Tancred – Reviews

“I wanted the album to have a timeless feel to it,” says Jess Abbott of Tancred’s new record, Nightstand. “So you could hear my stories of love and loneliness and sense that these are themes that have existed for everyone forever.” Such an attitude of empathy runs through the lead single, ‘Reviews’, with difficulties shared and worries admitted in the hope of connecting to others feeling equally troubled. Abbott divulges honest details of being female and queer in the twenty-first century not just as some effort to map her own experience, but to reach out to others, on the basis that we are less alone when facing problems together.

Nightstand is set for release in June on Polyvinyl and Hand in Hive, and you can pre-order it now from the Tancred Bandcamp page.

Buck Meek – Cannonball!

Not content with being part of one of the best folk rock bands in operation with Big Thief (whose Capacity was one of our favourite records of last year), Buck Meek has recorded a self-titled solo album to be released this spring. As lead single ‘Cannonball!’ attests, these are blues-tinged folk tracks steeped in style and storytelling, though Meek’s bio does his sound more justice than we ever could:

“Buck Meek’s songs are for the lost dogs of honest mechanics, good guys and girls born into a life of crime, runaways, snow spirits, the ghosts of Central Park, unsung diving-board stars, the affection shared through gambling, and so on. Bred in Texas, more bread in New York City, Meek spins outlaw ballads and quotidian fairy tales into a yarn.”

Buck Meek is set for release on the 18th May and you can pre-order it now via Keeled Scales.

Clara Marie – Boat or Bike

The press release for Clara Marie describes her as a “curious concoction of Northern Irish nymph meets Edith Piaf in a David Bowie-esque daydream,” which might sound quite the claim, at least until you hear her music. Because, upon listening to debut single ‘Boat or Bike’, the summary makes sense—or rather, it hints that ‘making sense’ might not quite be the primary aim of Clara Marie songwriting. From the syrupy slow opening, the song draws the listener into an uncanny and alluring version of real life, where the thin veneer of logic has been poked through, and all sorts of strangeness has seeped through the space. Complete with a suitably surreal video shot by Alex Villaluz, ‘Boat or Bike’ is a beguiling introduction into what appears to be a world as beautiful as it is strange.

‘Boat or Bike’ is out now, and Clara Marie is currently working on her debut EP, so be sure to keep an eye on her Soundcloud and Facebook page for further information.

Painted Forest – Witness

Painted Forest is a bedroom pop / lo-fi project from Philadelphia. Back in February they released an EP called Detective Series, three songs built on distorted guitar and a kind of chilled out, off-kilter charm. Standout track ‘Witness’ is the perfect introduction, its guitar surreal and giddy and somehow accentuating the sense of easy melody. The lyrics are equally strange, staccato lines that conjure images of vampires and spiders, delivered in a melancholic mumble.

“What did
We do
To him
Plunge the
fangs in
For us”

Pema – Depend

Pema is another project of Alex Cohen of Alex Napping, whose Mise En Place was another of our favourites from 2017, though the pop/RnB-influenced style is something of a departure from that sound. The new Pema album, Bad Habits, set to be released this spring has lofty and challenging intentions. The mission statement of the record is “to represent the sense of shame that society burdens on women,” charting the experience of Cohen as she explored her own character flaws. Lead single ‘Depend’ is one such example, offering an unflinching gaze on the ingrained conviction that women need male validation to succeed or even survive. As the onion-eating video attests, such an attitude is neither comfortable or productive, though the self-flagellation is in reality anything but, the whip held by an invisible hand that has grown accustomed to its power.

Bad Habits is set for release via Topshelf Records on the 18th May and you can pre-order it now from Bandcamp.

FRANKIIE – Glory Me

FRANKIIE are a dream pop outfit from Vancouver. After releasing their folk-tinged debut EP back in 2015, the band moved in various directions, including writing and recording solo music, becoming a schoolteacher, starting a fashion line and retreating to a small island community to work and surf. These changes gave each member a renewed sense of purpose, and soon FRANKIIE came together again, this time with the aim of making a new record.

