project, ‘Del’ takes its name from his paternal grandfather and delves into the silences which can settle between fathers and sons, picking at the ways in which a failure to communicate represents both difference and, ironically, kinship, and how others ways of signalling closeness might emerge. “There’s some way even though it’s unspoken, that a kind of bond could occur with these two people that can’t really talk to each other,” Cormier-O’Leary explains. “They’re both internalizing the same songs.” Likewise, as with ‘Marilyn’ before it, the track is also able to hold apparently competing emotions simultaneously, recognising silence as a gesture of kindness or forbearance as well as something frustrating and limiting.

Maybe he thinks
Silence means safety
From all the harmful
Words he could say

The rest of the EP unfolds in a similarly nuanced manner. ‘Sky Is Blue’ grapples with mortality, especially the blast radius of death and how it impacts a family unit. The song is delivered from the perspective of the ailing individual and imploring those who will survive them to embrace life after their passing. ‘Gouache’ deals with death of a different kind, a child who breaks with the expectations of their lineage and buries a certain aspect of their identity, while the honeyed glow of ‘Staring’ considers the beauty of transience in order to better appreciate the present moment, however much water has already passed beneath the bridge.

Closer ‘Pressed Flowers’ follows a similar theme, though exists at the opposite end of the spectrum. A song written in the wake of a wedding which looks to preserve the memories much like the activity of its title. An effort to cling onto the most precious of moments which by its very nature evokes the inevitable pull of loss. Notable events like weddings make this experience clear. But Proof Enough demonstrates how something similar occurs each and every day. There are special moments within the mundane which might be lost if we do not make the effort to catch them. And these moments come in a variety of forms, flavours and shades, much like any set of relations. One final reminder, then, that every family is a complicated system, and each individual contributes to its ever-changing shape.

Proof Enough is out now via Dear Life Records and available from the Michael Cormier-O’Leary Bandcamp page.

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With the album now out in the world, we’re pleased to report Songs from the Yellow Couch maintains this level of emotional resonance and sonic experimentation across its length, and thus proves a fitting debut. Take the fluctuation of latest single ‘Roller Coaster’. Clocking in at nearly five minutes, the track represents one of the most expansive and considered Dwi Riana has written to date, its foundations of intimate acoustic guitar built upon with subtle flourishes and heartfelt vocals. This style (not to mention the title) is fitting considering the subject matter, for ‘Roller Coaster’ is a picture of a relationship in all of its ups and downs. Specifically how each party must negotiate the ever-changing needs and desires of the other in order to maintain the bond. Frequent collaborator Julie Meunier lends supporting vocals to further the chemistry and poignancy of the sound, and the result is tender, unguarded and forthright. “I used to feel so resentful singing this song,” Dwi Riana explains, “but in the end, I found it to be a way of understanding, and eventually accepting the nature of some relationships.”

This sentiment holds across the record, Dwi Riana’s ability to combine honesty and self-reflection with genuine tenderness conjuring a sound that speaks harsh truths without sacrificing a sense of compassion. Something apparent from the searching tone of opener ‘Elsewhere’, a drifting, considered number which Connor Bennett’s sax nudges towards almost jazzy territory, or the candid ‘Write Home’, which again builds from an acoustic base to ask difficult questions and confront home truths. There’s a patient longing to ‘Your Girl’, as though spiralling inwards towards the real heart of a desire, while ‘In Between’ possesses a stirring rhythm and poetic clarity which communicates the feeling of exposure while moving through a transitional phase. ‘She/Her’ also displays the vulnerability that runs through these songs, and it comes to seem like this willingness to lower defences is central to the album. As though the only way to really confront something as important as identity or relationships is to bare your heart and endure any pain which might result. But, true to the spirit of Songs from the Yellow Couch, this pain is not the lasting impression. Rather it is the wellspring of gladness which emerges upon finally locating that which has been missing for so long.

Cause nothing
Could ever come close
To the feeling that you get
When you find what you have lost

Songs from the Yellow Couch is out now and available from the Dwi Riana Bandcamp page.

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We took the opportunity to ask Landini a few questions about the record, so read on below for a more detailed exploration of radical, from the path to a new album that started in reluctance, to the influence of Kelly Hayes, Mariame Kaba and, yes, Herman Melville.

The title seems a pertinent place to start, especially in light of… *gestures at the state of the world*. radical, or, all the good revolutionaries are dead (cuz we killed them), to give the full title, feels like a real statement of intent? Did you have the title in mind while working on the songs? What were the origins of the record?

