But there’s a playfulness too, a warm lilt which lingers long after its close and becomes the lasting impression. It has something to do with Alex Heane’s bass, the gentle clarinet flourishes of Emma Gatrill, the subtle, patient percussion of Rob Pemberton and above all Parrish’s vocals, which seem to emanate from a bygone era with their timeless pastoral folk spirit.

Pluto will be released on 2nd December via Chiverin and you can pre-order a copy now from the Maja Lena Bandcamp page. Maja Lena also has a run of UK live dates in early 2023. Check them out below:

26 Jan – The Cornish Bank, Falmouth
27 Jan – Louisiana, Bristol
28 Jan – Heartbreakers, Southampton
30 Jan – The Hope & Ruin, Brighton
31 Jan – Ramsgate Music Hall, Ramsgate
1 Feb – The Slaughtered Lamb, London
3 Feb – Headrow House, Leeds
4 Feb – Surf Cafe, Newcastle
5 Feb – The Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh
6 Feb – The Hug & Pint, Glasgow
8 Feb – Sidney & Matilda, Sheffield
9 Feb – Bodega, Nottingham

Photo by Martha Webb

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Following on from the exquisite Skulls Example back in 2018, Dear Nora returns with new record human futures this autumn on Orindal Records. Lead single ‘Scrolls of Doom’ is every bit as idiosyncratic and inventive as the rest of Katy Davidson’s work. A view of the world from an oblique angle which somehow better portrays its folly and wonder. “I make billions in seconds flat / and I stuff it under my cowboy hat,” Davidson sings, deadpan. “Yeah, you punk me and I’m perplexed / but we all know what happens next.” A time capsule of a specific period, a prophecy of what’s to come. The human futures, here and now.

Eliza Edens – Westlawn Cemetery

Back in August we wrote about ‘I Needed You‘, the lead single from Eliza Edens‘s forthcoming release, We’ll Become the Flowers. “A meditation on the strangeness of an aftermath,” as we put it, “when nothing is as it used to feel and anger and longing are impossible split.” The latest track from the album, ‘Westlawn Cemetery’ balances fond visions of the past and concerns about the future through its titular location. A scene of familiarity from childhood nevertheless loaded with themes of death and change. The permanence of the headstones representing the ephemeral nature of life.

Hallelujah The Hills – God Is So Lonely Tonight

Back in July, Boston favourites Hallelujah The Hills released their first single since 2019’s I’m You with ‘Superglued to You’, a track of open hearts and racing momentum bound together by Ryan Walsh’s ever-inventive lyricism. Brand new single ‘God Is So Lonely Tonight’ pushes further onto this ground, albeit this time concerning a different relationship and with a more reflective, wry tone. But as the song develops so too does the energy underpinning it, contemplation transformed into conviction as another shout-a-long chorus arrives. “And you know he don’t even know my name / But he needs me, he needs me, he needs me all just the same,” Walsh sings. “You know that God is / God is / God is / so lonely tonight.”

‘God Is So Lonely Tonight’ is out now and available from the Hallelujah the Hills Bandcamp page.

Hunting – Piano Fire

Vancouver duo Hunting have announced their brand new LP, You’ve Got Love (But it Even Tears You Apart), will be released via Nevado Music this autumn, and have unveiled a cover of Sparklehorse‘s ‘Piano Fire’ by way of introduction. Released to coincide with Mark Linkous’s sixtieth birthday, their take captures both the energy and strangeness of the original, and the stop-motion video created by Hunting’s own Jessicka Lynne at Field and Glass Studio only pushes further into the track’s surreal nature.

You’ve Got Love (But it Even Tears You Apart) is out on the 11th November via Nevado Music.

JPW – Wealth of the Canyon

What better schooling can there be in music than consistently talking to the best? As the writer and host behind the ever-present Aquarium Drunkard, Jason Woodbury has had the opportunity to do just that, and his debut solo record Something Happening / Always Happening, out now on Fort Lowell Records, suggests he has been taking notes. Under the moniker JPW, Woodbury creates songs dialled in to both the surrounding landscape and the mystical dimensions above and beyond it. Classic cosmic folk rock which might well beam you up, if only to get a better look at the world below. Take single ‘Wealth of the Canyon’, its sound rich and enveloping, its easy rhythms so laidback as to be practically horizontal. But within the warmth lies something mysterious, something quite possibly sublime. A cloaked thing which you can only hope to catch in glances as time goes by.

Maripool – This Time Again

The moniker of Lisbon-born, London-based artist Natasha Simões, Maripool offers a brand of bedroom pop equal parts bright and moody. Released via Practice Music, new single ‘This Time Again’ captures the balance perfectly, with a certain tension between the easy-going instrumentation and Simões vocals. A juxtaposition caught in the lyrics, where the ostensibly frolicsome nature of the song is undermined by a shadowy edge. Something sinister lurking just beneath the surface.