Lead single ‘Glory Me’ is our first taste from the forthcoming album, and signals a move towards a indie rock sound. It has some shadowy, almost goth elements, with juxtapose nicely with the catchy chorus and bright dreamy sound. Thematically the song tackles mortality, and displays a newfound cohesive writing process. The blurb describes it as “a contemplation of life and death” which “explores the questions of meaning and purpose – feelings that were heavily shadowing their lives before they took time for individual self-discovery”.

Boys – End of Time

Hailing from Umeå in northern Sweden, Nora Karlsson records a nostalgic brand of indie pop under the moniker Boys. This spring sees Karlsson release her debut full-length album, Rest in Peace, and ‘End of Time’ serves as the perfect introduction to those unfamiliar with her sound. Backed by a dreamy field recording of children having fun to really amp up the rose-tinted vibe, the song unfurls in a sweetly serene tale of yearning. The result is a version of regret that has been weathered by time, the sharp edges smoothed into a tactile round, making for something you want to handle and draw comfort from in times of need.

Rest in Peace is set to be released on the 11th May via Punk Slime Records and you can pre-order it now from Bandcamp.

The By Gods – Wait Up

The By Gods are a garage pop trio from Nashville, comprising of Tye Hammonds (drums) and husband and wife duo, Natalie (bass) and George Pauley (guitar). Last year the band released an Move On, an LP inspired by “a potent blend of musings on small town religion, depression, terrorist attacks, global politics and the subsequent social media backlash of all those events.” The album re-purposed 90s flavoured alternative rock for our turbulent times, meaty power chords and swaggering percussion laying the groundwork for vocals that have a shade of the David Bazan about them.

My favourite track on the album, ‘Wait Up’has recently been given the video treatment, starring the band’s pups Dookie and Wheezy. It’s a perfect opportunity to catch up if you haven’t heard it already, the smoldering 90s vibes eventually erupting in a crescendo of feedback-drenched guitar and pummeled drums. Check it out below.

You can get Move On now from The By Gods Bandcamp page.

Sun June – Young

It’s not often bands form in snatched moments of free time while working in the editing rooms of world famous directors, but Sun June (apparently) did just that. Laura Colwell and Stephen Salisbury put the long hours to good use, consolidating their ‘regret pop’ sound with a varying band that has now settled into a quintet. Lead single ‘Young’ offers a glimpse into retrospective heartbreak of their debut LP, Years—a release described as a “we’ve-been-broken-up-a-long-time” record. This is staring back in time not to find answers or cast blame, but instead for the fleeting chance to warm your face on the now lost glow of past love.

Years is to be released this June on Keeled Scales, and you can pre-order it now.

Queen of Jeans – U R My Guy

Taking inspiration from the 60s girl group sound, but finding its portrayal of women problematic, Philadelphia’s Queen of Jeans wrote ‘U R My Guy’ to turn gender norms on their head. As such, the track manages to both embrace the girl group aesthetic while subverting the facets that now prove outdated and/or misogynistic, enabling it to transcend any preconceptions of the genre. Indeed, the entire album, Dig Yourself, is a lesson in balancing style and meaning, former a strong reminder that sweet pop music does not have to be all sugar and no substance.

Dig Yourself is out now via Topshelf Records and you can snag it from Bandcamp.

VedeTT – It Seems To Be Natural

Hailing from Angers in France, VedeTT make a moody brand of dream pop driven by a dark energy and assertive drums. Single ‘It Seems to be Natural’ sets out their style perfectly, with the melancholic vocals undercut by a glowering, unstable vibe that adds something of a dangerous dimension. The track builds in momentum across its run time, but the vocals never quite break their hazy wrapping, meaning that the whole thing maintains an oneiric strangeness.

Losing All is out now on Echo Orange and you can find out more here.

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— Big Thief, ‘Mary’

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few months (or even years), chances are you’ve come across someone swooning over Big Thief. The band, led by Adrianne Lenker, released their sophomore album, Capacity, earlier this year, and it is an utterly breathtaking. It’s music that sits at a crossroads between a whole variety of genres. Part Angel Olsen left-field folk, part honest-to-goodness country, part good ol’ indie rock, Big Thief manage to create something with grit, feeling, and above all a beguiling sense of narrative.

