It has been going on eleven years since Anglo-Australian indie pop outfit Allo Darlin’ released their previous full-length We Come From The Same Place, but next month will see the wait ended with new album, Bright Nights. A joint release between Fika Recordings (UK) and Slumberland Records (US), the album has roots in the height of the pandemic, when the band members gathered online to reminisce and reflect on the music they made together, and ultimately vow to revive Allo Darlin’ once conditions allowed. The resulting collection is understandably bittersweet, marked by the passing of time and the increasing weight of themes like love, birth and death, yet always newly aware of the blessing it is to make music and share it with an audience. Latest single ‘Cologne’ typifies the tone, a song full of the kind of tender joy earned through a life well-lived.

Bright Nights will be released in July via Fika Recordings (UK) and Slumberland Records (US).

Constellation Myths – Shadows on the Wall

“A series of vignettes and character sketches that examine agency, belief, and the tensions between the natural and the human-built environment.” That’s how Massachusetts trio Constellation Myths describe their forthcoming album The Cost of Living, an album preoccupied with all the injustices, cruelties and resentments which have come to mark our age. Latest track ‘Shadows on the Wall’ is cuttingly relevant in this regard, detailing the corrosive impact of our continued slide into the digital, and the resulting isolated, individualistic existence can dislocate a person from reality itself. Taking over lead vocal duties, Andy Arch communicates such themes with a suitably jaded air, and as the sound rises with something like brightness, the effect is that of a man cut off and drifting, slowly slipping away from the world.

Dead Slow Hoot – Satellite

“Despite the careful intricacy of the track, the emotion at its core is delivered with unguarded sincerity, Hugo Lynch’s vocals confronting love and love with direct candour to paint a picture wistful and romantic and wise.” So we wrote of ‘All My Love Remains‘, a recent single from Dead Slow Hoot‘s new album, Orbits Intervened. Such earnestness marks the record, though, as singles like ‘Take It Or Leave It‘ and ‘Sleeping Before The Big Day‘ show, it is a release sprawling in style and scope. With the album now out, Dead Slow Hoot have shared final single ‘Satellite’ to further highlight this fact. An introspective song which starts out as a pleasantly upbeat slice of folk rock but eventually rises towards a cathartic crescendo, before clearing again as though with the newfound clarity of sudden epiphany.

The Duke of Norfolk – I Have Never Seen Volcanoes

The recording project of Oklahoma-born songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Adam Thomas Howard, The Duke of Norfolk has made a name blurring the divide between reality and mythology, offering a brand of folk capable of both intimate detail and sweeping grandeur. Howard’s latest work sees him join forces with Ben Lanz (The National/Beirut/Sufjan Stevens), and new single ‘I Have Never Seen Volcanoes’ shows the fruits of the collaboration. Drawing on the Emily Dickinson poem of the same name, the track evokes the unfolding climate catastrophe in all of its sublime violence. “I have never seen / fire and dust spit / down the hillside, / smoke and choke the machine— / Ashen faces, ashen cowhide,” as the track opens. “Trace a line in the dirt; / cut it deeper, carve a border. / See the blood of the earth, / pump it then, play the driller.” The rest of the song fires forward as though charged by such imagery, finding a fervid rhythm and revelatory foreboding.

Till suspension morn
’Till suspension morn
‘Till the angel’s horn

When the break in the churning,
when the sleeping rise up like rosebay,
and the key starts to turn
like the dagger twist’d in the ribcage.

‘I Have Never Seen Volcanoes’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Editrix – The Big E

Not content to rest on their laurels after last year’s superb full-length Viewfinder (an album which made our favourites of 2024) and more recent single ‘I Don’t Miss You‘, Wendy Eisenberg has reunited with Steve Cameron and Josh Daniel and turned their attention back to Editrix. The band’s first new release since 2022, new album The Big E promises to be every bit as ambitious and intense as previous releases, finding the trio further apart geographically, but tight knit in their vision and execution. The title track and lead single gives an idea of what to expect, a song charged with energy yet slightly unnerved in tone, playing like the chaotic, frantic internal landscape of someone gripped by neurotic concerns. “This song is about alien visitors: hoping they’re friendly and curious like the best of us humans,” the band explain. “It’s also about aging, which feels like you’re an alien to certain generations including your younger selves, and the impossibility of being understood.”

Watch the video by Ryan Hover below:

The Big E will be released on the 25th July via Joyful Noise Recordings and you can pre-order it now.