I cannot emphasize enough that I didn’t want to write a record last year, and didn’t set out with that intention. 2025 was always going to be a year of transition. I left New York City after fifteen years, moving with my wife and cat an hour and a half south to Philadelphia (she is Philadelphian and her family is all around here). It was my first relocation as an adult to a totally new city in the USA, and it happened without the excuse of work or school, so it’s been hard to feel like I’m not starting over as I get to know a new scene and community in my mid 30s.

But after a month in our new home we finally took our honeymoon in December 2024. We went to Chile, a journey to celebrate love which I found (maybe unsurprisingly) inspiring as a writer. I felt I was setting out on the next big chapter of my life and was immersed in the street art of the liberatory political tradition of Chile, an odd combination of forces maybe but ones that ignited my imagination. Sprinkle in the associated shame and reflection of being an American visiting the society and territory ravaged by Pinochet’s decades of atrocities, and you have a fertile ground for writing political songs, I’d say.

So yeah, I didn’t want to write and record and release an album, but I did, because I am a firm believer in working with inspiration when it arrives, even if other conditions are unideal. It’s a risk to let inspiration sit, especially when it feels as urgent as this one did; you never know when it’ll move on from you.

The title did come to me quite early on, in fact, I think I was doodling the full title around some early album artwork ideas in a notebook on the flight back home from Santiago. It certainly shaped and organized the songs and the aim of the release.

Songs like ‘firebrush’ draw on your own experiences pretty directly. Would you say this is your most personal record to date?

I think in some ways it is more personal than previous collections of songs in that the listener’s recognition of the personal side is more immediate, I’m sharing details of my biography and heart in ways that require less “spelling out,” so to speak. But I also think of “radical” as my most imaginative record, where forces of nature and world history clash and metaphors and characters interplay with great freedom. I’m not too big on formal overarching literary gestures but I like that the thematics of the songs do not feel confined to one song or one set of ideas, even, but move with freedom throughout the release. An embodiment of a borderless terrain, perhaps.

We’ve previously noted a “blend of earnest emotion and deprecating humour” running through your work, and I think the description still holds here, though more than ever it’s the former which wins out. Humour and wit are features for sure, but there’s no hiding behind irony. You say what you mean pretty clearly. Was there a conscious decision to embrace sincerity in this way? I mean, could a good revolutionary be anything else?

Irony will always be a part of my songwriting, or at least an element of playfulness that invites the listener in, that tells them they are allowed to mess around and try stuff within the space of interpreting this music. But yes, I think that the subject matter demands a clarity and truth telling that isn’t funny or clever or holding a shield. That’s what humor can be, right, honesty with some armor to it, medicine with some sugar.

So yes, you are very much correct that it was a conscious decision to embrace sincerity so often here. With so much of the writing in this album inspired by mutual aid organizing around prison abolition and Palestinian liberty, well, it doesn’t allow for half measures against the people (us, all of us) complicit in perpetrating the great horrors of our age. If anything, I sometimes still chide myself for not being more direct, more explicit; on the other hand, I did want “radical” to feel like a work of artistry with political underpinnings rather than a work of straight agitprop (a medium which I have much admiration and think is also super useful).

On a related note, there’s long been a conversational tone to your work (parts of Wins Above Replacement felt like sitting in the bar watching the game with the central figure of the song), but parts of radical push this further than ever. The near-spoken word introduction of opening track, for example. Could you talk a little about this side of your vocal style, and how it fits into the (earnest?) thematic intentions of the album?

Thank you for asking about this, I do try to shift the listener into different relationships (spatial and otherwise) with the narrator and I’m glad this is coming across. ‘about the author’ is a funny example where the song is explicitly from my perspective, about me and my actual life and beliefs, but musically it functions as an introduction to the band and some of the sonic styles of the album. I was lucky that we were able to record much of the instrumentation for the record as a four-piece band about an hour north of Philadelphia. We were in a beautiful studio that was a converted stand-alone garage of a friend of a friend over a weekend last May, where the bay was converted into a rehearsal space that could record live drums. The band includes a couple really dear friends of mine who have been playing shows with me around the Mid-Atlantic region of the US for a couple years now.

