The resulting release is both consistently beautiful and uniquely equipped to tackle the range of themes it wraps its arms around, lending near equal weight to the supporting artwork as it does the songs themselves. The style is introduced through the title track opener, where Constant Follower expound upon the maxim of the album’s name with their signature thoughtfulness and empathy. Utilising the tactile charms of plasticine stop-motion, animator, illustrator and puppeteer Emerson New breathes further humanity into the track.

Don’t forget what you said
The smile you send out returns to you

The rest of the record is just as attentive and complete, and each listener will likely have their own standouts. “Fingerpicked guitar evokes a searching emotional resonance, the track in many ways subdued but possessing a definite sense of power,” we wrote of ‘Whole Be’, “some charge in the vocals and harmonies lifting the otherwise grounded folk style towards something almost ethereal.” Again striking in its empathetic tone, the song details the contradiction inherent in the way we long for wholeness while acknowledging imperfection, forgoing the notion of completeness to instead champion the sense of meaning attained via perpetual striving. As though on some fundamental level, to be human is to be always wishing for something more. Watch the video directed by and starring Peter Lilly, Code Word Zebra below:

‘Almost Time To Go’ sees Andy Aquarius add harp, “crafting,” as we wrote in a preview, “a sound shadowy yet shot through with light, carrying a message of endurance in a typically compassionate manner,” while ‘All Is Well’ “mine[s] the title for all of its complications,” as we put it, “delving into the ways in which the contemporary reliance on comfort and convenience masks an ever-present dread below the surface of our society.” The latter, complete with its video filmed and directed by Kris Boyle, is an example of the real-life stories underpinning McAll’s work, the track dedicated to Jake ‘Taurus Mortimer’, a young person killed in the care of NHS Forth Valley Psychiatric services back in 2023.

“For an album which deals with such profound themes, it sounds disarmingly tranquil,” we wrote of Neither Is back in 2022. “But head more than an inch below the surface and darker waters lie. Because within the humble rhythm pull a variety of currents, conflicting forces which culminate in a sense of tension. A struggle between calmness and distress, between the real and imaginary, and indeed between the desire for and fear of such clear boundaries.” With The Smile You Send, Constant Follower don’t so much further their meditation on such themes as expand it, drawing a myriad of others into the work both in terms of the subject matter of the songs and the actual practical matter of their creation. The fact the release is no less heartfelt and intimate then its predecessors is a testament to McAll’s writing and the skill of his collaborators, but also, and perhaps most importantly, evidence that the convictions which underpin its every aspect bear fruit within the real world. The receptive soul will finds others and thereby comfort. The smile you send out returns to you.

The Smile You Send Out Returns To You is out now via Last Night From Glasgow and you can get it from the Constant Follower Bandcamp page.

Artwork by Heather Nevay, design by Timothy O’Donnell

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Toronto-based indie rock outfit Arenas are gearing up to the release of their debut full-length Truth Come Alive this spring, and new single ‘Quitting’ gives an indication of what to expect. Described by the band as “a snapshot of the fear associated with giving up on something,” the track uses a blend of playful energy and tangible weight to celebrate the cathartic joy of throwing in the towel. The result owes as much to acts like Pixies as it does contemporary post-punk, and packs a real punch with its sardonic charm. In a world of productivity and parasitic middle managers, giving up might be one of the last radical acts left available to us.

Brown Horse – Corduroy Couch

We featured Brown Horse‘s debut album Reservoir when writing about our favourite releases of 2024, praising their sometimes nostalgic, sometimes Gothic brand of folk rock. Maintaining the sense of momentum, the band are wasting no time with their second full-length, All the Right Weakness, which will be released this spring via Loose Music. Lead single ‘Corduroy Couch’ is available to listen to right now, a song which melds alt country and slacker rock to offer the same sense of sincerity, urgency, specificity and strangeness which marked the previous release.

We watched The Matrix on a corduroy couch
The smell of the ocean was drying on your skin
Your big retriever’s name was Hank
And I know I’ll miss him

The Burning Hell – Bottle of Chianti, Cheese And Charcuterie Board

Writing of the album Garbage Island back in 2023, we described how The Burning Hell lived up to their name, making “everything from tongue-in-cheek anti-folk to racing indie rock,” to offer “a bright and mischievous ode to a pre-apocalyptic world.” Coming soon via You’ve Changed Records and BB*ISLAND, the new Burning Hell album Ghost Palace continues this mission, albeit with the requisite correction that the world it is being released into is now comfortably mid-apocalypse. Single ‘Bottle of Chianti, Cheese And Charcuterie Board’ finds Mathias Kom, Ariel Sharratt and Jake Nicoll in a familiarly impish mood, pouring scorn on materialist bourgeois distractions with an oddball lyrical journey. Strangers named Jason, collectors of medieval swords, a Buddhist book club in the sky frequented by long-haired former tennis pros and part-time Rabbis. No, it’s not a new Pynchon novel. The Burning Hell are back.

Watch the video directed by Graeme Patterson below:

Ghost Palace is out on the 7th March via You’ve Changed Records and BB*ISLAND and you can pre-order it now.