MacGregor Burns – I’m Not Supposed To Be Here Anymore

Through a number of singles in recent months, LA songwriter MacGregor Burns has established a style at once emotionally resonant and idiosyncratic, with songs like ‘Silent Answers‘ and ‘Can’t Go Back‘ reaching between slacker rock and something more folk-adjacent. Latest single ‘I’m Not Supposed To Be Here Anymore’ continues this style, albeit leaning further than ever towards the latter, its stripped back style removing all distractions from Burns’s distinctively nuanced vocals. A voice straining with the accumulated hopes and regrets of a life well lived, relatively plain in its unguarded tone yet stretched by a certain sense of desperation. As though there’s a fire at his back which is creeping closer, or else a train to somewhere better in the distance and just about to leave.

‘I’m Not Supposed To Be Here Anymore’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Ohly – If I Go

Detroit‘s Christian Ohly, recording as straight Ohly, makes what we’ve called “a rich and heartfelt brand of folk rock that manag[es] to pair intimate emotion with cathartic energy,” not to mention a strong narrative throughline to further ground the songs within the nuances of the intricacies of the human condition. Produced by Jr Jr’s Dan Zott, new single ‘If I Go’ is what Ohly describes as his magnum opus. The embodiment of the project, as though everything which has come before has coalesced into a single song. A track full of tiny details and huge themes, zooming into the smallest moments of life in order to evoke the intangible joy of existence.

‘If I Go’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Pickle Darling – Massive Everything

Described by Lukas Mayo as “maybe the first kind of ‘pop’ song I’ve ever made,” ‘Massive Everything’ is not just a new song from Pickle Darling, but an introduction to a new stage in the evolution of the project. Out now via Father/Daughter Records, the single sees the New Zealand-based producer and multi-instrumentalist drop some of the playfulness and poetry of previous releases to instead embrace the exhilaration of being wholly direct. Mayo cites the likes of Robyn, Cher and Ray of Light-era Madonna as inspiration for this style, channelling such pop royalty in how they manage to conjure the entire topography of a person’s emotional landscape within a bold, vivid sound. The result is a love song with all the complications left in. Moreover, one not attenuated by the attached pain and personal baggage but conversely made larger. A picture of a love substantial enough to bear the weight accumulated through living.

Watch the video by Christiane Shortal below:

‘Massive Everything’ is out now via Father/Daughter Records.

Ryan Cassata – a Knack for Overthinking

As a singer-songwriter, actor, performer, writer, activist and motivational speaker, Ryan Cassata is well-versed in sharing his thoughts and ideas with the world, putting himself forward as a proud trans-person in an increasingly hostile world. His debut album with Kill Rock Stars, Greetings from Echo Park,is every bit as open and cathartic as you might expect, Cassata delving into both the wonders and tribulations he has faced, be those stemming from his trans identity, experiences of chronic illness or else the inherently anxious process of growing up. Focus track ‘a Knack for Overthinking’ embodies the spirit of the release. One unapologetic in its unguarded confessionalism. “Queer love songs are protest songs,” as he explains. “Whenever we’re loud about it, it’s a protest to me.”

I’m looking, at bare skin
In the smell of cigarettes
We hard kiss, my head spins
I want your confidence

I’ve got a knack for overthinking
And saying too much
I’ve got a knack for overthinking

Watch the video directed by Alla Arutcheva below:

Greetings from Echo Park is out now via Kill Rock Stars and you can get it from Bandcamp.

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A song that she says “comes from acknowledging the type of magic that exists all around us and yearning to get a taste of it,” ‘rosemary’ is the new single from addy (the project led by Philadelphia’s Addy Watkins). Her first new music since last year’s temperance, the song takes indie pop and stripped-back folk and refracts them into a new shape entirely, something warm and fond and all-enveloping.  “I was in love with a witch once,” Watkins describes of the song’s inspiration, “who taught me rosemary hung over my bed would help with my crippling nightmares. which it did and still does whenever I remember to hang it.”

Alice Hebborn – Saisons – Movement 2

December sees the release of Saisons, the debut album from Belgian composer Alice Hebborn on Western Vinyl. Created following a move to the countryside, the record draws inspiration from theories of ecofeminism and environmental harmony and presents a world cast volatile and disordered in the wake of human impacts. Across seven movements, built of piano and electronics, Hebborn imagines a different future. One in which humans cease to throw the natural balance and instead become a key link in a harmonious web of reciprocal relationships. Lead single ‘Movement 2’ is “the starting point of Saisons,” Hebborn describes. “It was written in the spring and draws its inspiration from the captivating images of this season: the awakening of nature and our senses, the great activity of all living things.”