And I get to see you when I see you
And I knew you were the one
To say I could see it in your eyes
With all of your lies

And I’d like to see you cry
And I’d like to see you die

Pony Girl – Running in Circles

Ahead of their new LP Enny One Will Love You on Paper Bag Records, Ottawa-Hull-based outfit Pony Girl have shared their latest offering, ‘Running in Circles’. A slow-burning pop number which slowly unravels into something more chaotic as another crushingly mundane day in work pushes the narrator to the brink. The song comes with a suitably cinematic video produced by K Collective in association with Dan Rascal & Cloud in the Sky, directed and edited by Dom Llanos with director of photography Santiago Trugeda. A flash horror movie which captures the enmeshed relationship between deadening boredom and overwhelming anger. Check it out below:

Enny One Wil Love You is out on the 14th October via Paper Bag Records and you can pre-order it now.

Sarah La Puerta – A Gun

Artist, musician and calligrapher Sarah La Puerta embraces the in-between. Be it the spaces between artforms, between places themselves, or the metaphysical gap between so-called reality and everything else. It’s fitting then that debut album Strange Paradise, released last year on Perpetual Doom, started in Austin and finished in upstate New York, and took on a whole world of inspiration to inform its search for paradise in the smallest, strangest gaps of life. La Puerta has recently unveiled a new video for single the ‘A Gun’, where director Christopher Michael Hefner further excavates the record’s surreal and elusive spirit, ensuring the search continues on.

Strange Paradise is out now and available via Bandcamp.

Shalom – DTAP

Ahead of a debut album scheduled for sometime in 2023 on Saddle Creek, Brooklyn‘s Shalom has unveiled new single, ‘DTAP’. Packaged together with a cover of Hovvdy‘s ‘True Love’, the single offers an unabashedly upbeat vision of love. A breathless and overwhelming experience unique to those early, giddy days. As Shalom explains, the song is about “dreaming of someone and the magic that happens when you don’t really care where or when as long as the who is right, the right person.” And it rings true even if real life experiences didn’t quite line up at the time of recording. “Even though I was in the midst of processing my big breakup, there’s something so pure about that song so the joy prevails,” Shalom continues. “Joy prevails, different time, any place.”

DTAP / True Love is out now via Saddle Creek.

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US-born, Sydney-based songwriter Ainsley Farrell is set to release her album Dirt later this year, and new single ‘The Way Back’ gives an indication of what is to come. With its careful yet constant rhythm, the song faces up to suffering with a steely determination, urging anyone struggling to hold on a little longer until the clouds begin to break. Farrell wrote the song while a close friend experienced a difficult period, channelling her feelings of futility at being unable to help from a distance into a kind of promise. An insistence that things will not always be this way. “This song is metaphorically holding her in the light, holding some of that pain for her,” as Farrell puts it. “Until she’s ready to put one foot in front of the other and realize it’s worth sticking it out in this world.”

Attia Taylor – S/T

Out next month via Lame-O Records, Space Ghost is the debut album of songwriter and activist Attia Taylor. Taking it’s name from the absurd Hanna-Barbera cartoon, the record draws upon childhood memories within its psych-inflected style, taking the best and worst of the past in order to craft the possibility of healing in the present. The title track is a great entry point, its lush 60s aesthetic populated by Taylor’s confident delivery, though beneath the florid surface lies something more uncertain as she explores her relationship with her mother and their hit-and-miss attempts at connection.

The Burning Hell – The Last Normal Day

Garbage Island. No, it’s not the new official title of the United Kingdom but the forthcoming album by Canadian outfit The Burning Hell on BB*Island. Led by songwriter Mathias Kom along with with multi-instrumentalists Ariel Sharratt and Jake Nicoll and a variety of rotating guests, the band make everything from tongue-in-cheek anti-folk to racing indie rock. Latest single ‘The Last Normal Day’ sees the likes of Nick Ferrio join the gang to weave a bright and mischievous ode to a pre-apocalyptic world. A track which might be terrifying if it wasn’t so much fun.

Watching things get destroyed, a
Brand new schadenfreude
Crept into our conversations
And our dreams

Garbage Island is out on the 24th June via BB Island and you can pre-order it now.

dampsquib – a new slice of pie

The moniker of Brighton born multi-instrumentalist Matt Farrugia, dampsquib takes a heap of experience working in ambient, art rock and pop styles and combines into its own singular entity. His forthcoming EP is described as a “smorgasbord of musical ideas,” refusing to sit still in any one genre in its quest for experimental and improvisational sounds, and single ‘a new slice of piece’ gives one example of what such a process might sound like. Ambient Rhodes and piano lines coalesce with Farrugia’s vocals, the looping Wurlitzer supported by drums run through a tape machine to achieve that trademark 90s texture.