Byland & The Bones of J.R. Jones – Jubilee

“Trac[es] the disappointment and exasperation loaded into any search for belonging, while arcing towards a sense of acceptance.” That’s how we described Heavy For A While, last year’s album by Albuquerque-born, Seattle-based artist Alie Renee Byland, AKA Byland, praising the release for its willing to allow “competing and seemingly contradictory emotions to occupy the same space.” With a tour with Deep Sea Diver on the horizon, Byland has teamed up The Bones of J.R. Jones for new single, ‘Jubilee’. It’s a duet that utilises the chemistry between the vocals to great effect, mining a sense of hushed intimacy in its slow bloom before the poignant drama of the weighty finale.

Constant Follower – Almost Time To Go

Towards the end of 2024, we introduced The Smile You Send Out Returns To You, the forthcoming album from Glasgow‘s Constant Follower, singles like ‘Whole Be‘ and ‘All Is Well‘ highlighting how the band have adopted a newly ethereal sound to explore a myriad of themes from parenthood to addiction and recovery. With the album’s spring release fast approaching, Constant Follower have unveiled new single, ‘Almost Time to Go’. Berlin’s Andy Aquarius adds harp, crafting a sound shadowy yet shot through with light, carrying a message of endurance in a typically compassionate manner.

The Coral Gables – Heavy Load

New York-based trio The Coral Gables have made a name combining country twang with good old fashioned rock and roll, not to mention a distinctively smart lyrical style. Latest single ‘Heavy Load’ is the perfect introduction for the uninitiated, bringing to life an existential wander around the streets of Washington DC by riffing on the Bob Dylan classic ‘Mississippi’. I’ve been through the wringer / I’ve been through hell,” lead Kenny Hoffman sings in the opening lines. “I’m walking through a city / That I used to know well.” The sound itself is full of warm country tones and easy-going confidence, yet Hoffman’s vocals carry a tangible edge. Something which sits at the intersection of desperation and wry fatalism, the voice of a man baffled by the world occurring all around him.

I’m doing what I can
Doing what I must
I’m serving my sentence
And the sentence was just
It’s not an undue burden
I’m reaping what I sowed
I’m carrying a heavy heavy heavy load

Dayydream – Fucked Up

Led by Glasgow-based visual artist and musician Chloe Trappes and featuring Loup Havenith (drums), Samuel Rafanell-Williams (lead guitar) and Dillon Salvi (bass guitar), Dayydream is a project which straddles shoegaze, slowcore and indie rock to create a sound both hazy and deep. Latest single ‘Fucked Up’ embodies this style, its title perhaps belying the song’s inviting warmth but describing its confessional tone to a tee, the sound suspended with a light mist yet not without its own internal force. The drums lead a gradual build across the track’s length, but any expectation of a shoegaze crescendo is unfounded, instead allowing a more understated, emotive air to be the lasting impression.

Molto Ohm – Sponsored #1

Molto Ohm is the new project from Italy-born, Brooklyn-based artist and composer Matteo Liberatore which examines the contemporary moment—where the rise of digital connection seems inversely proportional to relations within the physical world, and the fabric of society is changing if not disintegrating altogether. The electronic sound combines dance beats and shimmering melodies with vocal samples and environmental sounds, leading to something ostensibly intimate but ultimately alienating in its synthetic form. Ahead of debut album FEED on New Focus Recordings, single ‘Sponsored #1’ introduces the style. A track which “delves into the commodification of self-care,” as Liberatore describes, “where the quest for mental well-being is shaped by algorithms and consumer-driven promises of a better you.”

FEED is out on the 21st March via New Focus Recordings and you can pre-order it now.

Pink Must – Morphe Sun

Based on mutual genre-bending inclinations and a deepening chemistry, Pink Must is the new recording project of Brooklyn-based sound artists and musicians Mari ‘More Eaze’ Rubio and Lynn Avery. Forthcoming via 15 love, their self-titled debut is both something of an introduction and mission statement. It establishes an interplay between polish and dissonance, as well as an often wryly sardonic vocal style and conscious resistance to easy labelling at every turn. Take opening track ‘Morphe Sun’, a glitchy song Avery describes as “almost a remix of itself” which presents a vainglorious figure from the perspective of a friend who can’t help but find some part of their personality charming. “u hated the sunset / didn’t match the shade of the palette / u wore that day / could have been worse,” as the second verse goes. “reignited / the taste of smoke in teeth / gotta confess i kinda found it sweet.”

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Any new album from Advance Base is going to rank near the very top of our most anticipated of a given year, but the description of newly announced full-length Horrible Occurrences couldn’t be any more exciting. A record “all centered around a fictional town called Richmond and featuring an interlinked cast of characters,” as the press release explains. “You will hear stories of death and disappearance, climactic confrontations and unsolved mysteries.” Fans of the project will recognise songs like ‘Little Sable Point Lighthouse’ and ‘How You Got Your Picture on the Wall’, but new single ‘The Year I Lived in Richmond’ is what serves as an introduction to Owen Ashworth’s most conceptual release to date. A song which does more in three verses than the majority of published stories, and one which effortlessly displays Ashworth’s unrivalled ability to mine ostensibly ordinary lives for their brilliant slivers of heartbreak and strangeness.