Banti Buli – Hennessy Song

“Refusing to commit fully to irony or sincerity […] as though a song about relationships couldn’t really function without equal doses of heartfelt emotion and tongue-in-cheek humour.” So we wrote of Banti Buli‘s ‘Something Like a Honda Odyssey’ last year, a song which mixed languid rhythms with a distinctively verbose lyricism. Ahead of an album due next spring, Banti Gheneti is now back with ‘Hennessy Song’, a track which see the US-based Dutch-Oromo artist take samples from his surroundings to build an earnest soundscape exploring the transience of even the most steadfast habits. “The closest thing to a home (the Ethiopian corner store) becomes a hole in the ground and your lover leaves you,” as Gheneti says. “Even routines and promises are ephemeral.”

figure eight – 1999 (cherry)

A mainstay of the Bay Area scene, figure eight originated as the experimental noise project of duo Nash Rood and Abby Goeser, starting out with nothing but a distorted synthesizer and acoustic drum kit. However, on welcoming a number of additional members in recent years (including Nicholas Coleman on bass and Nicky Esparza on drums), the band has now evolved into something altogether more full-bodied. Take new single ‘1999 (cherry)’, a song with finds the outfit at their most boisterous and reserved within the same three minutes. The searing opening is indebted to hardcore, though the crushing momentum soon breaks into something almost delicate. These twin threads of lightness and weight weave across the track into what appears to be the spirit of this new version of figure eight—a band aware of the transcendent power available at both ends of the spectrum.

His His – My Friend Wants to be a Freemason

We last featured Aidan Belo’s His His project almost exactly a year ago when we covered the single ‘Ford Econoline’, a song about life in a tour van that we said felt “like the sensation of returning home in your mind as you cruise down an unfamiliar stretch of highway in some faraway city.” The Toronto-based artist returns with a new EP, Good Gold, coming out next month, and has just released the final single ahead of the release. Informatively titled ‘My Friend Wants to be a Freemason’, it’s a track about a childhood friend who became obsessed with joining a masonic lodge. “The idea of joining this secret society consumed my friend, and for a couple of months it was all that he’d talk about,” as Belo describes. Musically the song follows a familiar His His formula, a gentle and folk-inflected indie pop song that wears an air of weary wistfulness like the grain in an old film photograph.

Good Gold is due to be released on 15th November via Victory Pool Records. You can pre-save it now on streaming services.

Kassie Krut – Reckless

Kassie Krut are wasting no time introducing themselves. “K / A / S / S / I / E / K / R / U / T / T / T / T,” goes the opening line of new single ‘Reckless’, a de facto theme song for the new project of Kasra Kurt, Eve Alpert (formerly of Palm) and Matt Anderegg (Mothers, Body Meat). The band have just signed to Fire Talk Records, and new single offers a glimpse at the core of the project. Something undoubtedly contemporary yet possessing a rawer dimension too, as though through the idiosyncratic art pop style comes an altogether more atavistic, primal energy. Directed by Guy Kozak, the video for the song was filmed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and offers a visual representation of the sound’s frantic playfulness.

‘Reckless’ is out now and available via the Kassie Krut Bandcamp page.

Mark Trecka – Witch’s Hat (ft. Midwife & An Heap)

The work of Mark Trecka never sits still, the Chicago-born artist and activist utilising sound to explore a diverse set of styles and themes in a practice as inventive as it is ambitious. More recent work has turned towards post-punk as an avenue of exploration, and latest single ‘Witch’s Hat’ continues to plough that same furrow. Recorded between Paris and Colorado, the track is described as Trecka’s “Halloween song,” existing with the common ground between that which is haunting and beautiful. Midwife joins on backing vocals and An Heap on synths to further elevate the dynamic, the song moving from apparent minimalism into a gauzy atmosphere as though pushing through the layers of time itself.

Michael Younker – Bad News

Michael Younker is a Detroit-born, Brooklyn-based production designer who also makes rock & roll music that he says “melds lighthearted cynicism with unashamed big rock motifs.” He has just released his debut EP, Sweet Things, a four-song record that’s brash and chaotic and amped up with bratty energy. “Sonically & lyrically, Sweet Things feels like the kid who ate too much sugar, bounced off walls, and passed out on the floor,” Younker describes. “Music of obsession, excess, indulgence, and…consequences?” ‘Bad News’ is perhaps the best place to start, capturing the EP’s manic motion and carefree bravado. “I can’t make you love me,” Younker sings, before snottily trying his best anyway in the following line – “C’mon, give it a go!”

