In the lead up to the release of new applied communications album applied communications bites the big one via Rare Noodles and Bar/None Records later this month, Max Wood has been sharing a number of singles, most recently ‘tarot sans tinseltown‘ back in August. A track inspired by a trip to LA which delved into the almost hallucinogenic nature of the city, an encounter with Beck over a free lunch at the Scientology celebrity centre being only the start of it (“however idiosyncratic the track might seem,” we wrote, “it is only bringing to life the bizarre details of the time and place which inspired it”). But if you thought US hyperreal strangeness was specific to California, then think again, because latest single ‘donna deegan’ jumps to the other side of the country yet is every bit as zany. “Donna Deegan is the current mayor of Jacksonville, FL,” Wood explains. “She used to be a news anchor who was married to the sports commentator and there was a wild local scandal in which she was caught having an affair with the weather man, whom she later married. anyway, she’s great and this song is a scatterbrained tribute to growing up in my hometown.”

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.

Asha Wells – Gift Horse

“Highlighting how thinking outside the box can lead to the more intuitive, authentic expressions of emotion, and collaboration need not preclude a singular style.” So we wrote of The Lesson by Asha Wells back in 2025, a three-song collection which used both personal idiosyncrasy and communal cross-polination to build on Wells’s debut full-length Water Words and evoke its own distinct world. Now Wells is preparing to release Sleeping Sand, a brand new album with Anxiety Blanket Records which looks to build upon these foundations and offer a proper follow-up to her debut. As lead single ‘Gift Horse’ shows, the result is equal parts ethereal and tactile, working to dissolve the boundary between dreams and the physical world in order to more fully explore the subconscious. “‘Gift Horse’ is a final fleeting glance at a once love,” as the artist explains. “Lyrically alluding to what goes unquestioned in our lives. A returned glance towards a former love. Dallying in a slice of life romanticism. A picture of unapologetic reflection, and the clarity that hindsight can bring.”

Sleeping Sand will be released via Anxiety Blanket Records on the 13th November.

Essy Sparrow – Naked As We Came (Iron & Wine Cover)

Hot on the heels of of recent single ‘Weak at the Knees’, which we labelled “a bright folk song in which any bittersweet rumination or self-deprecative confession is vastly outweighed by the fondness at its core,” British songwriter and multi-disciplinary artist Essy Sparrow has shared her own version of Iron & Wine’s ‘Naked As We Came’. The cover is part of Best Day of All Time, a new compilation album featuring over thirty covers of iconic tracks from the 2000s. The likes of Jackie Oates, Eliza Carthy, Alice Faye, Beans on Toast and Chisara Agor feature, with takes on songs by Lily Allen, Beyoncé, Outcast, System of a Down and more. Sparrow’s offering is the ideal introduction. A song every bit as earnest and honest as her own work which paints a picture of a living relationship in little over two minutes.

Best Day of All Time is available to pre-save now. Sparrow’s Gossip From a Coastal Town will be released on the 2nd October and you can pre-order it now.

The Human Hearts – Still In Error

After leading SoCal rock band Nothing Painted Blue through the nineties and then recording under his own name, indie songwriting stalwart Franklin Bruno formed The Human Hearts, a new full band featuring Matt Houser (drums), Pete Galub (guitar), Brandon Kalber (bass) and Bob Bannister (bass). At once socially aware and dialled into the joy of good old fashioned rock and roll, the outfit have released a number of albums in recent years, each as urgent in theme as style, though never heavy-handed or ideological. The sound has been perfected on The Human Hearts’ latest full-length, Faith and Credit, an album which draws influence from a wide gamut of rock predecessors to paint a picture of life in the US today. With the release coming this autumn via Dromedary Records, Bruno and co. have shared lead single ‘Still In Error’, complete with a video directed by Scott Jacobson (The Daily Show, Bob’s Burgers) which sees Bruno learn to ride a bike for the first time.

Faith and Credit will be released on the 13th November via Dromedary Records.