Horrible Occurrences will be released on 6th December via Run For Cover and Orindal Records. Pre-order it now from the Advance Base Bandcamp page.

Anlaki – Escape ’til Dead

Based in Iruña-Pamplona, Spain, Anlaki is the bedroom music project of Julen Izkue which uses a classic DIY spirit to explore both the difficulties of adulthood and discomfort of modern life. Latest album Wind Call shows just how fun and inventive this lo-fi style can be, lovingly wrapping up a mix of slacker rock and power pop sensibilities in a warm blanket of fuzz. Single ‘Escape ’til Dead’ is the perfect example. The hazy tones are by no means a barrier to a sense of forward motion that propels things, the track embracing its title as a kind of motto to push itself onward with carefree brightness in spite of everything.

Constant Follower – All Is Well

Last month we introduced The Smile You Send Out Returns To You, the forthcoming album by Constant Follower via Last Night From Glasgow, with single ‘Whole Be’. A song about the contradiction inherent in the way we long for wholeness while acknowledging imperfection, the track not only introduced a newly ethereal sound for the outfit, but also furthered the visual element of their work through both cover art and video. Latest single ‘All Is Well’ is no different. Stephen McAll and co. mine the title for all of its complications, delving into the ways in which the contemporary reliance on comfort and convenience masks an ever-present dread below the surface of our society. It is notable that the band dedicate the song to Jake ‘Taurus Mortimer’, a young person killed in the care of NHS Forth Valley Psychiatric services back in 2023. Watch the video filmed and directed by Kris Boyle below:

The Smile You Send Out Returns To You will be released on the 28th February via Last Night From Glasgow.

The Convenience – Routiner

Duncan Troast and Nick Corson started The Convenience after meeting at Loyola University in New Orleans, using the project as a space in which to experiment within the wide genre of pop. Released in 2021 via Winspear, album Accelerator felt like the culmination of this practice, evolving the sound of their earlier releases towards its most vivid, far-reaching state. However, not satisfied to rest on their laurels, The Convenience are now pushing their boundaries again. New double single Routiner / Postcard sees the duo strike out towards a guitar-led art-rock which sits closer to the likes of Cate Le Bon and Parquet Courts. Take the first track, which is strung across a taut bassline but spins in various directions with a volatile twitching energy, capturing the push and pull of life, from deadening repetition to sharp alarm.

Routine / Postcard is out now via Winspear and available from Bandcamp.

Doctor Delia – What a Drag!!

“We literally had gendered uniforms,” explains Doctor Delia of growing up in suburban Tampa schools. “We were stuck in them like little toy soldiers. The whole time, or much of the whole time, I wanted to dress like a woman, or more feminine. Deep down I knew it felt good, and right for some reason, but there was so much shame around it.” New single ‘What a Drag!!’ serves as both a refutation of the strictures experienced during this time and a celebration of living as the person you truly are. “What a drag not to be yourself,” as the song goes, progressing with the kind of calm, assured rhythm that only comes with lessons learnt the hard way.

Holding Hour – Can I Leave Me Too?

‘Can I Leave Me Too?’, the latest track from Des Moines duo Holding Hour, is a lesson in juxtaposition. For while the song is set within the ostensibly celebratory, communal scene of a birthday party, the overriding mood is one of alienation and doubt. The sound itself follows a similarly contrasting style, its brooding undertones threatening to engulf the vocals as the percussion presses forward as though towards some imminent break or change. What results is a track full of conflict, between calmness and motion, darkness and light, not to mention that internal disquiet of a person coming to understand how they might be responsible for the less than perfect conditions of a relationship.

‘Can I Leave Me Too?’ is out now via streaming services.

Leoblu x World Wild Web – Utopia

Emerging from the heart of Berlin‘s underground music scene, ‘Utopia’ is a single which sees Leoblu and World Wild Web pair their styles into something at once ethereal and charged with vivid energy. We’ve written about the ambiguous and atmospheric sound of Julia Carlsson’s Leoblu several times in recent years, most recently with Blu Lucid Nightmare, and the addition of World Wide Web’s rhythms and beats pushes it into new territory—one still shadowed yet shot through with a kind of transcendent possibility. “’Utopia’ came from a deep place of questioning,” Carlsson explains, “both within myself and the world around us. It’s an emotional journey through grief, but also a declaration of hope, defiance and change.”

‘Utopia’ is out now via streaming services.

Melanie MacLaren – Laika

“The product of a period marked by experiences of grief, loss and illness, the new songs look to confront life in its truest state. To push beyond the myths we tell ourselves and look at mortality with a clear gaze.” So we wrote last month of the forthcoming release from  Nashville singer-songwriter Melanie MacLaren. New single ‘Laika’ is no less direct in its focus, using the tragic story of the titular Soviet space dog as a way into humanity’s propensity to exploit the vulnerable more generally, and how the powerful continue to disregard the rights and dignity of everyone else. The result is a lesson in restraint, though beneath the slow, soft folk style is a vast chasm of anger at everything we have done and continue to do.