Opener ‘Pretty Things’ is both seductive and sad, the vocals curling around the acoustic guitar like smoke from a burning ember. It’s our first taste of Lenker’s ability to paint vivid pictures with careful and often beautiful phrases, spare lines that are loaded with tension and allusion, an intense sexuality, a sense of danger or trauma, and the crushing weight of one’s past. The track is concerned with communicating pain and violence, or else transferring it blindly, casting each person as donor and receiver, capable both of offloading their pent up emotions and swallowing them. And, despite being told through the gender-reinforcing imagery of sex, the narrator works to muddy the traditional narrative of masculine and feminine, allowing both characters to be rough and animal, vulnerable and alive. In doing so the track transcends the moment, becoming something more complex and long lasting. Indeed, the entire record could be described along similar terms, refusing to be cast as feminine delicacy or masculine intensity, instead weaving these two strands into a tightly wound double helix—the Big Thief DNA.

“Don’t take me for a fool.
There’s a woman inside of me
there’s one inside of you, too.
And she don’t always do
pretty things”

Like a great short story, ‘Shark Smile’ seems to be over too soon, despite the fact it’s almost four minutes long. Emerging from a tangle of guitar and scattered drums, the steady beat of the song proper arrives with an unassuming sense of confidence. The tale it tells is not a happy one, beginning with the thrill of two lovers’ escape in the night, “howling through the edge of south Des Moines”, and ending in a brutal collision with the guard rail. The kicker lies in the chorus, what initially seems like a vow of devotion, turns out to be final words and the survivor pleading to follow into the afterlife. “And she said woo, baby, take me,” Lenker sings. “And I said woo, baby, take me too.”

The track is deceptively simple, but holds a rare mix of catchiness and rich emotion that marks the second triumph of Big Thief’s sound. These are stories propelled by the energy within their flow, as though its characters and the very world they inhabit are born of language and not vice versa, scenes conjured through cadence as though through spell or incantation. The title track  follows such an idea, pitching Lenker as a conduit for these flows rather than a conscious writer.

The push and pull of love is again the main theme on ‘Watering’, with aggression and tenderness tangled into one messy knot, while ‘Coma’, sounds like it’s been beamed straight from For Emma era Bon Iver, glistening with a so-far unseen gentleness. Something of this delicacy follows onto ‘Great White Shark’, though beneath the hushed vocals and skittish percussion lies a dark figure that threatens to descend into frenzy.

This is followed by the wonderfully syrupy and sad, ‘Mythological Beauty’, spinning stories of Lenker’s young mother struggling to raise her children. It’s one of those songs that captures you with its melody, that works its way into your brain and lies dormant, only revealing its texture and richness after repeated listens. For this reason it’s the perfect illustration of what Big Thief do so well, and why Capacity is one of the most striking albums of the year. Again the lyrics seem to flow through rather than from Lenker, the songwriter channelling voices beyond herself to tell the story that shapes her own. At once instance, her composure threatens to break, the desperation palpable as she recounts a scene from her childhood, as though the remnants of her mother’s now possess her own body. “You held me in the backseat with a dishrag,” Lenker sings, referencing an accident with a railroad spike she suffered as a child. “Soaking up blood with your eye / I was just five and you were twenty-seven / praying, ‘Don’t let my baby die.'”

If ‘Objects’ and ‘Haley’ are more meandering, likewise closer ‘Black Diamonds’ with it’s classic folk imagery of eyes and tears and whippoorwills, then it’s only a sign of the calm circumscribing the majestic ‘Mary’. Ringing out in a cathedral-like near silence, gentle piano acts to tether the fluid cadences of Lenker’s vocals, which unfurl like a magician’s silk scarves, a perpetual unravelling shaped by a poetic, negentropic logic. Once more, it is as though the meaning is summoned from the words themselves, something in the syllabic arrangement dragging stories and emotions into our world from somewhere else entirely. Lenker’s gift is her ability to recognise the strange, innate forces within language, surrender to them, and present them back to us with a crystal-clear clarity.  “Do what you want with me,” as she sings on the title track. “Lost in your captivity. / Learning capacity.”

Capacity is out now via Saddle Creek and you can buy it from the Big Thief Bandcamp page.

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