I’ll speak a little more on collaboration below, but in the studio or in the rehearsal room I never give folks a ‘part’ to play, I’m not a ‘composer’ … I love getting talented folks I trust—as people AND artists—in a room with lyrics and some chord progressions and then ask them, over and over again, “what do you want to do with this?” I believe I rarely have the best idea in the room, and ‘about the author’ reflects this part of the process with the different voices (different me’s, in a way) chiming in to challenge or antagonize the main narrator. I find dialogue infinitely more satisfying and ultimately more productive than monologue and it also feels more true to our current pixelated existence. Capturing this multiplicity can involve a bit of push and pull, if not thematic conflict, and can be somewhat thorny, messy, non-linear, inefficient, non-hierarchical … but it’s, well, more free?

Likewise, we’ve written about the duality of hope and despair through the amazing Lorenzo Landini albums in the past, and the themes push this balance to the forefront of concerns here. The whole optimism vs. doomer argument is too often abstracted into theoretical ideas of identity, but I’m most interested how you position the dynamic as a source of potential action. As though total hopelessness might be its own form of motivation? “no one is coming to save us / oh boy do we know that,” you sing in ‘kindness’, which to me seems to capture the nub of the situation. The good revolutionaries are dead, there’s no help coming, therefore the onus is on us?

This is definitely part of what I am on about, yes! I think we can push the severity of the problem even further, especially in the art world, in that I am not really discussing the political outlook or the left’s chances of victory; it’s not an intellectual exercise anymore, where it might have been for the white-passing cis het educated folks like myself, who have benefited most of our lives from the spoils of empire. Rather, when we are rightly horrified by our history of complicity—i.e. our willingness to let others suffer for our comfort, our desire to outsource justice to craven institutions, our tacit endorsement of for-profit pipelines of violence – when we look at all this and say “I can no longer morally excuse this in myself” … when we see the truth of these things, then we uncover in ourselves a responsibility and a love for what is being harmed that makes positive corrective action inevitable.

All honor to Renée Good and Alex Pretti, unjustly slain brave residents who refused to continue prioritizing their own safety while Black and brown neighbors suffered brutalization upon the altar of white supremacy and global empire. We can no longer say “this is not who we are” and draw increasingly intangible lines between ourselves and the bombs our taxes paid for. Put simply, it is our mess and we must at least attempt to clean it up, because that’s the right thing to do.

I suppose it all sounds a bit Catholic when I put it like that, doesn’t it?

Can we speak a little about influences? Who/what do you consider the major touchstones for the album? Be those musical or otherwise?

Ack this is almost too big a question as I am indebted to so many great artists and activists for radical! Trying to be concise here, believe it or not…

Sonically, I thought this was going to sound mainly like a quite spare punk rock album at first, but as an indie / alt band like Pavement or my favs The Weakerthans might record it. Songs like “complex” still retain some of that character. I thought that, within that general aesthetic, ‘signs from the static’ and ‘peace’ would then stick out as country and folk counterpoints, respectively.

Then I got in the studio and started playing with the band and I didn’t let myself be dogmatic about any of it. I’ll never be a puritan about style or sound or anything like that, and I relish the things that emerged. I was pleasantly surprised by the flashes of Interpol and Sylvan Esso scattered amongst the Bright Eyes and Neko Case.

Lyrically, when I began writing these songs I was reading Moby-Dick; or, The Whale for the first time, and I think that among other things Melville’s prose added a certain (forgive me) size to the scope of the language and the perspective, which I treasure. Also, after I had the title and solid sketches of 3-5 songs, an informal organizing book club I am part of began reading Let This Radicalize You by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba, two of my favorite liberatory writers, and no surprise I loved that work too. Many of the chapters articulated and dovetailed with ideas I was trying to capture in song and fiction, affirming what I was writing while still challenging me to do better, as a person and an artist

While writing the songs themselves I listened to Jose Larralde and South American New Wave, Patagonia is still quite obsessed with New Wave, which I didn’t realize before visiting, did you?

I also noted how you thanked a variety of friends and collaborators for bringing the record to life. What role did they play exactly? Is it important for a ‘solo’ artist to have this kind of support?

For me, that support is essential. It’s such a vulnerable, potentially foolish thing to earnestly make art that no one specifically asked or paid for, and I try to surround myself with collaborators that are friends first and colleagues second. I’m also not at all precious with my draft material, I’m constantly asking friends if they would read something, or listen to a phone demo, if they could then tell me what it made them feel, what they thought it was about. I hope it’s a loving lean on their expertise and critical eyes, one that invites them to ask the same of me. I love my friend’s artwork with all my spirit, experiencing it in whatever form it takes informs my knowledge of their interiority in a way that is so rich and wonderful that it almost doesn’t matter what the ‘product’ becomes.

