Now recording under her own name, Steph Green has unveiled Thanks for That, her debut full-length album to be released early next year on Mashed Potato Records. Described as “a concise, seven-track kaleidoscope,” the album casts an even wider net in search of influences, juxtaposing loud and quiet styles to bring Green’s ambiguous moods into relief. Nineties revival distortion accompanies the lush sincerity of contemporary folk, while elements of dream pop and classic surf rock swirl around the Gothic/noir-ish country tones established on Spooky Love. A sound at once empowered and vulnerable, capable of both confrontation and escape.

First single ‘Night Falls’ very much leaned into the country side of this style, but the latest track ‘Next Place’ shows off another dimension to the sound. With the dense haziness of the guitars playing off again the soft croon of the Steph Green’s vocals, the song highlights the album’s loud-quiet dynamic, and the gradual ebb and flow conjures a certain ethereality. A dreaminess evoked in the lyrics too, drawing the listener toward the titular next place.

Check out the stop-motion video directed and edited by Green herself:

Thanks for That will be released via Mashed Potato Records on the 14th January. Keep an eye on the Steph Green Bandcamp page for updates.

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Max and the Martians have now released Please Hold On/Love On Vacation, a 7” single consisting of two songs that will be featured on their next full-length album. “It was late spring, it was hot. We would take breaks to let the tape machines cool down, and had to record overdubs with the lights out to avoid the termite swarm in the evening,” Bien-Kahn explains of the recording process. “Duff Thompson, Ross Farbe, and Carver Baronda, some of my favourite songwriters, were playing on this session. We worked on this song all day and we got some really nice results thanks to everybody who was in that room and those magic old reel-to-reels that Mashed Potato Records is known for.”

A-side ‘Please Hold On’ is a smooth shuffle of a track coloured by loss and the passing of time, the gentle country spirit lending that quiet sadness so intrinsic to the genre “[‘Please Hold On’] is a love song to everything we lose,” Bien-Kahn says. “I wrote the lyrics years ago when my grandpa was struggling with Alzheimers, but the song didn’t take form until recently. When loss and grief found me, I rediscovered this song and it took on new life.”

In contrast, ‘Love on Vacation’ is an impish ode to summer dreaming, taking a handful of country rock and a handful of 60s surf to create something warm and glittering. There’s a sense the whole thing is more of a fantasy than a reality, an escape into a place or time where the edges of life are sanded down and our wishes might just come true.

Album artwork by Magda Boreysza

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Blood Warrior – Wooden Shade
Rosie Tucker – How Sad, How Lovely (Connie Converse cover)
Fran – Company
JAYA – Learn To Swim
Taylor Hamilton – What Is Real?
Carver Baronda – If Nothing Else Comes Along
Rose Dorn – Deathwish
Milly – Crazy Horse
Guidon Bear – Washing Machine
Joey Nebulous – Pride Month
Dorio – Shortcuts
Special Friend – Before
Sarah Pagé – Lithium Taper
Old Amica – Condensation
Blushing – Dream Merchants
Patient Hands – Stasis
Bryce Kepner – Chances
Jake Bellissimo – why fit? (Jordaan Mason cover)

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The haunted shuffle of opening track ‘If Nothing Else Comes Along’ lives up to the EP’s title, lap steel providing a nostalgic air and the track’s steady skip steeped in sadness. Baronda’s vocals are certain yet slightly removed, emerging from within the track, as though the whole thing is being playing over speakers from another age entirely.

With Baronda’s strong, ominous writing and delivery, ‘Devotion’ comes from a similar stable to Claire Cronin‘s Big Dread Moon, though where Cronin borrows from the stark gothic branch of traditional folk, Carver Baronda is more indebted to country rock. There’s a warmer, wistful air here, though this does not restrict the unsettling tone, a pervasive sense of weirdness shot through the track that lifts it into a Southern Gothic territory.

Spooky Love will be released on the 18th October and you can pre-order it from the Carver Baronda Bandcamp page.

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