Jan St. Werner – Squares Will Fall 7″

After making a name as half of celebrated Düsseldorf electronic duo Mouse on Mars, Jan St. Werner is set to announce himself as a solo artist this November with the release of debut album Squares Will Fall via Thrill Jockey. The record has been in the works for over a decade, originating in a thirty-minute composition made back in 2012 which went on to form the spine of an improvisation by Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and St. Werner when Mouse on Mars were in Vernon’s Wisconsin studio to record 2018 album Dimensional People. From here, ‘Squares Will Fall’ became multidirectional loudspeaker choreography for the Ural Industrial Biennial in 2021, before St. Werner headed to the studio with fellow Mouse on Mars member Andi Toma in 2026 to hone the work into an album, which represents both a continuation of this journey and a musical adventure in its own right. Listen to the title track now:

Margo Cilker – Molly and Me

Next month, Margo Cilker will release new album Little White Cross via Fossil Records, the label she set up with fellow alt-country artist ISMAY. “You could definitely call it a concept record,” Cilker describes wryly of the album. “If that concept is that I got really sad and went to Texas.” That’s because she travelled to The Bunker in Lockhart, TX to work with Bruce Robison (who has written and produced for the likes of Charley Crockett, Lee Ann Womack, George Strait, and The Chicks), and together they worked through Cilker’s heaviest and darkest material to date. Latest single ‘Molly and Me’ is a great example, a sober and emotional song about the sister of a suspected spree shooter. It’s told from the perspective of a third character, a woman now in her thirties thinking back to her relationship with Molly when they were teenagers. There’s a Nebraska-era Springsteen feel to the song’s narrative focus, which retains an impressive understated quality even as it reaches its shocking denouement. “I often feel haunted by stories,” Cilker explains of this urge to share stories that move her, “kept up at night by a kind of external pressure to tell them. I’ll write a song just to alleviate the grip it has on me.”

Oldest Sea – Lake Spooky (original recording)

“A vessel built to navigate the heaviest seas of experimental folk, pushing into dark, tempestuous waters in order to most fully explore soundscapes at once elemental and otherworldly.” So we wrote of Sam Marandola’s Oldest Sea back in 2024 upon the release of Judith Slaying Holofernes, a double single featuring Have a Nice Life. A number of releases have since followed, including a live version of Judith Slaying Holofernes, a tribute to Jason Molina and a track featuring Kathryn Mohr, but the latest Oldest Sea song ‘Lake Spooky’ is in fact the very first. Recorded over a decade ago, the track is a fascinating window into the project, lacking the sonic heft and depth that would come to mark Marandola’s work, yet somehow possessing the suggestion of that they were to come. A stark, imperfect germ from which a wider body of work would emerge. “[The song] was never intended to be released—I recorded it simply to document the song, and it sat quietly in the archive for a decade,” Marandola explains. “There’s room noise, imperfection, and no attempt to polish away the moment. Listening back now, I realized that’s exactly why I wanted people to hear it. It feels less like an old demo to me than a small artifact from the beginning of Oldest Sea.”

Slow Rosary – Melanie

Described as “an album of encounters with individual people, known and historical,” ALL TROUT is the third full-length from Rene Duplantier’s Slow Rosary, a release which uses acoustic guitar, a Casio keyboard, a DAW and recordings from friends to portray meetings both real and imagined and thus dig into the complicated layers of human connection. The figures in the songs range from next-door neighbours to John Prine and Jackie O, but lead single ‘Melanie’ keeps things very close to home as Duplantier focuses on his then girlfriend (and now wife) to offer a typically compassionate and humanistic view of a close bond. Despite the relatively humble components, the arrangement is suitably rich in execution, inviting the audience into a warm flow as though to mirror the safe harbour of the relationship depicted. The song “is about domestic bliss and being thankful for what you have, even when you’re depressed or need therapy,” he explains. “In the song and in life, I am astonished by the good times and try not to dwell on the bad. I am looking forward as best as I know how.”

Stella Dunai – Move On

Naarm/Melbourne-based songwriter Stella Dunai has announced herself with a couple of singles in the past year, songs like ‘Can’t Sleep’ and ‘I Love You Too Eagerly’ introducing a decidedly warm and compassionate style, and new track ‘Move On’ continues this thread. With the likes of Adrianne Lenker and Haley Heynderickx as touchstones, the song is an ideal introduction to Dunai’s ability to weave both atmosphere and narrative within her tender folk sound, celebrating the importance of friendship with a refreshingly optimistic air. “People come into our lives for different reasons and lengths of time and those exchanges shape who we are and who we become,” as Dunai says. “I find myself taking pieces and inspiration from the friends in my life and feel so honoured to see how we all shape and support each other every day. This song celebrates that constant evolution, while holding onto the joy, the silliness and innocence of meeting someone new, like making a friend on the playground as a child.”

The post Weekly Listening: September 2026 #2 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

After recent single ‘Neighbours’, a song “which manages to mine the ostensibly mundane experience of nodding hello to a familiar face in the neighbourhood for all of its uplifting delight, and all without a trace of irony,” as we put it, “even if the repeated assertion ‘I’m not afraid of strangers’ suggests something telling about the contemporary moment,” Max Bien Kahn has now returned with ‘Skipping Stones’. Again crafted with equal parts brightness and wistful reflection, the song takes another incidental encounter and turns it into a meditation on the momentum of a life and the routines which maintain its forward motion, or else preserve the illusion long enough to allow us the will to climb out of bed in the morning.