‘Laika’ is out now and available from the usual places.

This Frontier Needs Heroes – Truck Driver

Writing back in July, we described Brad Lauretti of This Frontier Needs Heroes as “a folk artist in the traditional sense, wandering and entertaining audiences with equal parts playfulness, protest and heartbreak while always pining for places left in the rear view mirror.” Inspired by a period driving an RV across America for another artist’s tour, latest single ‘Truck Driver’ leans into this spirit more fully, injecting a sense of constant momentum to the folk rock style to equate the life of a touring musician with that of a long-haul driver. “I got to live the life of a truck driver for a few weeks,” as Lauretti says, “driving all night, sleeping in the cab, eating in gas stations, with all the crazy things that happened along the way.”

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With the album set for release in February 2025 via Last Night From Glasgow, the band have returned with brand new track, ‘Whole Be’. “It’s about exploring the paradox of seeking ‘wholeness’ while acknowledging our inherent imperfections,” as McAll describes. “It resonates with the idea that our efforts to achieve completeness are what define us at a basic level, even if the end goal remains elusive.” Fingerpicked guitar evokes a searching emotional resonance, the track in many ways subdued but possessing a definite sense of power. Some charge in the vocals and harmonies lifting the otherwise grounded folk style towards something almost ethereal.

As ever with Constant Follower, the music is accompanied by a strong visual element too, from Heather Nevay’s artwork to the video directed by and starring Peter Lilly, Code Word Zebra. “I think the video offers a poignant narrative in reverse,” McAll explains:

It shows a man cycling through a sequence of events that undo a potential future of despair. It ends at the beginning, staring straight into the eyes of the protagonist as he experiences a powerful moment of clarity, symbolising the realisation of the fork in the road that he’s on. It’s a story of reversing the path to catastrophe and finding hope in such moments of clarity.

The Smile You Send Out Returns To You is coming soon.

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Back in May we wrote about Turn Around For Me / See You Soon, the new double single from Glasgow‘s Constant Follower ahead of their anticipated second album The Smile You Send Out Returns To You, coming early next year via Last Night From Glasgow. “[Stephen] McAll and co. breathe extra life into the arrangement,” we wrote of ‘Turn Around For Me’, “and the song swells with an affirming rhythm which tips it towards indie rock territory.” The follow-up ‘See You Soon’ is no different. A continuation of the band’s exploration of memory which draws on the concept of saudade—the nostalgic longing for some absent person or thing—the song captures a picture of everyday life as haunted by a missing piece. Something which can never be resolved, a wound which will go on hurting.

Jordan Whitlock, Memory Spells – Heaven and Here

Back in February, we wrote about the collaboration between songwriter/producer Jordan Whitlock and Matt Bauer‘s Memory Spells, describing single ‘Take My Hand’ as “Suffused with the lush, shadowy grandeur of Lynch at his most romantic.” Now the duo have returned with a brand new single ‘ Heaven and Here’, another impressively atmospheric piece of cinematic pop music. Combining ambient and classical elements with Whitlock’s piercingly poignant vocals, it has all the drama and aching emotion of a tragedy. Sombre strings ache and sway over glitchy atmospherics and the muted thump of percussion as Whitlock delivers lyrics that possess a spare and opaque poetry.

Wildflowers bloom
Bend toward the sun
I follow you out through the waves
Nothing between
Heaven and here
Only the words I couldn’t say

‘Heaven and Here’ is out now via streaming services.

Lutalo – Ocean Swallows Him Whole

Following on from 2023’s AGAIN, a record which explored the various forms of oppression woven through our societies, Lutalo is returning this September with debut full-length The Academy on Winspear. Described as a time capsule of lessons learnt in their first chapter of life, the album sees the Vermont-based singer-songwriter delve into their past and invite the audience along for the ride. Single ‘Ocean Swallows Him Whole’ uses the doomed figure of Icarus to capture the peaks and troughs of this journey, drawing an energizing momentum from adrenaline rush, even if it comes from a fall.

Watch the video by director, cinematographer and editor Rich Smith below:

The Academy is out on the 20th September via Winspear and you can pre-order it now.

 Melanie MacLaren – Heaven Is

A song she says is “about a lot of the myths and imagery we’re fed about the afterlife,” ‘Heaven Is’ is the latest single from Nashville singer songwriter Melanie MacLaren. Delivered in an easy country-pop style and with equal helpings of bittersweet feeling and wry humour, it combines existential musings with observations altogether more terrestrial. So heaven becomes both “a place up in the air” filled with lost loved ones and something in the here and now, like “sipping beer in folding chairs,” or “eating fruit straight off the vine.” “[‘Heaven Is’] is about the experience of how deconstructing those myths leads to reality check that we really have no idea what happens,” MacLaren describes, “besides that we leave, and everyone else does too.”

