New single ‘Early Days’ continues these sensibilities, broaching the difficult experience of becoming a parent with a distinctly relaxed mood. Fingerpicked guitar and gentle vocals knit into a comforting blanket which Amy O uses to reassure both her past and present self, viewing the naivety of young motherhood as both a blessing and a curse. It ultimately finds both joy and grief in time’s habit to slowly slip on past us. Snapshots from the time are presented side by side, the song a scrapbook cataloguing the years. Days of being milked like a cow, post-partum OCD, batches of lemonade, a bear digging through the trash. As the song concludes: “I’m piecing it together again / Nothing is lasting.”

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Now, Nice Try are back with another album (another self-titled album, at that), and not too much as changed in the meantime aside from the addition of Jake Alexander on bass. Robinson is still making super sweet pop songs that don’t outstay their welcome, and the songs still form a winning blend of reflective and carefree attitudes.

The album opens with ‘Waves’, a song about coping through motion, avoiding difficult times by jumping on a bus and riding it ten hours south. It’s a great introduction for the uninitiated, elastic guitars wrapped in just enough fuzz as Robinson delivers her gently candid lyrics.

‘Soft Rock’ paints a little impressionistic scene, floating in a lake beneath the hot dry air of an approaching storm, small anxieties wriggling into even the nicest moments. “Inevitably the internal shout,” Robinson sings, “am I good enough for you or anyone else?”

‘Angry’ is a minute-long blast of lo-fi pop that’s bursting with a need to share true feelings, looking for someone to be the deep and cool plunge pool at the bottom of a waterfall of fears and frustrations. ‘Smart’ is another bouncy indie rock song that feels like the sequel, although as is often the case, things seem to have moved on to something equally uncertain and confusing. “Shut my mouth for nearly a year,” Robinson sings, “when I told you how I felt, you said it was weird.”

Robinson yearns from an old friend on’ ‘Micah’, someone who has moved on to new jobs and houses and dogs, but who (clearly) still means a lot. It’s also a song about stasis, our narrator asking “what do I have to show for the last year? I’m older and wiser but I’m still just right here.”

‘No Good’ is reminiscent of the soft pop of Free Cake For Every Creature, as smooshy and sleepy as a bedtime phonecall to a loved one, while closer ‘Relax’ creates a sense of golden gladness from small meaningful moments. It’s the perfect finale to the album, ending on a kind and hopeful note that murmurs away the worries that have come before.

“I could walk you home
or wave to you across the road
and either way it goes I’ll be satisfied to know
our paths are in line
and I’m just happy to be somewhere
I don’t feel like I’m wasting most of my time”

You can get Nice Try on LP or a name-your-price download from the Nice Try Bandcamp page.

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In anticipation of the album, here’s a sneak peek of the first single, ‘San Diego’, a bittersweet pop song that’s part sunny vibes and part heavy-hearted woe. The track opens with skittering drums and a pulsing bass line, the lyrics a daydream of escaping a town and the people who live there, allusions to disappointment and soured relationships hanging heavy as summer storm clouds. But the catchy chorus blows all that away, that rush of sickly excitement that comes with new possibilities.

“Maybe I should move to San Diego
where it’s summer all year round
wash my hands in salty water
and dig my feet into the ground”

Fresh Kill will be released later this summer. Keep an eye on 1212 Records and the Fresh Kill Bandcamp page to pre-order.

Header photo credit Francesca Hanson

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Following up 2015’s Under the Shrub, Brenda’s Friend are back with a new six-song release, House Down. The album opens with the title track, a song which begins with a clear kick-drum thump but soon descends (or ascends) into an intricate stack of sound and lyrics. The spine of percussion remains throughout, a lifeline tied around the listeners ear as they delve into the kaleidoscopic shifting of vocals and instrumentation. ‘Sponge’ strips things back, the vocals now superimposed for emphasis, the lyrics ranging from pre-teen demands (“I want it! / I need it!”) to weird allegorical verses:

“I don’t want to stay at the bottom of that pond
I don’t want to lick up all that scum
don’t want to float with the salient sponge
take a breath, say hello to the sun”

‘Who Who’ is a track heavy in reverb, sitting between a bluesy rock and the riot grrrl sound of the 90s. Oelsner and Tobey join together to give the vocals a mantra-like quality, the collaborative casting of some swaggering, self-assured spell. ‘Pas De Deux’ is far gentler, the vocals soft and fine though cut with slight suggestions of something stranger, the lyrics abstract and instrumentation pulsing and buzzing in odd repetitions, as though accelerating toward some unclear conclusion.

“Oh I made a mess and cleaned it up
then the sky opened wide, it was terrible.
Oh I, melting candles underfoot
But your guard was so hard you laughed at the air
burned your own hair”

‘Horoscope’ is short and off-kilter, packed with a high-school blend of confidence and confusion (“stuck in the middle of my horoscope / its set to wait all month”), like the soundtrack of the best 90s kids TV show you’ve never seen, while closer ‘Navy Beach’ is a reckless garage rock hit to be played in dive bars packed out by rough heads on shore leave.

