Later this spring Chicago‘s Babe Report will release their debut full-length album Did You Get Better via Exploding In Sound, the long awaited follow up to their rambunctious 2021 EP The Future of Teeth. But if the band took their time between releases, they waste none within the songs themselves. The ten tracks clock in at less than half an hour in total and all are charged with the same frantic momentum which made aforementioned EP such a fun experience. Or perhaps even more momentum, as opener and lead single ‘Turtle of Reaper’ attests. A searing indictment of clickbait culture which burns white hot, the chorus invokes the hysteria of the Millennium Bug as guitars and drums combine into a frenzy of their own.

Cosmo Sheldrake – More Than A Mountain

London-born, Stroud-based composer and multi-instrumentalist Cosmo Sheldrake always pushes the boundaries of what music can do and be. His previous album Wild Wet World offered undersea soundscapes which incorporated everything from “plaintive whale song to clicking parrotfish and snapping shrimp.” Latest record Eye To The Ear is even more ambitious, a twenty-one song album which combines traditional and electronic instrumentation and also, to quote the album notes, “both human and more-than-human voices” to address both the dire situation faced by the natural world as well as the radical possibilities which might cease or reverse its destruction. Single ‘More Than A Mountain’ is as good a place to dive in as any, offering an understated, brooding tone as it meditates on the scene before us.

Got the beast but left the burden,
It’s the step before the fall,
It’s the pause before the question,
It’s the window or the wall

Little Wings – Ha Ha Blues

Back in February we introduced High On The Glade, the forthcoming album from Little Wings on Perpetual Doom with single ‘Bubbles Go Pop’. A song “every bit as idiosyncratic and inventive as you’d hope,” we wrote, which told “the story of a wild party in a zany vaudevillian procession befitting of a Pynchon novel.” Second single ‘Ha Ha Blues’ might have a more languid rhythm but the writing is no less inventive. Beneath the  rhythm’s apparent warmth stirs a darker, melancholic edge. “Field thinks of this as being his most Irish record, full of heartbreak and violence,” the album notes describe, and ‘Ha Ha Blues’ hints at this side of the record despite its sunny disposition.

Ha ha blues what can I do you for?
What did you choose before a door in your distance
My what news mining persistence
How many wishes once the floor falls through?

Max Blansjaar – Burning In Our Name

After single ‘Anna Madonna’, a song which “acknowledges the hurtful nature of the world and the resulting temptation to react with anger or bitterness” but “becomes the antithesis to such moods,” Max Blansjaar has shared ‘Burning In Our Name’ to further introduce upcoming album False Comforts on Beanie Tapes. It’s another blurring of the line between wry humour and earnest emotion as Blansjaar negotiates the experience of perpetual difficulty that is existing in this world of ours. “Caught up in a maze of hedonists and lies / Putting all our faith in devils in disguise,” as he sings in the chorus. “Just trying to escape when everything’s on fire / And burning in our name.”

nudista – Somebody Else

‘Somebody Else’ is the latest single from London duo nudista (Pilar Matji Cabello and Robbie Carman), ahead of their sophomore EP Nothing Makes Sense Until It Does on Sad Club Records. As with previous singles ‘Different Eyes’ and ‘Waiting Line’, it’s a song full of emotive introspection and a desire to live a truer, better connected life. “’Somebody Else’ is about coming to the realisation of having been living a life not trusting your own voice and path,” Cabello explains. “It explores the idea of not knowing fully who you are, about going on a self-exploration journey to find the voice within you and to tune into your own instinct.” It might unfurl with a gentle grace, all soft acoustic guitar and subtle percussion, but it’s message of self-determination is a powerful one. As Cabello puts it at the end of the chorus: “I guess I’ve just been living for somebody else.”

Nothing Makes Sense Until It Does will be released via Sad Club Records and you can pre-order it now from the nudista Bandcamp page.

Shit Present – Acting Tough

“Start again and you’ll be fine / Aren’t you sick of looking for answers all the time?” So ask Exeter outfit Shit Present on the title track of their forthcoming EP, Acting Tough on the ever-reliable Specialist Subject Records. The song introduces the band’s signature blend of pop punk energy, emo sincerity and raw punk rock attitude, making for a sound at once empathetic and cathartic. A useful blend considering the track’s intentions. An attempt to disarm the defence mechanisms of insecurity, and banish the nagging weight of pessimism through sheer momentum and shout-along release.

