What she calls “[a song] about the experience of being both loved and misunderstood by someone,” ‘Poser’ is the title track of the forthcoming EP from Edmonton‘s Antonia Estelle. Built on a skeleton of stark acoustic guitar, the song is fleshed out with syrup-heavy drums and gusts of distorted guitar, the vocals swaying with quiet intensity like a flickering flame. The emotions underpinning it are gloomy and turbulent, focusing on the strange balance of a dysfunctional relationship and the ultimate unknowability of selfhood. “I had a dream that bears had butterfly wings,” Antonia Estelle sings, “it’s a picture I can’t paint—a feeling that stays inside.”

I don’t know why I even try to explain
Things that I know you won’t understand

Big Cry Country – Pest Control

Based in Washington D.C., Big Cry Country pour a whole host of moods and emotions into their sound, as latest single ‘Pest Control’ attests. Taken from their EP Living Conditions, the song finds inspiration in the likes of Cayetana and Remember Sports to offer something at once deliciously angsty and infectiously energetic. “I’m older but not better,” as the cathartic refrain states. “I’ve seen the afterlife and you are wearing my old sweater.” Big Cry Country might be a fitting name, but releasing emotion has never been so much fun.

Closebye – Hell’s Kitchen

Formed by Dallas-born, NYC based duo Jonah Paul Smith and Julian Paint Smith (unrelated), Closebye make folk-inflected indie pop inspired by the likes of Elliott Smith, Aimee Mann and Hovvdy. Following their debut album Lucid News, released in 2022, the band have returned with a perfectly autumnal single, ‘Hell’s Kitchen’, what they call “an ode to their libra birth season and to their home base of New York City.” The Smiths are joined by Ian Salazar, Margaux Bouchegnies and Simon Clinton, who together use a plethora of instruments to craft a “breezy pop banger” that’s tinged with just a hint of something more wistful, creeping in at the edges like the cool touch of the oncoming winter on an autumn afternoon.

Who are you gonna be?
When every day is Halloween

Check out the video, directed and edited by Elizabeth Kroner, below:

‘Hell’s Kitchen’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Dumb Things – Self Help

‘Self Help’ is the lead single and title track from the new record by Meanjin/Brisbane indie poppers Dumb Things, coming soon via Coolin’ By Sound. Influenced by the droll poetic style of David Berman, it’s a slice of breezy, dusty pop with a streak of yearning melancholy, the narrator looking to self-improvement as a remedy to past mistakes. “The original idea for the song is that it’s a letter from a guy who’s a bit down on his luck but still in the fight, to his ex, some time after they split up,” says vocalist Adam Vincent.

Lately I’ve been working hard on my personality
Cos you got to keep it up, to keep it together ah ha
Been trying to find the time to put the work in
Yeah, I’ve been working out how to work it out

Elephant in Red – Honey

The creative outlet of Glasgow‘s Loup Havenith, Elephant in Red make what they call “sappy sounds for earthly beings.” Latest single ‘Honey’ sees the band combine gently grooving, stripped back folk with a shimmer of shoegaze, full of rich textures and gently wavering vocals. Havenith is joined by Chris McRory (drums), Fin Logie (bass) and Alex Gyllos (piano), who together built the song from the ground up. “[The song is] a sort of longing for calmness and simplicity,” the band describe. “Wanting to move past the weird overwhelming coming-of-age feelings that come hand in hand with being young in a city full of people.”

Lando Manning – Driftwood

Written during what he calls “the final dregs of lockdown,” ‘Driftwood’, the new single from London‘s Lando Manning, is an exploration of the many shades of isolation and loneliness. A quiet folky song, it’s built on percussive acoustic guitar and soft peals of piano, full of loaded negative space and a film-grained cinematic quality. “I had moved to Brighton and felt that I had been isolating myself from my friends back home,” Manning describes of his time writing the song, “and the track was written as a letter to my friends to try to explain why I had been absent.”