Old Man of the Woods – Ghost

“A visceral exploration of a villain’s arc, tracing her devolution from possession to obsession to dissolution.” So reads the album notes for Triptych I: Devolve, the latest release from Seattle-based project Old Man of the Woods. The first in a series of EPs, the three-song collection offers a self-described “goth ethereal mycelial” sound to chart a fall from grace in all of its tragedy, majesty and strange avenues of agency. Such as with single ‘Ghost’, where the central character moves from resentment to something closer to power with the realisation that the ability to haunt can represent its own form of control.

Orchid Mantis – Dead Malls (feat. Cathedral Bells)

Following a collaboration with Sign Crushes Motorist earlier this year, not to mention several more singles in the meantime, Orchid Mantis (the recording project of Atlanta‘s Thomas Howard) has returned with a new single ‘Dead Malls’. This time featuring Orlando, Florida shoegazey bedroom pop act Cathedral Bells, the track uses imagery of an abandoned shopping mall to explore emotions altogether more personal. Where past hopes, once bright and shiny and full of promise, have withered on the vine, now little more than empty husks. But the atmosphere is not downbeat, rather wistful and hazy, looking back on old memories as though flickering warm and grainy from an old film projector.

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Following in the lineage of songwriters such as Lana Del Ray and Ethel Cain, april june is a Madrid-based artist whose Gothic brand of synth pop muddies the line between desire, fantasy and reality. With a full-length edging closer, april june has been releasing a steady stream of singles in recent times, and the latest ‘it’s all my fault’ serves as the ideal introduction for those not already onboard. Shimmering nostalgia, heartbreak and loneliness marble into something enveloping, with a melodramatic gloom that is nevertheless shot through with shining longing.

ARXX – Baby Uh Huh

Earlier this year, Brighton duo ARXX released their album Ride Or Die via Submarine Cat Records, a record which saw Hanni Pidduck and Clara Townsend push the garage rock sound which made their name towards polished, soaring power pop. To close out the year, ARXX have returned with another evolution, this time of single ‘Baby Uh Huh’. Developed in collaboration with trans collective charity We Exist, the reimagined version collects a bunch of friends to celebrate the Queer community’s communal power, taking an already affirming track and elevating its joyous spirit even higher. “We were looking at the world around us, at all the attacks on Queer lives and in particular Trans lives and we wanted to do something to show our support with our Queer community,” the duo explain. “‘Baby Uh Huh’ is about finding the right people to surround yourself with to make you a better version of yourself, which is a very Queer experience.”

You can grab the charity single on Bandcamp. Ride Or Die is out now via Submarine Cat Records.

body / negative – sleepy (feat. Midwife)

Back in October we introduced body / negative‘s forthcoming album everett, with multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Andy Schiaffino enlisting the help of Midwife to create an incredibly personal memorial to her parents. “An attempt at communication through planes of existence and accumulated time,” as we described of the title track, “reaching across seemingly impassable gaps to ensure the line between loved ones remains open, regardless of how distant they might come to seem.” Latest track ‘sleepy’ is no less poignant, its sparse arrangement and layered samples playing like an evening in an empty room. Only within the stillness something else stirs, echoes of past days returning to dispel the apparent solitude, as though time is not a straight line but a stack of superimposed snapshots.

everett is out on the 8th December via Track Number Records and you can pre-order it from the body / negative Bandcamp page.

Haley Heynderickx & Max Garcia Conover – How Does The Horse Go Home?

Both Haley Heynderickx and Max Garcia Conover have been regular fixtures here at VSF over the years, so it was a real treat to have the pair join forces for Among Horses III, one of a series of collaborative releases from Son Canciones. “Whether writing confessions about themselves or imagined fictions about others, the genius of both Heynderickx and Conover is their ability to draw a relatable emotion from their subject matter,” we wrote, “tapping into a universal sense of nostalgia and longing and presenting it back to us, shaping and polished into its most gleaming form.” To celebrate the fifth anniversary of the EP, the pair have returned with a new extended edition, featuring new songs like the ‘How Does The Horse Go Home?’—another deft, striking contemplation on love in all of its changing, persistent forms.

Land Dweller – Losing Touch

Having previously recorded under the moniker Varsity Dad, Denver‘s Dan Harvey has now taken up the name Land Dweller and is preparing to release the project’s debut full-length Past Life. With Harvey on bass, guitar and vocals and Larry Shaw lending drums, the album establishes the Land Dweller MO—a blend of slacker and garage rock which melds bright rhythms and nostalgic textures. Take lead single ‘Losing Touch’, where the sound’s fatalistic reflection is counterbalanced by a rising rhythm, allowing for something at once despondent and cathartic.