Standing in line
The cafe is full
And they’re sitting by the window
I accidentally catch their eye and smile
They’re married to their jobs
And married to each other

I don’t ask hard questions
When I don’t want the answer
And every skipping stone hits the bottom

Baby Green will be released on the 23rd October and you can pre-order it now from the Max Bien Kahn Bandcamp page.

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Back in 2021, Brooklyn-based bassist, composer and singer Carmen Quill released Don’t Get Comfy / Nowhere, a debut album which emerged more from personal need than any sense of creative practice. The songs consisted of nothing beyond vocals, upright bass and background noise but were able to tackle the most intimate of subjects, from romantic relationships to the loss of a parent. Quill’s latest full-length Harmless, to be released this November via Ruination Record Co., builds upon this framework, their compositions slowly yet surely blooming from minimalism towards something richer and deeper. As the title track suggests, this is often achieved by way of the mantra or incantation. The song rises out of a simple, repeated set of questions (“Why do I feel so helpless? / Why do I feel so aimless? / Nothing I do is harmless”) towards a considered engagement with themes of agency and complicity in the age of televised genocide and rampant inequality. As Quill explains: “I wrote ‘Harmless’ in a moment when I was feeling acutely the everyday sensation of not knowing what to do with myself when I look around and see so much big shit going wrong.”

Charlotte Greve – Lighter Blue

After ‘Membranes‘ (“considers the multitudes which exist within any one person, and how this array of dimensions is shaped and grown by our immediate surroundings”) and ‘Own Lap‘ (“an eleven-minute epic brought to life with full orchestral grandeur which nevertheless never loses sight of the personal amid the sweeping majesty”), Charlotte Greve continues to introduce her forthcoming album WATERBODIES with the release of latest single, ‘Lighter Blue’. Centering on geological imagery and underlined by a beguilingly rhythmic pull, the track considers the curative potential of art, as though the will to create can illuminate the otherwise shadowy avenues of our lives and allow us to live with newfound meaning. “The silent crater/volcano represents a period of disconnection from making art and feeling out of touch with it,” Greve explains. “Tiptoeing around, feeling lost and ungrounded because something essential is missing. In that state, doubt about all things arises, making space for insecurity to flourish. The moment music arrives again, suddenly everything makes sense, the path is lit and you can just walk on it. The forever torch, showing you the way to live your life, gifting you melodies that carry you through the day with purpose.”

Watch the video, shot, edited, and produced by Annika Nagel, below:

WATERBODIES will be released on the 2nd October via New Amsterdam and you can pre-order it now.

Chloë Ester – Bitter End

Based in Charlottesville, Virginia, Chloë Ester is a songwriter who announced herself back in 2020 with debut EP Dying All The Time, establishing a narrative-led brand of indie rock which was happy to blur genre lines in order to capture a sense of simultaneous vulnerability and empowerment. Now Ester is preparing to return with follow-up EP I Could Be The One to further this style, widening the palette and scope of her sound without sacrificing any of the rawness and heart which makes it so engaging. Single ‘Bitter End’ is an ideal entry point, a reflection on a break-up which pairs personal uncertainty with upbeat brightness to explore the tension between regretful introspection and the desire to let go.

Cloudbelly – Poppa

Described by the band as a “meditation on intimacy, belonging, and the things that complicate them,” Cloudbelly‘s third full-length Throwing The Game promises to take the indie folk formula of its predecessor i know i know i know and push it to the edges of the genre, creating something sprawling and shape-shifting in order to explore the full contours of an emotional landscape which stretches both back into the past and out in the future. After lead single ‘Oh, Antarctica!‘ saw Corey Laitman and co. face down what we called “the dispiriting experience of mourning the future in a present world which seems to be tilting in a bad direction,” follow-up ‘Poppa’ turns its attention in the opposite direction to explore the memories of a loved one, and how dignity can persevere through the trials of later life. Namely Laitman’s grandfather, a man who lived for the wilderness yet ultimately found himself in a high-rise caring for his ailing wife. As the press release puts it: “If there is a contradiction in the coexistence of tenderness and grief, this song doesn’t seek to resolve it. The contradiction itself is the emotional event.”