Heaven is the place where the dead girls go
Heaven is the place up in the air
Heaven is a place i don’t think about much
But I’ll have to one day I’m aware

‘Heaven Is’ is out now via streaming services.

Miserable chillers – Great American Turn Off

Miserable chillers has made a name with an idiosyncratic, constantly inventive sound, following a myriad of creative directions from Kate Bush-esque art pop to SNES soundtracks and field recordings. A mixtape featuring recordings made between 2018 and 2024, Great American Turn Off not only personifies the spirit of Miguel Gallego’s work, but serves as the ideal introduction for those looking to dive in for the first time. The release functions best as a full entity, rewarding those who take forty minutes to lose themselves in its easy rhythms, but we recommended single ‘The Shaft’ for anyone who needs a quicker dose.

Great American Turn Off is out now and available to hear in full here.

Molly Murphy – Seabird

Specializing in what she calls “lo-fi folk tunes summoned from the Blue Ridge and set loose in New York City,” Molly Murphy makes bright and emotionally resonant folk music. Her latest single is a cover of  The Alessi Brothers 1976 song ‘Seabird’. Complete with vocal harmonies, subtle mandolin and slide guitar, it’s a lush and laidback take on the original. Murphy’s vocals take centre stage, confidently but vulnerably delivering lyrics that use the imagery of the titular bird covering vast distances of remote ocean as a metaphor for distances altogether more human. “Like a lonely seabird,” Murphy sings, “you’ve been away from land too long / Oh, too long.”

Old Amica – Tiden far

Described as a release about time, Old Amica‘s ‘Tiden far’ sees the Swedish project turn their attention memory, looking to invoke how we experience the past, where the amorphous drift comes to form strange patterns and meanings. As such, the single is suitably hazy and slow-moving, its drama arising from a concealed hand as though always masked by something. Familiar sights and sensations as experienced through a gauze curtain. Old voices coming through a crackling radio, messages moving through the accumulated years with something to offer us yet.

Shady Baby – Feel It

Following a couple of singles in 2023, Brighton garage rockers Shady Baby are back with a brand new single, ‘Feel It’. Comprising of Sam Leaver (vocals, guitar), Nick Varnava (bass) and Tom Jackson (drums), Shady Baby draw on late 90s and early 00s alternative rock, and ‘Feel It’ is no different. A rich,  enveloping wall of sound is punctured by energizing electric guitar and crisp percussion, with enough hooks to appeal to the radio and festival circuit and enough grunge to bring in the rock-heads. All this raw energy is used to explore feelings of agitation and doubt. “‘Feel It’ started off as a song about grappling with impatience,” says Leaver, “but along the way it evolved into exploring the uncertainties of new relationships.”

‘Feel It’ is out now on streaming services.

Special World – Cloak in the Attic

This month saw Special World, that’s the solo recording project of Philly‘s Andy Molholt (who you might know from Speedy Ortiz), released their debut physical release with a self-titled collection. Described as ‘early’ songs, the cassette provides a peek into the inventive and often idiosyncratic style of the Special World sound, something demonstrated by the single and opener ‘Cloak in the Attic’. Starting with a glass smash but progressing with a lethargic rhythm, the song slowly crawls over the listener and absorbs them into its peculiar world. A place often strange and always colourful, where the light bends in odd shapes and everything takes on the loaded, abstract logic of dreams.

the cloak in the attic is hidden
obscured by a flowering gem
where is the proof?
no fumes left to reduce
cannot refuse a bargain which i cannot lose

night after night we misconstrue

Stelth Ulvang and the Tigernips – Dissolve

Described as “a visceral journey through the late-night mental crumblings of summer, capturing the essence of spontaneity and sincerity,” ‘Dissolve’ is the first single from Stelth Ulvang’s upcoming self-titled album, Stelth Ulvang and the Tigernips. Ulvang might be best known as the pianist for folk sensation The Lumineers, but has long pursued a variety of creative outlets, and the new album is something of an antidote to radio-friendly anthemic polish which has come to mark The Lumineers sound. ‘Dissolve’ is our first glimpse of a collection of songs which instead leans into the vulnerable and raw side of things, allowing Ulvang to show a slightly stranger but altogether more authentic side to his work.

YULLOLA – Silk Nightdress

At the end of last month, Maine songwriter and producer YULLOLA released Zen Maiden, a brand new record that exists in an unreal world of its own. Direct, pop-inflected indie rock songs sit next to cinematic spiritual jazz segues and dreamy spoken word sections. All of which makes sense when you understand where the album came from. “This year I truly was considering becoming a nun whilst getting obsessed with vocal inflections of kulning and female Bulgarian choirs,” YULLOLA describes, “spending hours in the forests of Maine just making sounds.” Opener ‘Silk Nightdress’ is the perfect introduction, a spoken word track with all the shimmering unreality and dark cinematic romance of Twin Peaks at its most melodramatic.

Zen Maiden is out now and available via the YULLOLA Bandcamp page.

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It’s an apt encapsulation of the message at the heart of Even Days Dissolve. Let us head back into the environment around us, Scott William Urquhart and Constant Follower suggest. Stitch ourselves back into the fabric of the land. For the land is already within us and always has been. It just takes a moment to remember it, to understand.