Luah – To Relate

Luah is the recording project of Brendan Paul Sullivan, a Florida-born, Baltimore-raised and Kingston, New York-based songwriter, alongside an assortment of friends. The first taste of a forthcoming album, new single ‘To Relate’ is a slow unfurling of a song. Downbeat vocals bob along a meandering arrangement, so what might at first appear to be a morose mood is gradually revealed to be something more varied and natural. As though in committing to the flow, Sullivan not only accepts the changeable currents but finds beauty in every small eddy and pull.

Other Suns – To Adrianne

The cornerstone of debut full-length album Songs About Death, ‘To Adrianne’ introduces the hushed, introspective sound of Other Suns. Opening with the gentle lap of the tide, the song uses a spare folk sound to conjure something both warm and searching. A space outside of normal things in which to voice questions or share sentiments in the aftermath of loss. Or perhaps just to listen, to attune to the quiet sadness inherent in all things in an effort to sense the connection which exists between them. As the final line offers: “If everything dies, I’m not alone.”

Touch the Clouds – Dissolve

“A study on retrospection itself, calling attention to the artifice of memory and the rose-tinted fictions it has us believe.” That’s how we described ‘Gordie and the Cruisers‘ by Detroit‘s Touch the Clouds back in 2022. A bright indie rock anthem which held a more ambiguous message underneath. New track ‘Dissolve’ is no less dichotomous in style, its driving momentum and impassioned vocals detailing a headspace altogether less certain. As though only in leaning into forward motion can one shake free of the baggage of modern living. “I’ve been goin’ through a lot / trying to find a little peace / in all the yuck / racing around inside of me,” as the song opens. “Like dogs on the loose / running the street / howling a tune / into the moonlight.”

The Wolf In Our Own Backyard – God Help Me

The songwriting project of Kevin Gigler, The Wolf In Our Own Backyard is a Providence, Rhode Island-based outfit that works within folk’s best traditions. New album Stuck in Useless Country is full of wry humour, self-deprecation and dissatisfaction, all delivered with an upbeat and often scrappy folk rock style which twists and bends conventions as it sees fit. Single ‘God Help Me’ is perhaps one of the more traditional tracks on the album, though is shot through with the same spirit. Think John Prine’s ‘Paradise’ updated for a slightly later stage of capitalism, where the citizens of said useless country are left with no recourse but to mourn its perpetual decay.

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In preparation for a full-length album, the group have been steadily releasing a stream of singles over recent months. ‘Gordie and the Cruisers’ is the latest of these, a track which utilises the inventive and nuanced Touch the Clouds sound to explore themes equally complex. Because while on the surface the bright, anthemic tone recreates the abandon of youth in all its vivid joy, there are more ambiguous threads too. A study on retrospection itself, calling attention to the artifice of memory and the rose-tinted fictions it has us believe.

What results is a song which offers cathartic crescendos with one hand and punctures them with the other. Choosing to interrogate its own escapism, and thus resist the dead end of nostalgia. “Are we going back to visit the past?” as the opening line asks. “Are we on that path to nowhere?”

we were driving away as fast as we could
with a hand in the air like a sail, as sunlight set
speed was bending the trees at the edge of the road
young and on fire, yet lifeless

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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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The record is a companion piece to The Fairies Sing Each to Each, a libretto Nguyen is publishing with Flower Press. Described as “an ambitious hybrid of opera, poetry, and prose,” the story follows a character named Amadeus Vu, a traumatized individual, as they construct their own myth via a tangled narrative of gender, monstrosity and the divine. Expect an examination of neurodivergence, chronic illness, queerness and life as an Asian American through a wildly speculative lens.

Weak & Divine explores trauma in all of its complexity, looking to madness and mythology to fill gaps in the story left by the simplified conventional view of the world. “Traumatized people are either seen as helpless innocents or conniving villains,” FEYXUAN describes:

Either you have no agency, or you do the wrong things with your agency. Either way, the narrative is taken from you. Amadeus Vu is a traumatized individual who is the creator of her own myth, seizing her origin story from her abuser, and also seizing it from all that would seek to view her through a reductive lens of absolute, binary morality.

In anticipation of the record, FEYXUAN is today releasing the lead single, ‘Lord of the Butterflies,’ a strange and surreal three minutes that could form the soundtrack to a long-lost darkly psychological and philosophical JRPG. In keeping with the ambitious storytelling of the libretto, the track is challenging and ambiguous, the dream-like repetition and droning keys lending a skewed sense of the sublime. It is a song of juxtapositions, religious imagery sitting next to the profane, the cold inhumanity of the digital next to the powerful superhumanity of the divine.

who are you? who are you?
“I am a man who will become God”

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This year will see Ohly return with a brand new album. In preparation, the single ‘University’ has been released. Picking up from the Ohly EP, the track is every bit as vivid as its predecessors, starting out with a simple strummed guitar and background shimmer but soon achieving a new depth as drums enter the frame. However, it is Ohly’s vocals that remain centre-stage, every other element working to support his distinctive delivery and elevate its impressively verbose flow.