The Fourth Wall – Future Memory

“Combs through the contradictions of the immigrant experience in order to voice feelings otherwise impossible to convey […] a mixture of hope, denial and genuine love which not only subverts expectations but confounds any attempt to properly reassess.” So we wrote of The Fourth Wall‘s Return Forever back in 2024, Stephen Agustin’s ambitious and confronting writing earning the record a place among of favourite albums on the year. Now the Portland-by-way-of-Hawaii project is back with brand new album Memories of the Future, and the release might somehow top its predecessor in terms of depth and scope. Using Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism and Frederic Jameson’s work on sci-fi and postmodernism as starting points, Agustin explores the collective failure of the imagination when it comes to dreaming of the future, and the personal and political stasis which results. What emerges is the apocalyptic vision our present time deserves, where the hyperactive stimulation of the digital age masks a fundamental emptiness. “How long will it take / To see the future as a memory,” asks closer ‘Future Memory’, a fitting conclusion to a fatalistic yet clear-eyed album about a world in crisis.

Watch the video by Agustin below:

Memories of the Future is out now via DevilDuck Records and available from The Fourth Wall Bandcamp page.

Hour – Pearls

Last month we introduced Ghost Bridge, the new album from Hour coming soon via Dear Life Records, with the title track. “A song, clocking in at near ten minutes which must rank among [Michael] Cormier-O’Leary’s most ambitious and thematically loaded to date,” as we wrote. “The level of detail is striking but there is no ounce of ostentation. Lesser acts might be overwhelmed if tasked with exploring concepts of loss and mortality, prone to slipping into maudlin excess, but with a unique blend of compassion and abstraction, it seems Hour are up to the task.” The achievement is made possible by a rich ensemble cast, and William H. Travis’s video for new single ‘Pearls’ manages the unenviable task of catching them all gathered in one place (with the notable exception of flute player Adelyn Strei), offering a rare chance to see Hour in its (almost) complete form. “I think his footage succeeds in demonstrating the love we all share for one another in our large, many-tentacled band,” as Cormier-O’Leary says. “It’s a perfect moment in time, a pearl if you will.”

Ghost Bridge will be released on the 9th October via Dear Life Records and you can pre-order it from the Hour Bandcamp page.

How Strange It Is – Tough Luck

This autumn, Portland, Oregon outfit How Strange It Is will release their new album THERE IS NO EVIL with Disposable America and Pleasure Tapes. Consisting of Jordan Krinsky (vocals, guitar, synth), Caleb Ballard (additional vocals, guitar, clarinet, synth), Annie Miranda (bass), Annie Fifer (additional vocals, guitar) and Kyle Gordon (drums), the band have developed a fuzzy brand of indie rock across a pair of past releases, and the new record only furthers this style. Take latest single ‘Tough Luck’, an atmospheric, almost ethereal track which cycles through the whole gamut of emotions to capture the strange experience of life. “This song leans into the comedy of circumstance,” the band explain. “When you’re going through it and the world keeps throwing cosmic jokes at you. When you meet up to have a post-mortem with your ex and love songs start playing on the radio. It could be a cinematic moment where you realize you’re still in love but its actually over and that’s ok. The rollercoaster of those feelings.”

Watch the video below, directed by Jess Poe and edited by Poe & Jamison Winternintz:

THERE IS NO EVIL will be released on 20th October via Disposable America and Pleasure Tapes and you can pre-order it now.

John Van Deusen – There Is A Way Home

John Van Deusen made a name fronting celebrated Seattle outfit The Lonely Forest for the best part of a decade, releasing two EPs and four full-lengths in the 2000s/2010s. But his solo work is undoubtedly his most ambitious undertaking to date. Released across two years, forty track double album As Long As I Am In The Tent of This Body I Will Make A Joyful Noise confronts Van Deusen’s personal struggles with faith, depression and suicidal ideation, drawing on influences as disparate as The Beach Boys, Deftones, Smashing Pumpkins and Death Cab For Cutie in the process. After the first part was released back in 2025, John Van Deusen is now sharing Pt. 2 to finally complete the project. “What does it mean to be depressed while worshipping God?” he asks in the album notes. “What does it say about being human?” As the title might suggest, As Long As I Am In The Tent of This Body I Will Make A Joyful Noise is able to sit with suffering without reducing the entirety of existence to its confines, and wise enough to contemplate the mystery of God even as the immediacy of pain threatens to obscure our connection to the metaphysical. Listen to single ‘There Is A Way Home’ now:

Kyla Marlena – 21

“To me, this record feels alive. Like it has a pulse,” explains Toronto-based cellist and songwriter Kyla Marlena of her debut album Hold Time. “It’s dynamic within and between songs, it can be unpredictable.” Forthcoming this November via idée fixe, the record is something of a pivot for an artist who started out writing instrumental compositions in relative solitude, offering a rich folk rock sound forged through serious collaboration. Ben Whiteley (The Weather Station), Julian Psihoigos (Georgia Harmer, Katie Tupper), Felix Fox (BADBADNOTGOOD, Jonah Yano), Jasper Smith (Benjamin Dakota Rogers), Karen Ng (The Weather Station) and Noah Williamson (Sonder) all lend their talents, Marlena not so much instructing these musicians as corralling their energies, leading to a sound that’s authentic and organic. Lead single and album opener ’21’ gives an indication of what to expect, showing how Marlena explores themes of memory and time in a manner which subverts expectations, forgoing the hazy dreaminess which so often accompanies such ideas in favour of something more immediate, scrappy and raw.