‘Driftwood’ is out now and available on streaming services. Manning will release his sophomore EP on his label Mango Wax Records next February.

Laurel Bluffs – Richmond

“Losing myself in the mirror / drenched in alcohol and smoke / I called, you came and picked me up / laid me down, turned out the lights.” So opens ‘Richmond’, the latest single from Phoenix, Arizona-based project Laurel Bluffs. A drive to Richmond follows, a hungover nausea, the bumpy road, and with it the kind of wistful reflection which blooms in the sorry aftermath of things. The folk rock sound and unadorned delivery lend an intimacy to the track, where fondness and longing are present without spilling into sugary sentiment. Instead, there’s just the highway, a building pressure, and the accumulated weight of actions as gathered over the course of regretful years.

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

Neighbours Burning Neighbours – Neil Young

Specialising in a brand of meaningful chaos, Rotterdam noise pop act Neighbours Burning Neighbours have been crafting songs from disorderly melodies and left-field harmonies since 2018. Following a couple of single releases, the band set to work on their debut full-length, which they plan to release in 2024. To whet appetites, they have released the record’s first single ‘Neil Young’, a typically discordant but infectious track which challenges gender norms and the harmful status quo. Watch the video, directed by Charlotte Brand and produced by A Small Production Company, below:

‘Neil Young’ is out now via streaming services.

Twin Bridges – A Dream of You

Led by cellist Zach Gerzon, Twin Bridges are a band from Portland, Oregon who combine folk and indie rock songwriting with neoclassical arrangements and elements of chamber music. They recently released Fertile Ashes, a new record which Gerzon wrote in the aftermath of some very difficult personal circumstances. “These songs explore what can feel like an impossible task, overcoming grief from loss, trauma, and failed relationships,” he says of the album. “Making this album helped me let go of things I held onto for so long.” Perhaps the record’s most personal cut, ‘A Dream of You’ is an ode to Gerzon’s late mother, suffused with an elegant simplicity and sorrow.

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The formation of such a mindset is central to Win A Trip To Palm Springs! “I grew up in a really sheltered conservative household and dealt with some pretty nasty mental health issues my whole life,” Price explains. “I had never really stood up for myself or done anything just because I wanted to.” But a geological expedition to Joshua Tree, where Price studied seventy million-year-old magma bodies, opened his eyes to different types of people and alternate ways of living. “Being out there for the first time was so cathartic,” he continues. “I couldn’t believe that I was this kid from south Texas that had ended up working with folks from all over the world in one of the most other-worldly places I’d ever seen.”

More than the purely physical escape from Texas, the trip represented a wider freeing. An epiphanic moment which dismantled ways of thinking and ultimately allowed Brody Price to confront personal trials on his own terms. To finally end up becoming himself, doom folk and all. The significance of the album’s title begins to emerge in this context. The record essentially inviting the listener into this new headspace. A place where there is no need to beat oneself up, where all moods are recognised as natural and suffering is a fact but never final. Win a trip to Palm Springs and you can start becoming yourself too.

The mood is captured in a whole host of forms across the record, from the fond folk of ‘It Was You’ to the crushing country sludge of ‘Dying When I Met You’ and the slow weight of ‘Satellites and Dust’. But with its forgiving warmth and tongue-in-cheek charm, final single ‘Fall’ is perhaps the clearest encapsulation. “This song is about this repeating cycle in which I often find myself,” Brody Price explains. “It involves making mistakes, feeling regret and remorse for those mistakes, changing course based on what you’ve learned from the experience and then finding yourself right back in the same situation.”

But true to the spirit of the record, the subject matter is approached from an angle of levity and compassion. “I didn’t want to approach the idea from some self loathing sad-boy perspective,” Price continues. “I wanted it to be practical, like ‘this has happened before and everything turned out okay. So hang in there, things will likely turn out okay again.'” What emerges follows in the lineage of songwriters who take on suffering with wry humour and self awareness, from Leonard Cohen and Jerry Jeff Walker to St. John Prine himself, and Will Johnson and John Paul White help to build a bright rhythm in support. “I’m prone to really really deep sadness and isolation,” as Price concludes, “but that doesn’t mean that I forget how to laugh.”