Because where the song really stands apart is in the lyricism. The first EP suggested a narrative element to his writing, but ‘University’ truly grounds Ohly as storyteller, conjuring a detailed picture of a time spent in college. Themes of post-collegiate gratitude, sadness and fear run through much of contemporary music, and it is easy to fall into easy rhythms or cliches, but Ohly stands apart in his sheer eye for detail, snapshots of his time in university presented in something approaching a stream of consciousness. Lines and verses spill into one another as he recalls the minutiae of recent years, all moving with an intuitive momentum that grows into something not only recognisable but emotive too—as though in the collected moments of one’s life lies something moving and profound.

‘University’ is out now and available from the Ohly Bandcamp page.

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—Steve Erickson, Shadowbahn

In Steve Erickson’s Shadowbahn, the Twin Towers return, fully formed, in the middle of the Dakota Badlands. Thousands are drawn to this “American Stonehenge,” and rumours start of a figure on the upper floors. This person, we find out, is Jesse Presley, the stillborn twin of Elvis—a man with no singing voice haunted by the spectre of his brother, and the memory of a parallel America where Elvis was never born. Growing increasingly strange, the dream-like novel charts the movement of several characters through this world, where a second reality impinges on our own, as though the line between two dimensions has grown porous, slowly melding into one.

Thus, while there is a binary difference between these two worlds, the experiences people have living in them is far more vague and mysterious. Some people see the Towers and hear music, though invariably hear different songs. Others hear “only a mass of harmonics,” while some hear nothing. Some don’t even see the Towers at all. If there is a distinct Real America and Shadow America, then one has become corrupted by the other to the point where it’s difficult to distinguish between the two. What’s more, crucially, inhabitants of both believe themselves to be Real Americans. The lasting impression of the book is that capital T-Truth is either impossible, or else so many-headed that it might as well be, with a different reality presented to almost every character. The truth is out there, singing from the Towers. Just don’t expect others to agree.

Which brings us to Relatives In Descent, the fourth album from Detroit’s Protomartyr. Led by vocalist Joe Casey, the quartet have been making literate, politically-relevant post-punk since 2012, and this latest record is as angry, hopeless and funny as ever, picking up on the same sense of confusion and fear as Erickson’s novel. Indeed, the very first lines of opening track ‘A Private Understanding’ crown uncertainty as the lead emotion. “Not by my own hand,” sings Casey. “Automatic writing by phantom limb / Not with my own voice / Pleurisy made to stand on two legs.” The lines serve as an abdication of authority, and thus form perhaps the only genuine communication between Casey and the listener before his characters take over, and we’re left to form our own private understanding of exactly what he is hoping to say through them.

Far from being an ironic means for Casey to escape responsibility for his words, the opening is pivotal for the record and the fundamental doubt that colours its main themes. Casey is acknowledging his struggle to communicate, the same problem faced by Elvis later in the track, who dies on the rug at the foot of his toilet never managing to convey his belief in/relationship with Jesus Christ. But, despite the difficulty and subsequent humiliation, beneath all this Casey is attempting to communicate, and thus trying to figure out what all this means. The closing refrain could be interpreted with this in mind—”She’s just trying to reach you”—with the nameless ‘She’ being something akin to truth or meaning, singing out from some distant place.

If such a relationship with truth suggests Casey and his characters are locked within a nightmare postmodern society, then welcome to Relatives In Descent. It doesn’t get any rosier. The apocalyptic blast of trumpet in the opening heralds a whole manner of contemporary horrors, capitalism looming over everything like some blind and cruel god. ‘Here Is The Thing’ finds Casey at his manic best, fierce and fervid to the point of incoherence, an eschatological preacher raving about a myopic malevolent force (AKA The Thing) and its presence everywhere, at all times.

“It lives in your home
Under roof and floor, every room
In the ground
In the day
In the grind of the day
It grows fat off your fear
And it will be with you for all of your life

Here is The Thing, there is The Thing”

The dread continues on ‘My Children’, a similarly fanatical song exploring inheritance in a world of disposable goods, and the anxiety of becoming disposable yourself, scrapped and replaced by more efficient models. Inspired by Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s Cré na Cille, ‘Catriona’ finds the protagonist within their grave, still simmering about their irritating features of their lives. “And all that loving, that’s leaving,” Casey sings, “replaced now with complaining down in this hole,” a sentiment in stark contrast to the romantic view of life after death he provided with the song ‘Ellen’ on their last record, Agents of Intellect. It feels like a writer providing a shadow to his previous light, working to undermine his bolder statements with insidious doubt.