Constant Follower have now returned with a new double single, Turn Around For Me / See You Soon, and the songs are no less evocative. Co-produced and mixed in Austin, Texas by Dan Duszynski (Loma, Brian Eno), ‘Turn Around For Me’ opens with the hushed grace so familiar to previous Constant Follower work. But as the track develops, McAll and co. breathe extra life into the arrangement and the song swells with an affirming rhythm which tips it towards indie rock territory. A spaciousness, perhaps, taken from the landscape in which it was recorded. “To stay out in the middle of nowhere in the Texas Hill Country for a month while we worked was quite the experience,” McAll explains:

I slept in an old RV nestled amongst pecan trees and would be woken in the night by the coyotes. I’d go for night walks to try and spot them, but all I’d see were the sparkling eyes of countless spiders watching me from the grass. We’d spend long days in the studio mixing what I’d recorded in Stirling, adding magical touches. This track won’t be on the album. I felt like it needed its own space, and a 7″ provides just that.

The track comes complete with a video by Tsumugi Yagi. “[The song’s] immediacy made me want to focus the video on a single character’s journey,” Yagi explains. “I filmed the character dancing in a simple setting, creating a visual that harmonizes with Constant Follower’s evocative music, which wraps around the heart of the listener. The video is intentionally not dark, yet it has a sense of enclosure, aiming to capture the nuanced emotions of the protagonist’s inner world.”

Turn Around For Me / See You Soon is out now via Golden Hum Recordings and available from the Constant Follower Bandcamp page.

Photo by Harri Reid, album artwork by Peter Russell

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MacCaig and the coastal wilderness which so often features in his work are inspirations Constant Follower have always worn proudly, and the songs of Even Days Dissolve feel like direct descendants from this lineage of Scottish literature. But the record goes further to cement the link by having “the grand old man of Scottish poetry” posthumously appear on a pair of the tracks. “Bringing two of these songs together with the voice of our beloved Norman MacCaig has been a real highlight of this project,” McAll explains. “His poetry was introduced to me by my high school teacher Mrs Tatarkowski, and it was the first prose I was able to read and understand when I was recovering from a traumatic head injury. So his work holds a deep space in my heart. I don’t think any poet or songwriter has matched his ability to capture the space and wonder of the natural beauty of Scotland.”

The first example of this is ‘Wildlife Cameraman (Summer Farm)’, where McAll splices his own story of the titular cameraman into MacCaig’s rendition of the poem ‘Summer Farm’. An ode to a life in the outdoors, where solitude inverts upon itself so as to find company in open spaces. Be it through the ducks and hens and swallows, or even the “straws like tame lightnings” hung from from hedges and strewn on grass. The poem offers the landscape as a place in which to escape interior turmoil if never quite transcend it, and serves as an archetypal example of MacCaig’s ability to bend the apparently trivial into something with true existential significance.

I lie, not thinking, in the cool, soft grass,
Afraid of where a thought might take me—as
This grasshopper with plated face
Unfolds his legs and finds himself in space.

Self under self, a pile of selves I stand
Threaded on time, and with metaphysic hand
Lift the farm like a lid and see
Farm within farm, and in the centre, me.

The song comes complete with a stop-motion video directed by Erentia Bedeker and the animation studio Wreckless Creative, furthering the track’s strange sense of solitude/non-solitude:

‘Space Between Stars’ offers a moodier sound, a certain tension runs through Urquhart’s guitar even as it evokes the sprawling distances of its title, while ‘Ash Wednesday Slow’ sees hip hop artist CRPNTR deliver an evocative spoken word segment which itself seems to charge the guitar with a newfound momentum, as though Urquhart taps into the energy found between the words themselves. The song serves as a perfect example of what Urquhart offers the record. Because if MacCaig and McAll capture an image of the landscape, then his guitar offers the movement, be it fine detail or sweeping elegance, lifting the songs from static poems into something breathing, tableaus animated with moving time.

Closer ‘Comes A Silence (Basking Shark)’ is a fitting conclusion, the guitar this time accentuated by saxophone and harp by Matt Carmichael and Andy Aquarius respectively as MacCaig returns to detail an encounter with the titular creature via his poem ‘Basking Shark’. A “roomsized monster with a matchbox brain” met while rowing on a “sea tin-tacked with rain,” which inadvertently triggers something of a crisis of identity. Because for all of its ancient size and cryptic silence, MacCaig experiences the shark not as some mystery rising from the depths but a thing in its proper place. Rather it is he who is cast adrift, representative of humankind having forgotten its position within the natural order of things. “Swish up the dirt and, when it settles, a spring,” MacCaig writes. “Is all the clearer. I saw me, in one fling, / Emerging from the slime of everything.” Here the basking shark is a kind of sublime experience, a visitation able to submerge us back into the ecosystems we have spent so long trying to escape.