Win A Trip To Palm Springs! is out now via Niles City Records and you can get it from the Brody Price Bandcamp page.

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Back in August we wrote about ‘Sarehole Mill‘, the debut single from EP Wandering Worlds by Birmingham-based artist, composer, producer and singer-songwriter AGAAMA. It was a song, we described, “rooted in physical place but also the psyche of the individuals and collectives with pass through it, carrying with it all those people’s energies and anxieties.” Now out via The state51 Conspiracy, the EP continues this examination of spaces, gradually moving from a place of uncertainty to one of love. With its patient intimacy, closer ‘In This Life’ completes this journey, drawing a line between healing and empowerment, championing the healing of wounds as the path to more fully becoming oneself.

Alexia Avina – Let This Die

Fresh off the back of recent album A Little Older on Lost Map Records, Alexia Avina returns this month with a brand new EP, Crush. Focused on vulnerability and smallness, the previous record probed at tender spots we might usually ignore or protect, choosing to sit and contemplate pain instead. But Crush emerges from the aftermath of this period. A fresh start where new feelings germinate and sprout through the ground. Composed entirely of synths, the result is something freer, more fun, ready to give itself over to joy and desire, even while understanding such emotions might only stay for a fleeting moment. Check out the video for lead single ‘Let This Die’ below, shot, directed and edited by Sara Laufer.

Crush releases on 14th October and is available to pre-order from the Alexia Avina Bandcamp page.

Alicia Clara – I Let My Plant Die

Following last year’s EP Outsider/Unusual, Montreal-based dream pop artist Alicia Clara returns this month with a new four song release. Titled Velveteen, the EP is something of a message to her teenage self, and finds Clara at her most assured, combing confident musicianship with impressionistic and introspective lyrics that display an admirable vulnerability. Latest single ‘I Let My Plant Die’ was written on the pandemic’s one year anniversary and is full of both yearning for “normal” life and gentle self-admonishment for living passively and taking small things for granted. “The inspiration behind the title came from three baby plants I inadvertently let die when I left my apartment to go stay with family outside of Montreal in March 2020, thinking I’d be back in the city come April,” Clara explains. “I recognized a parallel between this and a tendency I have to put off tackling tasks or situations that scare me, thinking time will do the work on its own.” Check out the video directed and shot on the Swiss-French border by Alix Bortoli below:

Velveteen is out on the 28th October via Hot Tramp and you can pre-order it now.

Brody Price – It Was You

Later this month, Dallas artist Brody Price will release his latest album Win a Trip to Palm Springs! On Niles City Records. Price refers to his style (only semi sarcastically) as “doom country,” a tag which goes some way to capturing the record’s blend of folk, country, noise and sludge. The album’s second single, ‘It Was You’ exists on the gentler end of the spectrum but still captures the wider tension and stormy atmosphere which mirrors the lyrics’ exploration of the turbulence of life. Price is joined by Robert Ellis (piano) and Andy Baxter (vocal harmonies), who together create a folk song that, despite its twang and gentle melodies, actual explores the difficulties we all face and sometimes try to hide. “This song is about being aware of my own internal turmoil and realizing that everyone has the same thing in some form or fashion,” Price explains. “Even if someone may appear to have it all together, you still can’t tell what’s racing through their mind when they lay awake at night.”

Win a Trip to Palm Springs comes out on 28th October and you can order a copy now from the Brody Price website.