The protagonist of ‘The Chuckler’ is similarly confused, dragging themselves through the vaguely torturous gauntlet of working life and hermetic isolation (they telephone call centres in Bangalore or Mahabalipuram just to talk to someone), suffering a kind of personal apocalypse as the real deal—war, rumours of war, clouds of poison in the sky, etc.— occurs around them. This Revelationary dread and technological fear is continued on ‘Windsor Hum’, which plays more or less like DeLillo’s White Noise committed to tape. The Windsor Hum is a real-life example of the phenomenon of unexplained noise, the city of Windsor, Ontario plagued by an industrial drone from across the border. A number of hypotheses have been put forward, from mechanical noise to tinnitus, though none offer a satisfying answer, and even the scientific explanations have a catastrophic bent.

Casey uses the hum as an allegory for The Thing, this unseen, inexplicable force that strips agency in the name of liberty and freedom, the inner-ear whisper that says consumption is king, and proliferation of wealth and goods the route to meaning. So, while the environment slowly breaks down, and people are displaced by famine and war, this tone fills our heads, pacifying any worries or misgivings, though sending a conspicuous chill down our spines that we do our best to ignore. What makes the metaphor extra relevant is the geographical side of the Windsor Hum, with the noise seeming to come from over the Detroit River. The good ol’ American Dream packaged up and exported worldwide.

“The old Windsor humming
Across the river
From the U.S. of A
Saying, “everything’s fine”

The track, closing out the A side of the record, is an important one, because it makes clear the angle of Casey’s attack, as well as his motivation. This isn’t the anti-capitalism of a Sixth Former in a Che Guevara T-shirt, rather the result of chronic, low-level body shock in reaction to a pervasive, unequal system, where autonomy is annihilated by the very items sold to fertilise it.

Which is exactly where ‘Don’t Go To Anacita’ picks up, the fictional town serving as a kind of end zone for neoliberalism—where people dream superficial dreams of “technology and kombucha,” worry about being cheated or robbed, and pray to a deity who only blesses the prosperous. ‘Up The Tower’ goes further, imagining rebellion, the peasants finally growing sick of their lives and responding with blood lust. However, beneath the satisfaction of such protest lies a deeper unease, one again related to the central doubt of the record. The hatred and violence conjured is mindless, the destruction of excess becoming an excess in itself. Without some degree of direction such energies creep toward ominous territory (see: anti-globalism and white supremacism), overpowering to the individual yet malleable to larger forces, prime to be shaped into ever-more seductive delusions, effectively becoming another weapon for The Thing despite the supporting rhetoric. In essence, when advancement requires a degree of destruction, then regression has a perfect disguise.

In many ways, ‘Night Blooming Cereus’ is the antithesis to this, celebrating not violent upheaval but unseen beauty that manages to flourish outside of The Thing’s control. This ode to those living on the fringes is perhaps the most hopeful moment on the record, suggesting that the answer might lie not with fire and fury but rather a collective refusal to play the game. However, this is of little consolation to those who have spent their days playing by its rules to still end up empty handed, and both ‘Male Plague’ and ‘Corpses In Regalia’ play like furious rebuttals by those already too-fully enmeshed within The Thing’s web, using false-nostalgia and raging resentment against what they see as the Shadow side. Flowers don’t bloom at night, they say. It’s not how things work. It’s not American.

“See-through skin – barnacles of age
Male plague, male plague
Old days misremembering
Male plague, male plague
You think the world owes you a stroke
Male plague, male plague
Fear of the future – losing your hold
Male plague, male plague”

Closing out the record, ‘Half Sister’ sets out this total subjectivity once more, with truth cast as something foreign or mythic or downright ridiculous. Again, Casey returns to his own struggles with the irony of being an artist in such a world, where to not speak against the absurdity of the system is to become complicit, yet knowing those very absurdities render his words meaningless. Rather than give up, or persevere nobly, Casey twists his art into the shape of this double-bind, using self-deprecation to cover any hint of naivety. “I have a backlog of so-called prophets,” a character tells a Messiah-like oracle near the beginning of the song. “You are of a multitude.” The preacher insists he witnesses truth, to which the first character reacts with genuine confusion and interest. “The truth?” he asks. “What is it?”