This record in particular I sent many of these song drafts to folks whose character and politics I admire, and I am so grateful to their insight and encouragement. Then for the final recorded version of ‘peace’ I asked many of these same folks and other varied friends and comrades to record themselves singing the group vocals remotely and send them to (my producer) Vadim and I to mix, I am so pleased with how it came out, Vadim had all his little cousins sing it as well. And when I asked for the group vocals I also invited anyone who wanted to share a story about organizing to include it, and that’s how my friend’s narration that ends with “it’s possible to build the world that we deserve” came to exist. No coaching or direction there on my part, seriously! When I heard it I thought it was just so perfect that I wanted to end the record with it.

To conclude, I won’t be as ham-fisted as to ask whether or not you are hopeful re: the current political climate of the US and wider world, but I am interested in your own personal experience of the present. How does it feel to live in America today? To release an album into such a world?

As I write to you I am in daily contact with a handful of friends in Minneapolis, the area which could be described as our current front against the traditions of white supremacy and fascism that have always infested the political concept of the United States of America. I do not know if I am hopeful, but thanks to the aforementioned Kaba, I know hope is a discipline to be practiced for it to exist at all. And I am always inspired by communities coming together, as they are, to an unprecedented degree in the Twin Cities, which already had its share of activation after the murder of George Floyd, only for the locals to now be occupied by a paramilitary force with goals entirely contrary to the vast majority of the residents.

I don’t really think art is ‘enough’ in any moment, let alone one like this, or that any one piece can ‘change the world’, and the culmination of this line of thinking is, unfortunately, where I am now as I write to you Jon: a place where it is hard to want to make things at all, especially joyful, fulfilling things. I want to think of myself as someone who understands when it is time to be on stage, and when it is time to be on the street. But, as one of my literary heroes Tony Kushner writes, despite the ‘fraudulence’ of attempting to be an explicitly political artist, “those who are involved in the struggle to change the world need art that assists in examining the issues at hand,” and I think that includes all of us, not least of all myself. Writing the record itself was a process of becoming, of examining my values and my actions and actually actively transforming.

So right now yes, it feels bad to be an American, a people who “suffer from collective amnesia” (more Kushner) … To borrow clumsily from an Italian countryman now, while the new world struggles to be born, the monsters are very much here. And I want us to survive.

radical, or, all the good revolutionaries are dead (cuz we killed them) is out now and available from the amazing Lorenzo Landini Bandcamp page.

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Horn’s music career took off in Virginia, where she moved to complete an MFA in Creative Writing, but this record is concerned with the next period of her life. She moved to New York City post graduation and suffered a bewildering sense of dislocation away from family, friends and any concept of home. “Moving to New York after graduation had felt almost too right, like an arranged marriage,” Horn explains. “I was pretty unhappy for a while. My life was still in Virginia, where my friends were, in Texas, where my mother was learning to live again after years of being passed from one hospital to the next… I drifted through the city in pajamas, at midday.”

Much of the album focuses on this difficult early period in the city, a series of beginnings and endings that unfurl with a surreal dream logic, suffused with that strange loneliness of being surrounded by millions of unfamiliar faces. This atmosphere is introduced on opening track ‘Go on, move your body’, a song Horn wrote in the midst of those early NYC days that finds her hesitant and adrift. “Nothing prepares you for this,” she mumbles over minimal guitar and ponderous percussion, establishing a sparseness and patience that marks the record. The uncanny accompanying video, directed and edited by Travis Kent, reinforces all this, casting Horn (both literally and figuratively) as a strange figure in a strange city.

It should be noted that this is not an entirely solo endeavour. Horn is joined by Jade Guterman on bass and Adam Jones on drums (plus Adelyn Strei and Miles Hewitt, adding the odd flourish of clarinet/flute and piano respectively) who play with a lightness of touch that feels sympathetic to Horn’s writing. As if cautious not to break the spell by treading too heavily. ‘All in bet’, for example, could have been presented as a conventional acoustic track, just strummed guitar and Horn’s yearning vocals. But instead skittering percussion kick it along, woodwinds sigh and hum, little barrages of piano leaving glittering traces as they swoop on through.