Doctor Delia – Whoa

Based in Portland, Oregon, Doctor Delia is a self-described “entity specializing in tinctures, alchemical transubstantiation, and old-time new-time music.” We first featured their work last summer, when we reviewed Parlor Songs, a collaborative album with Mother Juniper that we described as possessing “an intangible sense of homespun communal spirit.” Their latest release is Sunroom Vloop // Whoa, a double single which again takes a traditional instrument (here the violin) and creates something that feels both fresh and somehow timeless. ‘Sunroom Vloop’ is a bright and playful expression of the titular sunroom, all clear warm air and vivid reflections, while ‘Whoa’ is a violin loop altogether more mystical. “If you listen closely you can hear a great Spirit moving through the bones of the violin,” Doctor Delia describes. “It is my spirit; it is more than what I can put into words. So I play.”

Sunroom Vloop // Whoa is out now and available via the Doctor Delia Bandcamp page.

ghost orchard – rest

This November sees the release of rainbow music, the new album from ghost orchard on Winspear. The project of Grand Rapids, Michigan’s Sam Hall, ghost orchard has made its name with a distinctively sincere blend of folk and electronic styles, and their latest record develops this aesthetic further. A picture of calm and patience amid loss, where the quiet stillness holds the latent warmth of things now gone. New single ‘rest’ is the perfect introduction, its palpable, physical details holding something less tangible too. As though the world itself mourns that which is lost, and the correct arrangement of objects might summon it back once more. Watch the video by Nik Arthur below:

rust on its bearings
links in the chain
scars intermingled
the feeling wanes

and like the moon still crests as its’ hue ruminates
like thick smoke fills the room
and brings you back again

rainbow music is out on the 4th November via Winspear and you can pre-order it now.

Greta O’Leary – Body, Now

Written during an autumnal drive through the mountains of the South Island, ‘Body, Now’ is the latest single from Aotearoa folk artist Greta O’Leary. It’s a delicate, careful track which places the body into this context of the environment, charting its subtle changes in the face of grief in the manner one might watch the seasons pass across a landscape. But for all its isolation and heartbreak, the song emerges as a balm against outside forces. A return to the self as not only a mode of protection, but a way in which to reconnect with the most fundamental of things.

‘Body, now’ is available from the Greta O’Leary Bandcamp page.

Hang Linton x LeBron Aggressive – SALE

The work of Leeds-based interdisciplinary artist Hang Linton has been described as “a rebellion against clean aesthetics,” his work across music, performance, video and installation inspired by time spent amid countercultural collectives in Berlin. Debut single ‘SALE’ sees Linton enlist the talents of LeBron Aggressive for a synth-based meditation on consumerist culture, the catchy and playful sound simmering underneath sardonic lyrics. Essentially repurposing the strategy of advertisements to send the attack in the opposite direction. A crystal clear message dressed up with shiny adornments. “Discounts on discounts but don’t discount the fact,” as Linton sings. “We bought it all for cheap, with the sweat off someone else’s back.”

Kierst – Phone Call

South Carolina raised, Brooklyn-based songwriter Kierst has a new EP, Thud, coming next month on Sad Club Records, and latest single ‘Phone Call’ sets the tone for the release. A reflection on longing and self-worth which owes as much to Grouper and Mazzy Star as it does contemporary bedroom pop, the intimate vocals and pressing rhythm lifted by an ethereal soundscape, resulting in a mood which transcends the immediate pain for heartbreak. “I think it’s important to know how to sit with yourself, and not depend so much on romantic fulfilment, Kierst explains of the track. “You can only be as good to someone else as you can be to yourself, and the song’s about knowing when to respect that.”

Platonic Sex – Exhausted Competing For You

Meanjin/Brisbane outfit Platonic Sex are gearing up to release a brand new EP this November, and latest single ‘Exhausted Competing For You’ gives further indication of what to expect from the four-piece. The single is a track based around the tensions of a mismatched relationship, where the initial rush of excitement has dissipated and issues of compatibility are brought into relief. The temptation to persevere in the face of such doubts is clear, but struggling to make things work comes at a cost. “It’s exhausting to keep something alive for the sake of fighting for it,” says lead Bridget Brandolini, a realisation which becomes apparent across the song, its energy picking up into an affirming catharsis. Check out the video directed by Bridget Webb below:

‘Exhausted Competing For You’ is out now on all your favourite streaming services.