It’s an apt encapsulation of the message at the heart of Even Days Dissolve. Let us head back into the environment around us, Scott William Urquhart and Constant Follower suggest. Stitch ourselves back into the fabric of the land. For the land is already within us and always has been. It just takes a moment to remember it, to understand.

Even Days Dissolve is out now and available from the Constant Follower Bandcamp page.

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“Thriving on a diversity of influences and intentions and underpinned by the constant desire to invent new things.” That’s how we described Hybrid Dimension II by The Allegorist, an album which highlighted the visionary style of Berlin-based artist Anna Jordan. One so committed to the world it created, it was performed in an entirely fictional language. Forthcoming album TEKHENU promises to be no less ambitious, again using narrative-based compositions to conjure a mythical world at least partly inspired by ancient Egyptian imagery and shaped by metaphors for human connection. Latest single ‘Howling With The Wolf’ finds such common bond in the animalistic drivers at the heart of every human, re-establishing our connection to the natural world and embracing the wilderness as a plane of interconnection.

TEKHENU is out on the 5th May via Awaken Chronicles and you can pre-order it now.

American Grandma – Stone Cross

The slowcore project of Denver‘s Jensen Keller and Caden Marchese, American Grandma is prepping to release their brand new album Rare Knives of Light later this spring, and single ‘Stone Cross’ finds the outfit at their shimmering best. Positioning itself at the ambient end of the spectrum, the song does not eliminate the dark heft of the genre so much as leaven it, the ascending tones lifting the entire weight of the sound, shadows and all. So as Keller asks a series of cryptic questions, what emerges is curious blend of the physical and intangible—a mirage you can feel between your fingers, a dream or prayer brought to life.

Does the sun shine bright forever?
Will I commemorate you with a painted sign?

Constant Follower & Scott William Urquhart – Waves Crash Here

Last summer we featured Constant Follower and their beautiful record Neither Is, Nor Ever Was. As we described, the project represents “a struggle between calmness and distress, between the real and imaginary, and indeed between the desire for and fear of such clear boundaries.” But ultimately “embraces this turmoil, and in doing so offers a fundamental reimagining of memory, of the past and future, the real and not.” The band are now gearing up to release Even Days Dissolve, a new album in collaboration with Scott William Urquhart, and lead single ‘Waves Crash Here’ shows a continued engagement with both memory and the natural world. With its evocative sweeps and fine detail, Urquhart’s guitar evokes the duality of permanence and ephemerality of the environment which inspired it, and Constant Follower’s Stephen McAll again turns to the poetry of Norman MacCaig to guide his moving, precise writing. Watch the video by animator George Farrow-Hawkins below:

Even Days Dissolve is out on the 14th April and you can pre-order it now.

Eyesore & The Jinx – An Ideas Man

Liverpool post-punk trio Eyesore & The Jinx return this May with a new double-single 7″ An Ideas Man / Do What You Love. We’ve previously described the outfit’s work as “cutting and hysterical, as though the banality of society has pushed them over the edge,” and ‘An Ideas Man’ finds them no less enraged with the world unfolding around them. It’s a twitchy song about “cult of landlordism and a parasitic ideology which has become pervasive in its wake,” as Josh Miller explains, taking on the voice of the titular figure in all of its self-congratulatory smarm. The sound’s taut angles threaten to spill over into some violent climax, and in a world in which men will kick you repeatedly on a punctual monthly rota and pretend they are doing you a favour, how else should our songs sound? As Miller concludes: “In short, it’s about how much I fucking hate landlords.”

Greg Mendez – Goodbye / Trouble

Later this year, Philadelphia‘s Greg Mendez will return with a self-titled full-length via Forged Artifacts and Devil Town Tapes. Following on from 2020’s Cherry Hell, a record we described as “taking the themes of Townes Van Zandt, Connie Converse and Elliott Smith and casting them in the bedroom pop spirit of today,” the new album sees Mendez continue this honest reflection, digging into the past to re-examine painful experiences while never losing a wry edge too. “There’s a lot of pretty bleak memories in the songs,” he explains, “but one thing that I hope comes through is that nothing is ever fully dark.” Lead single ‘Goodbye / Trouble’ captures the style perfectly, a lo-fi pop number rooted in memories while waiting for some present transcendence. Watch the video by Video by Doug Dulgarian (of they are gutting a body of water) below:

Greg Mendez is out on the 5th May via Forged Artifacts and Devil Town Tapes.

Kassi Valazza – Corners

Back in January we introuduced Kassi Valazza Knows Nothing, the forthcoming album by Portland artist Kassi Valazza on Fluff and Gravy Records (US) and Loose Music (UK). Writing of lead single ‘Watching Planes Go By’ we described how her timeless country singer-songwriter style “bears all the hallmarks of the best retro tracks while refusing to fall for nostalgic imitation.” Now Valazza has unveiled the record’s second single. Titled ‘Corners’, it’s a tender but tentative love song that again draws on psych-styled folk as much as it does from Americana, unfurling with an easy emotional ache as though from a decades-old dusty radio. Valazza’s voice sits at the sweet spot between soft and strong, tired and heartsick but holding onto a golden romantic hope.