Kin Hana – Howling World

You might know Hudson Valley songwriter and guitarist Aaron Hodges from his work under the moniker Longshoreman, or as part of the psych-folk band Nighttime, but more recently he has adopted the name Kin Hana to usher in a new era of drone/doom-adjacent folk. Next month, Kin Hana will release Howling World, a new full-length which feels like an embodiment of Hodges’s vision, where personal intimacy is matched by an elemental, almost otherworldly atmosphere (Jason Molina and Béla Tarr are cited as touchstones). The result, as highlighted by the lead single title track, manages to communicate both immediate, instinctive emotion (be that wonder, longing or dread) and genuine thematic depth. “This song came out of René Magritte’s painting Young Girl Eating a Bird,” Hana explains. “I was drawn to the contradiction in the image—she seems to be turning away from the world while at the same time literally devouring a piece of it. There’s something wild and irrational about the act that I felt I understood without being able to fully explain. The ‘howling world’ became both the senseless world she’s turning away from and the one she’s suddenly part of. I realized that feeling ran through much of the record, and the song eventually gave the album its name.”

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I had the feeling that most writing in this environment becomes an advertisement for yourself and your virtues. There is importance and beauty in writing characters and stories that are filled with the good you wish to see in the real world, but sitting around a table of like-minded individuals doesn’t always leave a lot of room for narrative art that is ugly and weird.

The story I’m telling is ugly and weird. It’s mean-spirited, it makes fun of its characters, it’s violent, and I go for cheap laughs. The songs that emerged for this project, the first I’ve written in over a decade, probably speak to an urge to make art like that, which I’ve likely repressed in my fiction writing for polite academia and peer-to-peer workshopping.

After foreshadowing opener ‘The Television Watcher’, single ‘I’m a Soldier’ introduced the tone of the record, not least how The Male Pattern’s style of storytelling manages to carry emotional and thematic weight despite its wacky, off-the-wall charms. “The undeniable irony and playfulness do nothing to undermine the heartbreaking loneliness running through its heart,” as we put it in our preview. “An anthem of America in 2026, where vapidity, ridiculousness and mean-spirited self-interest feel like symptoms of some dark, cursed pathology lurking beneath the surface.”

Latest single ‘Charlie (The Robbery)’ zips us further through the story, finding our protagonist sinking ever further into the underbelly of society, and teetering on the precipice of something far worse. He can’t quite get back on the job market, can’t keep his urine clean enough to satisying the state, has taken to carrying a gun around with the American urge that someone might give him an excuse to use it (“It’s my God-given right”). But firearms and narcotics have never been a good mix, especially not when the characters involved are quite so desperate, and an ostensibly foolproof plan to rob a small-time dealer inevitably tilts towards disaster. “This gun might be loaded but we only need to show it,” as the next verse goes, “And then it’s all for the taking, there’s no way to blow it.” Only, of course, there is a way to blow it. The obvious fate for anyone TV-brained swinging a loaded gun.

Stick ‘em up, this is a heist, put your hands up toward the sky
Don’t reach for that piece unless your ready for heat
Charlie looked like he was going to cry
I got too excited
I tried to say a line from The Dark Knight Rises
When Charlie made his move
I blew him half way across the room
I grabbed the score and I ran for the door

Photos by Andrew Piccone, album design & art by Edelweiss Cardenas

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Eliza Edens has now announced brand new album Death Drive, and the title track suggests the record continues this newfound style, tackling difficult themes with unabashed brightness and even wry humour. As you might expect, the idea is informed by the Freudian concept of the title, Edens finding fertile ground in the fact that brushes with death (be they physical or psychic, from childhood ski accidents, digital breakups during lockdown, or their mother’s experience with dementia) bring a greater appreciation of life. So while there might be a certain recklessness to the abandon with which Edens faces this new era, it is all part of deeper pact to seize the moment while it is still present. A joyous, if slightly dangerous, celebration of being alive.