Puck – Best Friend

Having cut her teeth touring in the bands of SZA, dhruv and Maggie Rogers, Puck might have already announced themselves as keyboardist, but upcoming debut album Best Friend feels like a proper introduction. The record draws upon a childhood immersed in Seattle’s grunge and alt-rock scene but reaches out toward folk and jazz too. A highly personal blend used to conjure the experience of love but also violence, ultimately directing its energies into processing trauma and grief within a society seemingly arranged to reinforce such phenomena. “I wanted it to be catchy enough for the words to sneak under people’s skin,” Puck explains of the title track. “I didn’t really have much music to heal by, so I made some.”

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Opening track ‘The Secret Thoughts of Housewives’ begins with crackles and pops and snippets of ambient recordings, before plaintive acoustic guitar frames a sad-sounding song that is explained pretty well by its title, and comes with a lovely video directed by S. Cagney Gentry.

“Oh I want to be gone when you get home tonight, alright
No I won’t be home when you get home tonight, alright
I want to be flying away into the night
When the baby is asleep, I will slip out in(to) the early morning light”

“Poppa got a dream gonna leave this Alabama
Said to mama ‘gotta get’ she said ‘No!’
Jumped in his camino, said ‘I’m off to California
Come and find me when you ready’ she said ‘No!'”

‘Postpartum Blues’ is a short (and actually devastatingly sad) song about the hidden darker side of starting a family, while recordings of family life permeate ‘When I Was an Island’, with its dream-like imagery and vocals that sound like I imagine Justin Vernon’s later records would sound if he would only abandon the autotune. ‘Om Family / The Death of Self’ sounds like a family meditation session, an incensed-scented mantra interrupted by the sounds of a child, which approaches the death of self that Daniels mentioned head-on.

‘I Take What I See With My Eyes’ has a slow and considered rattling drum beat and snaky electric guitar, adding layer upon layer as it builds towards its conclusion, hitting the closest thing to a crescendo on the record, a gloriously messy marriage of all the elements used so far. The penultimate track is an interlude of pure field recording, again self-explanatory titled ‘Anna’s Whistler Windchimes’, before finale ‘We Go Into the Ocean’ begins with a touching recording of a father and son being silly but also creating a pretty convincing ocean soundscape. Daniels then sings a song about the ocean to the accompaniment of his son’s seaside sounds, before they swap duties and Daniels’ son sings a (much more irreverent) song of his own.

It’s a beautiful end to a beautiful album, deep and ambitious but also somehow natural and organic, as if these songs were born from the picture they paint and not the other way around. You can buy The Teacher now via the David Karsten Daniels Bandcamp page.

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Each song on the album bleeds into its neighbours and, interestingly, the end of the last song runs into the start of the first one, meaning the whole thing forms a continuous loop. The cyclical nature of the album adds to its ruminant nature. Daniels says that the listener could begin to experience time as a cyclical phenomenon, or even percept a deceleration, or even comlplete halting of time. This reflects Daniels’s interest in indigenous ideas of circular time and gives the album a mystical quality, elevating it beyond a simple slice of relaxing ambience. Each track has its own idiosyncrasies, but my current favourite track is the first one. ‘Love’ sounds like the serene and dream-like descent to the bottom of some deep ocean, complete with the cryptic calls of colossal ceteacea hidden somewhere in the blue.

<a href=“http://davidkarstendaniels.bandcamp.com/album/the-four-immeasurable-minds” data-mce-href=“http://davidkarstendaniels.bandcamp.com/album/the-four-immeasurable-minds”>The Four Immeasurable Minds by David Karsten Daniels</a>

Daniels has released The Four Immeasurable Minds on his own Smll Thngs label. Order it via his Bandcamp page. If physical releases are more your thing, you can also get the album on cassette from the super cool French label Carpi Records. Order it here.

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