Doll Spirit Vessel – Train Brain Rot

“Write another half song / Grief under a summer sun,” opens ‘Train Brain Rot by Kati Malison’s Doll Spirit Vessel project. “Dead flies in the candle crater / Promised that I’d call you later / But I’m not me, this is a shell of someone.” The lead single from debut album What Stays which is coming later this summer on Disposable America, the song hints at both the band’s wry humour and questioning tone, the slacker-esque sound refusing to settle for easy comforts even as it invites identity crises to the door. Check out the video directed by Jon Cox and Kati Malison below:

What Stays is out on the 12th August via Disposable America and you can pre-order it now from Bandcamp.

elison – Covered Me

Writing about single ‘Hopes & Horoscopes‘ back in January, we described the work of Des Moines duo Elison as “distinctive balance between tender emotion and gauzy soundscapes” which the band used to “confront bad habits and vices, from mourning unrealised dreams to becoming lost in superstition or introspection.” New single ‘Covered Me’ adds a sense of momentum to the style, the insistent drums evoking a certain tension as elison chart a troubled relationship with a narcissistic partner.

You’re the reason I don’t trust myself
With me you’re someone else
Nothing you say is true
Cause you want everyone to love you

Frank Meadows – Dead Weight

To call Frank Meadows’s forthcoming record Dead Weight a country album is both entirely fitting and slightly reductive, drawing as it does from a rich array of influences scattered across the American continent. Out next month on Ruination Record Co., the release sees the Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist look to the various stops of his past in order to more fully realise the current moment, stringing the pearls together with a palpable momentum which gives the whole thing an affirming air. The title track is as good an introduction as any, full of the warmth and self-reflection with marks the record thanks to Meadows’s piano-led style and contributions from the likes of Michael Cormier O’Leary, Oliver Kalb and Winston Cook-Wilson.

Maja Lena – No More Flowers

Ahead of forthcoming album Pluto on Chiverin Records, Maja Lena has shared brand new single, ‘No More Flowers’. With bucolic folk and cosmic synth sounds, the song explores the way in which friendships can change or end, and acknowledges that sometimes it is better to walk away rather than try to resuscitate something outside of your control. Like much of the record, imagery and ideas are drawn from fictional sources, in this case a particular branch of animation. “I’d been re-watching Studio Ghibli films at the time and fell in love with some of the earlier heavily synth driven soundtracks,” Lena explains. “I liked the idea of some the parts sounding like creatures from another world in conversation with each other, which Rob [Pemberton] managed to emulate better than I could imagine.” Check out Martha Webb’s video below:

Pluto is out via Chiverin Records on the 18th November. You can buy the single via Bandcamp.

Maya Lucia – sleepy baby club

We first covered Maya Lucia with the release of lashing out back in 2019, an EP which signalled a pivot from love ballads into rambunctious garage rock. New record miss girl world builds upon these foundations, again channelling the mischief and exaggerated pain of youth into something full of both fun and heart. Described as “an internal dialogue of growing up and moving on,” single ‘sleepy baby club’ song faces a decidedly pessimistic present without losing hope of something better just over the hill, all delivered with an infectious pop rock bounce.

Touch the Clouds – Feeling Light

With members of Few and Far Between, King For A Day, Lovesick, and others, Touch the Clouds is something of a Detroit scene supergroup. With equal parts pop and punk, the band combine the energy of post-hardcore with the invention of space rock, allowing infectious harmonies and vast ambient textures to coexist with the same song. Take ‘Feeling Light’, the first track from a forthcoming Touch the Clouds album, a song full of impassioned energy and left-field turns which combines emo earnestness with a transportive atmosphere.

I’m feeling light
floating right
in tune with ultraviolet I’m set free

TOLEDO – L-Train

New York‘s TOLEDO have released brand new single ‘L-Train’ with Grand Jury Music, a track which finds Dan Álvarez de Toledo and Jordan Dunn-Pilz confront the struggles of living and creating within the contemporary moment. ‘L-Train’ was “written at a low point for the both of us,” the band explain. “We had just moved to Bushwick and started playing shows every week. We were drinking and partying and losing sight of ourselves.” The age-old paradox of the touring musician, where a career expressing yourself can turn upside down, pushing the truth further away.

each morning I wake up
the headache
the shape of release still far from my doorbell
and I don’t wanna do this anymore
i wanna know me better

Check out the animated video by Kohana Wilson below:

‘L-Train’ is out now via Grand Jury Music and is available from the TOLEDO Bandcamp page.

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