When I was a kid I crushed a rib while skiin’
Dad said I’m glad you didn’t die
Maybe I was flirtin’ with the limit but baby that’s how you win it
Wanna get tangled up
I wanna love my death drive

Watch the video below, directed by Edens themselves with Mod Schwalbe (DP), Michelle Hanks (editing and colour) and Elena Foraker (title design):

Death Drive will be released on the 30rd October via First City Artists and you can pre-order it now.

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To celebrate the announcement of the record, Shaina Hayes has unveiled new single ‘Tempest’. Like previous tracks before it, the song finds Hayes meditating of the cycles and rhythms of her rural life, finding both solace and wisdom within nature’s propensity to change, be it dying back or growing anew. So while the track takes place within a personal storm, it is always reaching for a greater perspective. As though attempting to view one’s problems from a higher vantage might work as a kind of inoculation against fear of the unknown, instead installing a deep curiosity. “And I’m not scared of the world / And what it may hold,” as Hayes sings in a telling verse. “I just fear that I won’t / Have time to explore it.”

Watch the video by Flavie Lemée below:

Take the Case of a Rose will be released on the 13th November via Bonsound and you can pre-order it now from the Shana Hayes Bandcamp page.

Photo by Charline Clavier

The post Shaina Hayes – Tempest appeared first on Various Small Flames.

This summer, a special version of Advance Base went on tour with Pedro the Lion, Owen Ashworth joined by Moontype to give his songs a rare full band treatment. Thanks to the technical wizardry of front of house engineer Milwaukee Mark Sullivan, the Milwaukee show was recorded well enough that Ashworth decided to release an impromtu live album, hence In Milwaukee is available to download for free today. The set includes tracks from Horrible Occurrances, Animal Companionship, Nephew in the Wild and A Shut-In’s Prayer, as well as recent single ‘Movie Theater Manager‘ and even a few Casiotone For The Painfully Alone numbers too, though it is perhaps the newer tracks which stand out the most in this arrangement. Take ‘Brian’s Golden Hour’, a fitting closer that is charged with extra intensity with a full band behind it, which in our opinion serves as an encapsulation of Ashworth’s stellar career thus far. As we concluded in our review of Horrible Occurrences:

“You’ll be fine,” a paramedic tells the titular character in ‘Brian’s Golden Hour’, a teen skater and would-be Days of Heaven-era Malick who plans to film himself dropping in on a homemade ramp from the roof of his parents house only to bail and shatter his spine. “You’re 15 & paralyzed / & lucky to be alive,” as the refrain goes. But Brian doesn’t actually commit to the trick. His only paralysis is a hesitation at the top of the ramp. This horrible occurrence takes place entirely in his head. Yet the paramedic’s words echo all the same. Kind, if slightly hollow. What they want to be true, or need to be true. Or rather what might as well be true inside that moment, until the opposite is confirmed. You’ll be fine. Words so brittle and tender and heartfelt. Somehow the epitome of both security and vulnerability. The essence of not only Horrible Occurrences but perhaps Ashworth’s entire body of work. Voices heard from beneath the weight of all that has happened, and all that possibly could. You might be dying. The darkness might all be in your head. You’ll be fine.

In Milwaukee is out now and available as a free download from Bandcamp. Moontype are also on Bandcamp, as are Pedro the Lion. Advance Base will play a few solo shows soon: Sept 6th in Chicago, IL (@ Sound & Gravity Festival), Sept 9th in Ann Arbor, MI (@ Funhouse) and Sept 10th in Toronto, ON (@ St Stephen’s). More tickets and information can be found here.

Caleb Elliott – Without Warning

With 2019 debut Forever to Fade and 2023 follow-up Weed, Wine & Time, songwriter, guitarist and cellist Caleb Elliott established vivid, widescreen style of folk rock, his work incorporating sleek grooves and rich string arrangements to elevate the sound. Fast forward a few years and the Florence, Alabama artist is returning with new singles. The latest ‘Without Warning’ suggests he has further honed this style in the intervening period. Moving with an understated grace and blooming gradually in something almost cinematic, the track sits comfortably next to later-era Damien Jurado. Able to offer genuine emotional intimacy while transporting the listener into its own hyperreal world.