House Down is out now and you can buy it from the Brenda’s Friend Bandcamp page, including on limited-edition cassette via Winspear Records. Also, be sure to check out the Amy O and Erin Tobey Bandcamp pages.

Album art by Janelle Beasley

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The first single, ‘I’m Young’ is a folk song but not as you know it, all echoey drums and cool-as-heck snaky guitars. It sounds confident and assured, not a superfluous note throughout. I guess that’s what happens when you have ten years to write an album.

“On reflection I can see that I’m a product of my time”

Middlemaze is due for release on the 3rd of May on Let’s Pretend Records and you can pre-order it on LP or cassette now.

Photo credit Chaz Mottinger

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Opener ‘President’ is, at its base, a catchy indie pop track, but some chugging guitar takes things into punkier territory as Robinson delivers some pretty heartfelt lyrics (“I just need to learn to be whatever I am to you”). ‘wet willy’ follows a similar pattern, the lyrics about the heart-lightening effect of meeting a new friend,

“push everything bad away
cling on to something new
I will finally let myself feel okay
and it will all start
on this morning walk with you”

‘patience’ has frantic instrumentation and slightly more composed vocals, while ‘water pennies’ begins a lot slower, just vocals and cracks of electric guitar before the drums come galloping in and we get another lovely indie pop song.

“I knew that when I got back home
not much would be different
nothing has blown over
now it’s October
and what I think about come Fall
is how little you’ve changed
I feel so much older
and colder and stronger”

The breezy ‘minus two’ hides anxious lyrics, while ‘No Big deal’ is about wanting to go back to a simpler time, an easy life in which everything was no big deal. “I just want it to feel like no big deal,” she sings. “Let’s go back to life the way it was before / talking all night on your mom’s basement floor”. ‘magical thinking’ is bright and defiant in a kind and pleasant way (“Somehow I woke up to see I am essentially free /I don’t need to be told,  I’m finally in control / I’m eternally outside on the school bench in the springtime”)”, before ‘Your Hair’ closes things out with a deceptively upbeat song about being in a bad relationship, the narrator coming to her senses and seeing past the other persons’s undeniable charm. “What do I say to you when you always give me nothing? / you make me feel like nothing”.

You can get Nice Try on a name-your-price download from the band’s Bandcamp page. Be sure to also check out their online store, especially to get you hand’s on some Nice Try socks!

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The album is packed with smash hits from an alternate dimension, an easygoing universe in which everybody gets along just fine and the highest form of being is hanging out with your best buds. ‘Over and Over’ is all surfy lo-fi rock, while ‘Drive Me Crazy’ is a catchy pop song, complete with some killer electric guitar work. ‘Feels Good To Never Sleep’ captures the band’s ethos very nicely, a leisurely ode to enjoying yourself, complete with a roll-down-the-windows vibe perfect for the approaching summer.

Pretty much every song on the album falls into this feel-good rock-out category. Take for instance ‘Malevolo’, which teams rumbling lo-fi with wailing electric guitars and carefree “oohs”, or ‘Morals and Values’ which alternates between half-paced, lounging verses with a thumping chorus. ‘Hale-Pop’ is one of my favourites, sounding like a stroll along the beachfront at the height of summer with a warm foamy six-pack and your best amigos. ‘Vietnam Donkey Kong’ is all punchy pop rock, before ‘The Skin I Live In’ offers some freaky darkness to proceedings, “You hurt yourself again, you cut your pretty skin, and now I’ll have to start it over”. Penultimate track ‘My Thrill’ is slower and slinkier than most, snaking around in a summertime saunter, before the final track, ‘Ocean Song’, really puts the surf into surf rock, with background ambient noise of crashing waves and a too-cool-for-school fusion of lo-fi rock instrumentation and pop melodies.

What I like most about this album isn’t one tangible thing, but the overall feeling that it exudes. This isn’t a group of guys trying to get noticed by some slimy record exec, or get plastered all over commercial radio and make a million dollars (although I guess that would be kind of cool). It’s just some friends having a lot of fun making the kind of music they want to hear. And the best thing of all is that you can tell that they’re having a blast. Who cares about making $$$s when you can have a pretty great time regardless?

You can get The Wailin’ Smithers on CD or as a download from The Wailin’ Smithers’ bandcamp page.

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The final song ‘Way Gross’ dials down the pop elements a little and offers a straighter shot of unbalanced melancholy. It ends with the lines “You have everything you need to cut my neck and let me bleed out / Just let me bleed all out”. 

You can get the EP on a pay-what-you-want basis over at Bandcamp. While you’re there, be sure to check out their previous EP, Second EP, which is also great.

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You can buy a digital copy of the compilation via Bandcamp, and you can also get a download code plus a themed Christmas card from the Flannelgraph Records website. If you like what you hear, I would also recommend checking out the two previous volumes (Volume 1 and Volume 2), which feature bands such as Dolorean, Dirty Beaches, Drekka and Sleeping Bag. This really is a good cause and certainly a very good way of making someone else’s holidays a lot less rotten.

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