I wonder if I called you
would it be alright
to say I loved you

Kassi Valazza Knows Nothing will be released by Fluff & Gravy Records / Loose Music on 12th May. Pre-order it now from the Kassi Valazza Bandcamp page.

Monde UFO – Government Employee

As their name might suggest, there’s something otherworldly about the work of LA‘s Monde UFO, but new album Vandalized Statue To Be Replaced With Shrine, out next month via Quindi Records, shows just how varied this ethereal mood can be. First single ‘Visions of Fatima’ led the listener into a decidedly downbeat mystery, channelling the miracle of its title to speak of shifting wonders and cloaked truths. But described as “a sun-kissed trip of low-key lounge surrealism, bizarro storytelling and shuffling exotica splendour,” latest track ‘Government Employee’ shows off a different dimension to the record. One where the laidback rhythms evoke an alternate version of visitation, the lyrics playing with an almost Pynchon-esque restlessness beneath the languorous surface.

Nyokabi Kariũki – fire head

Last week, Kenyan composer and sound artist Nyokabi Kariũki released FEELING BODY, her debut full-length album on New York label cmntx records. Combining everything from experimental electronic, contemporary classical and East African traditional music, the album explores Kariũki’s experience of living with long-COVID for the entirety of 2021. The record is built around a central motif of the voice, utilizing Kariũki’s full vocal range as well as spoken word recordings and text-to-speech software, what she describes as “a way to express visceral feelings and noisy thoughts.” It also features contributions from violinst Yaz Lancaster and trumpet player Michael Denis Ó Callaghan, their playing manipulated to echo symptoms of the persistent illness. Nowhere is this clearer that on standout track, ‘fire head’, a genuinely unsettling piece which layers a field recording of Ó Callaghan disassembling then reassembling his trumpet with a cacophony of automated voices repeating the line “They stopped asking if I was ok.”

Shalom – Lighter

Later this week, Brooklyn-based Shalom will release her debut album Sublimation on Saddle Creek. We wrote a preview of the album last month, describing it as “a bracingly honest exploration of a young life,” that “combin[es] stories of partying and trauma, love and breakups and feelings of disaffection,” and admiring its mixture of bold, direct indie pop and emotional nuance. Ahead of the record’s release, Shalom has unveiled the final single ‘Lighter’. It’s probably the most pop-oriented song on the album, the carefree atmosphere masking its themes of discontent. “So done with being myself,” Shalom sings in the chorus, “I’d rather be anyone else, I’m tired of being a fighter.” Watch the animated video by Rory Alene below:

Sublimation releases 10th March via Saddle Creek. Order a copy now from the Shalom Bandcamp page.

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Released via Shimmy-Disc in 2021, the album answers these questions in an imagination and oblique manner, not only delving deep into McAll’s personal circumstances but questioning ordinary ideas of memory. A record free from the past but never really, its airy tones always pulling inward as though destined to orbit the negative space of what was lost. The contours of this experience are mapped with a careful hand, leading to something at once peaceful and profoundly challenging. A calm wisdom which nevertheless upends notions around who a person is and what forces might shape them.

For an album which deals with such profound themes, it sounds disarmingly tranquil. A folk record built around McAll’s baritone vocals, its arrangements of synths, keys, bass and guitars conjure the space and detail of the landscape which inspired it. But head more than an inch below the surface and darker waters lie. Because within the humble rhythm pull a variety of currents, conflicting forces which culminate in a sense of tension. A struggle between calmness and distress, between the real and imaginary, and indeed between the desire for and fear of such clear boundaries. But Constant Follower embraces this turmoil, and in doing so offers a fundamental reimagining of memory, of the past and future, the real and not.

Thanks to support from the PRS Foundation and Creative Scotland, Constant Follower recently recorded a session atop The National Wallace Monument in Stirling, a fitting setting not only for its unique beauty but the way both history and mythology are folded into its story. The site held personal meaning to McAll too, having visited in his now forgotten past. “I don’t remember my childhood, but my mum took lots of photographs,” he explains, “I look so happy in the pictures of us at the Wallace Monument.” Returning with his own kids allowed a new view into the quasi-memory of the photographs. As he continues:

I see how magical it is for my own children—the building, the mythology, the huge sword—and can only think it must have been the same for me. I see it every day when I open my curtains and wondered what it would be like to play up in the crown overlooking the city, and why no one had done it already. So it was a great surprise and an honour when Stirling Council made it happen. To be able to play while stretching our eyes over this beautiful landscape… sometimes it was hard to sing for the lump in my throat.

The session was filmed and directed by Martin J. Pickering, with drone footage by Jakub Jozwiak and 2nd Camera by Lily Hayes, as well as help from runners Danny Urquhart and Owen Edwards who faced the unenviable task of getting the gear to the top of the monument. “It was a physical and brutal shoot because it was freezing and extremely windy,” Pickering says, “but that all lent itself to an amazing end result on camera. I cried when I watched my edit back.” You can find the set in full below:

Neither Is, Nor Ever Was is out now via Shimmy-Disc and you can get it from the Constant Follower Bandcamp page.

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