‘Without Warning’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Eric Angelo Bessel – Pathways

Fresh off the back of 2025 LP Mirror At Night and its b-side sister release earlier this year, Eric Angelo Bessel is already preparing a brand new full-length, and the quick turnaround has done nothing to dampen the record’s ambition or scope. Consisting of eighteen interlinked compositions, Illusion of an Inland Ocean plays like an exercise in cartography, mapping the contours of a mysterious location which exists just beyond the ordinary confines of the world, inviting the listener along for the expedition so that we too might wander in our own act of discovery. The songs of Mirror At Night sounded like “dispatches from some strange otherworld” as we wrote, Bessel probing the line between the real and unreal, organic and digital, dreams, memory and waking life, and Illusion… pushes this style further than ever. An effort to conjure a sense of place which goes beyond traditional world-building, working to not merely create something new but evoke the sense of revealing something which has always been present, waiting for someone with the patience and attention to bring them to light. Listen to lead track pathways now.

Lamplight – Clover

We last featured Lamplight back in February with the release of ‘Year 2083‘, a stand alone single featuring hemlock which marked the crossover from the project’s 2024 self-titled album and whatever was to come next. What was to come, it now turns out, was Lick The Spoon, Let It Soften, a brand new full-length with Western Vinyl which sees Ian Williams paint a picture of life in all of its uncertainty and with both the love and the grief left intact. Single ‘Clover’ introduces the themes of the record, a track which seems suspended between the retrospection of mourning and a look towards future dreams, turning to the small certainties of the present as a kind of balm against the otherwise debilitating doubt which might set in when asking life’s big questions. “Lick the spoon and let it soften, it’ll melt,” as Williams sings in the verse which give the album its title, “you don’t need another mouthful, draw it out / all you need you’ve already gotten.”

Rayland Baxter – Better Man

After losing his father Bucky Baxter back in 2020, Rayland Baxter found his attempts at songwriting falling flat no matter how much effort he put it, only for a conversation with his sister to change his perspective. “We talked about life and family and love and heartache, and our individual experiences with all of that,” he explains. “She simply encouraged me to write about what I was feeling, something I was avoiding in the early stages of writing.” Baxter’s new full-length True Violet emerged from this inflection point, an album “personal and bloody” attuned to both the immediate pain of suffering and the enlightenment which slowly seeps in. Lead single and opening track ‘Better Man’ functions as a prologue for this story, the first step in a journey through grief from one stage of life to another.

Watch the video directed by Joshua Shoemaker below:

True Violet will be released on the 23rd October via ATO Records and you can pre-order it now.

Spring Colours – Femur In The Dust (Who Told You There’s A Better Life!?)

After putting in the hard yards on tour and building up a fanbase the old-fashioned way, Toronto “digital-punk” outfit Spring Colours finally released their anticipated debut full-length The Courage Cloak this year, a bold, cathartic album which rails against the masks and armour society demands we wear in order to stand out. “The ‘Courage Cloak’ we put on is red and angry, a symbol of the patriarchal need to perform and to be seen,” Lukas Lyjak explains, “and hides the simple need for genuine connection we all have. It is that cloak that we explore across the album, and more than anything, are striving to shake off.” There’s no better place to dive into the record than the snappily titled focus track ‘Femur In The Dust (Who Told You There’s A Better Life!?)’, a song which channels everything from Tokyo Police Club and Foxing to the hyperactive indie rock of Johnny Foreigner to create a sound that’s simultaneously fatalistic and defiant (As Lyjak puts it: “It’s that Slavic state of mind I grew up with—life’s unfair and tiring, get over it”).

Watch the video directed by Riley Campbell with director of photography Spencer Campbell below:

The Courage Cloak is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Stephen Steinbrink – Magic Mirror

“The spirit [of the record] is captured in the conjurer’s trick of the title, where reality is ruptured by a brief spark of magic. Buoyed by the experience and wisdom gleaned from outside activities, Steinbrink returns to music as a kind of magician himself. A figure who, guided by invention and playfulness, looks to use mastery of a physical craft in order to open the door to small, intangible miracles.” So we wrote of Stephen Steinbrink‘s 2023 LP Disappearing Coin, an album which made the list of our favourites released that year in no small part thanks to its willingness to look for freshness and curiosity so far into a career. In a Split Mirror, Steinbrink’s latest full-length coming via Mansions and Millions this autumn, functions as a direct continuation of this mission, not because if its stylistic similarities to its predecessor, but because of its differences. There’s a newfound openness to these songs, a colour and clarity which might at first appear at odds with the imagery of mirrors, doubles and distortions, but which ultimately makes perfect sense. Because, as lead single ‘Magic Mirror’ displays, this is an album about the ever-changing nature of identity which embraces instability not as some exercises in postmodern slipperiness but rather a firm, confident grasp of human truth.

Watch the video directed, shot and edited by Steinbrink himself below:

In a Split Mirror will be released on the 30th October via Mansions and Millions and you can pre-order it now.

Tasha – Quick!