It’s such a shame to have to see you acting tough
Did somebody make you feel like you aren’t good enough

Tara Jane O’Neil – Glass Island

Written during what she calls “the skirmishes and shuffle of the seven years since her self-titled album,” The Cool Cloud of Okayness is the forthcoming new album from California multi-instrumentalist and visual artist Tara Jane O’Neil. Fittingly for a record preoccupied with life’s changeable nature, it was recorded at O’Neil’s home studio, which is built on the ashes of her previous home destroyed by the Thomas wildfire that devastated southern California in 2017. These themes of destruction and new growth, life’s cyclical rhythms and cruel repetitions snake throughout the record, nurturing green shoots of hope in the charred earth of loss and grief. Latest single ‘Glass Island’ explores these patterns with all the delicate beauty the title suggests. “Another day,” O’Neil sings, “ring around the moon and back again,
dig in again.”

The song comes complete with a video by Harry Dodge:

The Cool Cloud of Okayness is out on the 26th April via Orindal Records and you can pre-order it now.

tilt – all and nothing

tilt is the project of Brooklyn-based trio Isabel Crespo Pardo (vocals), Kalia Vandever (trombone, vocals) and Carmen Quill (acoustic bass, vocals), who draw on their considerable solo credentials to make formally inventive, jazz-inflected art pop. Next month, tilt will release their debut album something we once knew on Dear Life Records, a record which takes us by the hand and leads us into a world of improvisation and idiosyncratic style. Lead single ‘all and nothing’ feels like a doorway into this landscape, a calm song that breathes in an organic rhythm behind its careful composition. A delicate but confident vocal duet rises and falls on the mournful draught of Vandever’s trombone, tracing elegant and unexpected patterns on the backdrop of negative space. The result is both bright and somehow pensive, like the shapes thrown by golden afternoon sunlight as it slants through a window.

Work Wife – Control

“A warm and introspective song of trying to find yourself in the vast bustle of the city amidst its noise and countless strangers […] ending in a thumping singalong finale.” That’s how we described ‘Strangers’, the first single from Work Wife‘s EP Waste Management. With the EP now out via Born Losers Records, latest single ‘Control’ highlights a different side to the release, swapping out the intimate clarity of the opener in favour of something dreamy and enveloping. Despite clocking in at barely two minutes, the track possesses a real sense of scale, washing over the listener with layered richness. When Meredith Lampe’s vocals eventually emerge, it feels as though you have passed into the centre of something to find the intimate truth within.

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Part of the process involved Max Blansjaar learning the power of authenticity and restraint. “I challenged myself to get straightforward,” as he explains. “Stop chasing complexity and Follow Your Nose!” The album False Comforts feels very much a product of this newfound understanding. The sound of an artist reacting to the fundamental uncertainty of the contemporary moment—be it personally, with Blansjaar reaching the age between school and adulthood, or globally with everything the 2020s have brought—by deciding against any attempt to chase trends or fit into brackets and instead work from the gut.

A line from Brad Liening’s poetry collection Are You There, God? It’s Me, Whitney Houston made an impact. “some explanations / last forever and never / answer a thing.” False Comforts takes such wisdom to heart, finding not frustration in uncertainty or incompleteness, but rather something like freedom. “I knew these songs would be false comforts,” as Blansjaar continues. “They wouldn’t fix anything, they wouldn’t give me answers, they wouldn’t help, they were pointless, unproductive hideouts, explanations lasting forever. And I found a strange comfort in them for that. Maybe someone else will, too.”

Lead single ‘Anna Madonna’ welcomes the audience into such an endeavour. A song which acknowledges the hurtful nature of the world and the resulting temptation to react with anger or bitterness. Yet delivered with a playful rhythm and gentle indie pop charm, it becomes the antithesis to such moods. A message of empathy and sincerity persisting in spite of the hopeless conditions which birthed it.

Anna Madonna, don’t shut the door on me
Don’t block all your windows, so nobody knows you’re here
I know you’re sick of the political climate
And every day you fight a hopeless war
I know you think your girlfriend hates you in secret
But don’t take it out on me
It’s nothing to do with me

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