However, just as with the opening track, ‘Half Sister’ closes out with the nameless She trying to reach you, as though beyond The Thing and its man-made constructs exists something more elemental and true. The question then becomes, who is this She? The sun to The Thing’s shadow? The corporeal to its ectoplasm? The Elvis to its Jesse? Or merely some ancient, atavistic tone urging humankind back to an older violence, where the rules were simpler and man more sure in his ability to work Truth to his liking?

Relatives In Descent is out now via Domino, and you can get it from the Protomartyr Bandcamp page.

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“Sharp mind, eternal youth
I’ll be the first to never die
Nice thought, and I’m never gonna lose it”

If that all sounds dark then that’s because it is, but there is something both fascinating and thrilling in songs so direct and confrontational. Protomartyr’s music is imbued with a certain sense of exciting terror, a DeLillian dread that we know we should escape yet can’t help but stand beneath in open-mouthed awe. At least now you know you are not standing alone.

RIYL: Post-punk, Ought, ruminations on death

Favourite songs:

You can buy The Agent Intellect now from Hardly Art or the Protomartyr Bandcamp page.

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The album builds upon the band’s two previous albums (2008’s Orion Songbook and 2010’s Deadmalls and Nightfalls – both of which I would highly recommend), and confirms the ability to make sun-soaked Americana with a literary lyrical bent. Indeed the album’s lyrics are extremely dense – coming in at over 5,500 words – and paint a vivid picture of growing up in suburban Detroit during the 90s. The album artwork serves to capture the themes on display and does a better job than I could possibly hope to with words. The era evoked will certainly hold greater appeal to those of a certain generation and I’d guess that if your birthday falls between 1980 and 1990 then you will identify with a lot of the lyrics, from sun bleached VHS tapes to sports coaches to the birthday parties of friends and school mates. This is not simply a chronicle of childhood, however. A lot of the lyrics are tinged with nostalgia and a sort of wistful sadness. This is probably best illustrated by sampling a few of the lines from the album:

There’s a dead world locked in a Nintendo 64
In some divorced friend’s mom’s apartment bedroom drawer

(From Open It Up)

Or:

The shrink-wrapped cosmetics and cardboard aesthetics of department store picture frame inserts that my 
Mother keeps under a sink in a cupboard with her high school diploma and it hurts to try
To keep all our treasures intact for forever

<a href=“http://music.frontierruckus.com/track/dealerships” data-mce-href=“http://music.frontierruckus.com/track/dealerships”>Dealerships by Frontier Ruckus</a>

I would advise that this brand of folk or Americana is not for everyone. Frontier Ruckus have not attempted to jump on the bandwagon of popular contemporary folk acts and tried to make foot-stomping, sing-a-long choruses that could grace huge venues and festival headline slots. But this is not a criticism, in fact I mean it more as a complement. There is remarkable restraint and real feeling here. I found it very difficult when listening to the album to draw direct comparisons, although I think that it would be fair to cite  The Mountain Goats, particularly The Sunset Tree, with it’s evocation of coming of age and being a teenager in America. Other artists that come to mind are John K. Samson’s The Weakerthans and Will Sheff’s Okkervil River (particularly their earlier albums) and Decemberists, mainly because of the literary style lyrics, which you could almost read as poetry from the liner notes.

The band have also released a video for the closing track, Careening Catalog Immemorial, which was directed by David Meiklejohn and again captures the album’s aesthetic pretty nicely. Watch it below:

Europeans can pre-order the album from Loose Music, while North Americans can get the album in a beautiful double vinyl package, on CD, or by digital download via Quite Scientific. The band are also about to embark on a European tour, including several stops in the UK. Check out the dates below:

01 Mar – Windmill, LONDON
02 Mar – Burgerweeshuis, DEVENTER
04 Mar – Stengade, COPENHAGEN
05 Mar – Pustervik, GOTHENBERG
06 Mar – Debaser Slussen, STOCKHOLM
07 Mar – Debaser, MALMO
08 Mar – Kulturhaus 73, HAMBURG
09 Mar – Underground, COLOGNE
10 Mar – Fachwerk Gievenbeck, MUNSTER
12 Mar – Rote Fabrink, ZURICH
13 Mar – Cardinal, SCHAFFHAUSEN
14 Mar – Silencio, PARIS
16 Mar – Start The Bus, BRISTOL
17 Mar – Whelans, DUBLIN
19 Mar – Ruby Lounge, MANCHESTER
20 Mar – Bloc Bar, GLASGOW
21 Mar – Fibbers, YORK
22 Mar – Jericho Tavern, OXFORD
23 Mar – The Borderline, LONDON

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