That said, Horn is happy to at times slip from the limelight, leaving bass or drums front and centre and whispering around them as if from shadows. The record is also not entirely one-pace. Songs like ‘Designer’ might not explode in terms of tempo or volume, but nevertheless see the turbulence of that time bubble up from beneath the surface. It’s at these moments the influence of Phil Elverum is most apparent, that curious ability to write a stormy indie rock song with drums and guitar that still feels hushed and heavy with sorrow.

But the true triumph of Jana Horn are the moments of near silence. The sense that, three records in, she has learned to deliver songs with the most stringent economy, finding beauty in the moments most basic and spare. As when the guitar patters like raindrops against the soft negative space of ‘Without’, or the shyly staccato ‘Come on’, on which Horn delivers short, clipped lines in exchange for a shudder of percussion. Between both, something else seeps in. The quiet that sits at the heart of the record.

Jana Horn is out now via No Quarter and available via Bandcamp.

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If ‘Alligator’ seemed to embrace certain dualities and contradiction, then the full album takes things to a whole new level. The themes and narratives often explore binaries, the characters surrounded or alone, looking for home or running away from one, and the sound itself is happy to pair haunting atmosphere and cutting emotion with s sense of humour most zany and wry.  Magali’s background as a visual artist has long pushed the project towards multimedia innovation, and Cacchione has also worked beyond the ordinary confines of music, collaborating with those behind fiction podcasts like Welcome to Night Vale and The Space Within. So it’s perhaps no surprise Make Strange Friends has loftier ambitions than most folk records. “On Make Strange Friends, Caged Animals have crafted a multifaceted album that is both a time capsule from a weird era and a tender love letter to the next chapter,” the label describe: 

The album harks to lo-fi treasures like The Basement Tapes and Mellow Gold, marrying rough-hewn, folky impressionism with a lush, post-modern palette, including guest appearances from Jeff Tobias, Frankie Sunswept, and Steven Lambke. The result flickers with the blacklight anxiety of Nebraska, the sepia color of Deserter’s Songs, and the comic surrealism of Beckett’s Waiting For Godot.

The resulting album is every bit as varied as that sounds. The protagonist (or more specifically, antihero) of opener ‘Rattle the Quiet’ is suitably stupefied, dropped into a too-bright morning tender and unprepared to face the consequences of the previous nights. But then ‘Radio Down’ soon follows with a satisfying sense of salvation, moving from the throes of addiction to a new life on the other side. The songs are changeable even within the own runtime, and often embrace what might seem competing moods simultaneously. Take ‘Balloon Heaven’ as a case in point, a single of taut bass and ambiguous imagery which conveys its moody atmosphere without sacrificing colour and groove. At once searching, almost desperate, yet still buoyed by its own momentum to have fun along the way.

Make Strange Friends is out now via You’ve Changed Records and available from the Caged Animal Bandcamp page.

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With this sense of possibility comes a wider sonic palette, Howard choosing to sacrifice tightness and order so that he might encompass all of the styles which have informed his work over the the previous decade. “I sort of underwent a crisis as I became a more confident producer and instrumentalist,” he explains. “The more I could imitate or recreate a sound, the more I would confront demos I’d made and think ‘this is good, but it doesn’t feel like it’s mine.’ This was a new problem for me. I scrapped two albums worth of semi-finished material, carrying my personal favorites over to this final release. As a result, it’s probably my messiest record, but I grew to appreciate that. It’s a full genre-map of everything I’ve made over the last ten years. I made sure every song meant a lot to me.”

Fittingly, the changeable nature of the sound matches the themes of the record. In Airports was named for a period in which Howard found himself stuck in an airport for almost a week, left with nothing to do but watch people and wait. The surreal experience offered what might be the ultimate image of ephemerality, the people around him constantly changing, his own time ticking down as the delayed flight approached. Orchid Mantis has long employed a dreaminess but here it carries a confessional, reflective edge, as though newly aware of the shifting world around it, and the slow, gradual losses accumulated over time.

The idea is present from the very first track, ‘Generation Loss’, titled after the technological phenomenon where data degrades which each copying process. Howard positions personal memory as a similarly fragile thing, vulnerable to decay. But while there is sadness in the realisation, there is something warmer too. Call it fondness, call it love, the feelings all the more meaningful for the transience of their focus, and the purpose of art only deepened in its conservational efforts. “I know you / in the rearview / passage of time / falls behind you,” as Howard sings in the rich, romantic ‘Comedown Phase’. We’re constantly losing everything we’ve been given, which makes attempt at preservation all the more beautiful.

In Airports is out now via Start-Track and available from Bandcamp.

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