“Finds an artist embracing the pace and breadth of their new life. Confronting each day with a sense of defiance rather than looking for somewhere to hide.” So we wrote of Tasha‘s 2024 full-length All This and So Much More, the New York-based songwriter emerging from a whirlwind period of experiences both thrilling and painful with a freshly honed appreciation of the possibilities of life. Released this June via Bayonet Records, follow-up You Are Spring! carried this spirit to new heights, channelling the season of its title to offer a warm and colourful sound pregnant with the promise of new growth. Undeterred by the present tip towards autumn, Tasha is preparing to head out on tour and has released a brand new video for single and closer ‘Quick!’ in celebration, along with a roundtable discussion with Taja Cheek (AKA L’Rain) and Jamila Woods (who both feature on the record) for Talkhouse. But listen to ‘Quick!’ and the rest of the record and it becomes clear autumn might in fact be a perfect time to dive into You Are Spring!, because more than a celebration of the season, it is an ode to all that we endure in order to enjoy the fruitful periods when they finally arrive. “Quick! See how this beauty rushes by?” as Tasha asks on the track. Let this be a reminder for us to concentrate on what we have in front of us before the wheel turns again.

Watch the video by V.E. Haddad (along with Annie Klebano) below:

You Are Spring! is out now via Bayonet Records and available from Bandcamp.

Tough Old Bird – Come Back, Come Back

The Buffalo, New York outfit Tough Old Bird have released a steady stream of singles across this summer, with tracks like ‘Wednesday’s Child‘, ‘Shape Of Our Love‘ and ‘I Was a Giant‘ highlighting how evocative and versatile the project has become. “Tough Old Bird have not pivoted to a new sound so much as expanded their armoury,” as we wrote, “and are now equipped to tackle whatever emotional palette any given song demands.” Latest track ‘Come Back, Come Back’ provides yet further evidence of the promise of this new era, its sound electrified but lacking none of the patience as a result, telling a poetic narrative that’s at once brooding and compassionate and little world weary too. “Well, it was such a long way to go / To come back, come back alone,” as Corrigan sings around halfway through, two lines which embody the solitude which marks the track, though from that point things tilt towards something more intense, allowing for a final sense of catharsis with the reflection.

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With the album coming later this week via benefit non-profit label Share It Music, waltzerr have unveiled one last single to keep anticipation high. Described as a track “about recognizing when love is no longer enough to sustain an unhealthy relationship,” ‘Counting Clovers’ is a typically bittersweet number, fighting through the lingering hold of fondness to regain a sense of self-worth amid experiences of emotional manipulation. The result might open with a certain sense of hesitation, but what emerges is affirming in its resolve, acting in spite of vulnerability and regret in order to move towards a healthier way of living. An embodiment of the album’s title. Tomorrow will be better, you just have to find the courage to grasp it.

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It was only on the insistence of filmmaker Rick Alverson that henry o henry realised the songs might hang together as an album, and the recording process developed organically from there with a characteristically authentic spirit. Father and son duo Eamon O’Leary and Ned Steves play across much of the album, recording together for the first time and without rehearsal, favouring instinct over deliberation and furthering the sense of songs unfurling in real time. Emilie Rex of Lean Year and poet Callie Garnett also appear, while Alverson oversaw the sessions and guided these energies towards their final shape, and Erik Hall contributed overdubs and mixed the result to further its subtly striking power. A record able to live up to its title: ambiguous in nature and all the more alluring because of it, where the hard-won wisdoms of a life well lived are matched by the flickering sense of some unforeseen possibility.

After lead single ‘The Fool’, what we called “a song worn and wistful and weathered but with a glint in its eye, moving with a sincerity and easy grace that comes with experience,” henry o henry has now shared latest track, ‘Parade’, ahead of Apocrypha’s release next month via Western Vinyl. An example of the careful patience which marks so much of the album, the song is understated yet strangely hypnotic, as though its mellow rhythms slowly envelop the listener and hold them within their world.  “It’s like lying completely still in the grass but there’s always a circus in town,” as o henry puts it, hinting at both the grounded nature of the sound and the eccentric shadows which play across it.

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With the album’s release imminent, Kate Prasher has returned with final single, ‘Retrograde’. As the title might suggest, the track again moves away from the present, though represents far more than simple reflection. Because, within its sparse, poetic lyrics and understated arrangement featuring Ben Garnett, Greg Jones, Diana Walsh and Adam Schwind, the song is both a gesture of solace within current moment and a promise for the future. A pledge to future action in the name of care and love no matter which planets might be reversing or obstacles fall in the way.

Sunday Afternoon will be released on the 28th August via First City Artists and you can pre-order it now from the Kate Prascher Bandcamp page.

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