This phenomenon is central to Somethinghood. Present in the desert sky of opener ‘Sorbet’, or a kitchen’s steam and sunlight in ‘Heaven’. And furthermore it’s used as the foundation for more philosophical musings. Take ‘Museum of Light’, a track which uses the underappreciated miracle of hot water as the basis for metaphysical contemplations, and comes to find beauty and sustenance in everything. “My sink spills god when I run the faucet,” Lerman sings. “Hot water holy father I’m coming back to life.”

I saw bankers buying flowers
And babies clutching fingers
Of mothers who weren’t always
But forever now shall be
I saw Catholics praying
Buddhists meditating
Atheists existing
And that’s proof enough for me

Which isn’t to say there’s no unease in the songs. ‘Jenny When the Blues‘ is marked by a tangible loneliness, ‘Motion Sickness’ by a premature mourning, and the striking ‘Frankie is Alive’ is entirely balanced on the knife-edge of mortality. However, what darkness there is on the record only serves to highlight the delights it holds too, as though life’s ephemeral nature is an inherent part of its joys. ‘Frankie Alive’ is the perfect example, a strikingly fond track which charts the life of dog against a backdrop of news both brutal and banal. Bushfires in the outback, dolphins in the canals of Venice, Ozzy Osbourne opening a chain a gothic BBQ restaurants. The news grows increasingly astounding as the song develops, from extraterrestrial contact to the separation of the soul from the body, all while the titular hero outlives science and expectation.

On the day Frankie turned 30
She became the first dog to ever turn 30
And above packed arena seating
She was knighted in front of a crowd of one billion

The contrast of catastrophes and miracles is typical of Somethinghood, even if the miracles are not always as obvious as Frankie’s. “The world you know is ending / You can feel it in the quiet,” goes ‘Big Hole in the Sky’, “in the junkyard breeding lightyears / of upturned cars on fire.” But against the apocalyptic imagery, the track operates on another plane. The ground level existence, a sense of love persevering against everything else. The song, and indeed the album as a whole, not only serves as a confrontation of our unravelling world, but also the near divine moments of peace we might still find within it.

Somethinghood is out now and available from the A Box of Stars Bandcamp page.

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Clever Girls recently unveiled a brand new single from the album. Titled ‘Baby Blue’, the song dials back the raucous bite of ‘Spark’ in favour of raw sentiment. Jean says it’s “about the absolute euphoria that occurs when love and emotional safety are reciprocated in the face of loneliness,” and the track glides effortlessly between a sense of solitude and one of connection. Subtle guitars sparkle and swirl like thoughts in the quiet of an empty room, while the beat that kicks in after the chorus sounds uncannily like the intimate thump of a human pulse.

‘Baby Blue’ was initially written three years ago, but wasn’t recorded until early 2020. It has since taken on renewed meaning, recalling what Jean describes as “the darkest days of the pandemic” in the spring of 2020. “I spent all of May, while Vermont was still very much on lockdown, in complete isolation with the exception of my cat,” they explain. “It was exactly the type of experience that the song was born out of in the first place—feeling isolated, and cut off from the world even when it was still turning—if not on fire—outside of my door.”

Constellations is out on 20th February on Egghunt Records and you can pre-order it now from the Clever Girls Bandcamp page.

Cover photo by Kay Dargin

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However, after a two-song demo release last year, wished bone are back with their debut full-length, cellar belly. The album is also a debut of sorts for Human Noise Records, it being the first full-length release from the new project of Tom Johnson of GoldFlakePaint. The partnership seems a perfect one—an eternal champion of independent music working with a band operating outside of the industry’s demand for constant attention—and for all the ills and complications, such a thing highlights the positive ties that can develop from the internet’s hold on music. A kind of cross-pollination between two passionate camps, their ideas blown by the winds of the internet to meet by happy chance, and thereafter growing into something bigger and stronger.

The botanical theme is apt in more ways than one, as wished bone’s Ashley studied plant biology, and indeed something about the atmosphere and style of cellar belly has a natural, almost ecological feel. Which is to say, this is a record crafted out of a thousand separate elements that pull together in harmony—an ecosystem of drum track beats and lo-fi lilts and a diversity of guitar sounds ranging from laid-back to melancholic. This dreamy environment is populated by snatches of vocals, the forthright, intimate delivery belying the often strange and poetic lyrics. As such, the vocals feel less like a direct communication and more some interior musing, the condensed language of true sentiments that might evaporate when constructed into full sentences. Take opener ‘reasons’ as an example:

love untouched is the sun at dusk
on my windowsill
and light on the snow has an ominous glow
her hair is tangled still

The result is a record where all emotions can be explored, and the mood and tone can change without warning. However, rather than feeling jarring or volatile, this inconsistency only adds to the organic aesthetic. The lazy tropical shuffle of ‘reasons’ leads into the electrically-charged ‘yellowstoned’, before the rich depth of ‘hubbub’ emerges like a new morning, a newfound brightness unfurling itself across the scene. Likewise, the off-kilter brood of ‘yellow bird’ paves the way for the upbeat rhythm of ‘pollinate me’, a track no less strange but altogether more positive. The song is a great example of the wished bone lyrical style, the language odd yet more precise for it, conjuring lives both inside and out in all their idiosyncrasy.

little spiders build entire worlds
would you like to meet the love of mine?
he stands about a storey high
his eyes are blue like little butterflies

when you came to town you made me shake
made me think about mistakes I’ve made
could you tell me why you’ve got no shoes?
is there something i can do for you?

i’m a flower and you are a bee
why won’t you pollinate me?

The acoustic strum of ‘seed’ pushes as far toward traditional folk as anything on the record, though breaks down into something closer to Daniel Johnston around the midpoint, an analogue roughness trumped by the vivid ‘spring time lover’. This is followed by ‘pat’, a rhythmic and playful song that crests and crashes along with Ashley’s clear-eyed pledge (“someday soon, i’ll find you”), before the empty-house stillness of ‘two floors’ bubbles into life and shows off an ethereal sort of eccentricity. All that is left then is closer ‘ohio’, as vibrant and clear as anything cellar belly has to offer, where even the imperfections seem to further the sense of clarity and cohesion.

Which seems pertinent for the record as a whole. Whatever quirky oddities are on show, no matter how often the pace or tone switches onto another track, the album never loses a sense of natural progression, as though a functioning world of it’s own. Think of cellar belly as a habitat moulded by external pressures, its shape and colour and form reacting to conditions around it, though adapting and changing to persevere. To be alive.

cellar belly is out now via Human Noise Records and you can get it via Bandcamp, including on cassette.

Photo by Joshua Cobos

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The band have unveiled a single from the EP, ‘Slow Dark Water’, which sees the return of the gloriously sloppy rock that Furnsss purvey. However, this time the vocals are elevated from the fuzz, no longer submerged in indifference but placed front and centre. The track gradually gathers in pace and energy and by the halfway point you feel as though you are aboard a runaway train, the inevitable smash-up dropping just after the two-minute mark as the track descends into a cacophony of drums and some pretty mean guitar work.

Stay tuned to 80N7 for further details on the EP!

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