Just in time for Christmas, Swick has unveiled a cover of Advance Base‘s ‘Christmas in Nightmare City’, a song which fits the DoomFolk StarterKit style of quiet introspection perfectly. Taken from the album Animal Companionship, the song is set on a lonely late-night drive, the protagonist restless as they struggle three months into sobriety, all captured with Owen Ashworth’s distinctively quiet power. “No-one writes Christmas songs like Ashworth,” as we wrote in a review of the record. “His aesthetic and temperament are the perfect medium to capture the strange mix of sad and magical.”

None of this feeling is lost in Swick’s take, the stripped back style and hushed vocals capturing the same sense of seclusion, the balance between inner turmoil and the strange peace of quiet roads, the odd beauty of the twinkling lights of an oil refinery. The sparse arrangement accentuated with subtle touches of bass and pedal steel from Bennett Littlejohn, taking this version into folkier territory than Owen’s, and it really works.

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Following on from singles ‘Sun Self‘ and ‘Kristofferson/StarStuffs‘, DoomFolk StarterKit (the recording project of Portland’s David Swick) is back with a brand new song. Existing within a conflicted state familiar in our contemporary moment, ‘2Hands’ finds a narrator caught between a need to retreat and rest and the seemingly endless task of working in order to stay afloat. A challenge faced with Swick’s trademark brand of introspective sincerity.

Field Guides – Margaret

“Attempting to not just represent the world, but show it to us anew.” That’s how we described Ginkgo, the forthcoming album from Field Guides on Whatever’s Clever in our preview of lead single, ‘Salmon Skin‘. Latest track ‘Margaret’ takes its inspiration from the nineteenth century author and women’s rights activist Margaret Fuller, her transcendentalist belief in the possibility of change lingering over an otherwise melancholic scene of domestic conflict. “And all that we have is ours for the taking” goes the final line, amended slightly from those which come before it, shimmering if not with hope then some mysterious precursor. Check out the video by Caleb Bryant Miller, Rebecca El-Saleh and Kupstas himself below:

Ginkgo is out via Whatever’s Clever on the 26th June and you can pre-order it now.

Fronjentress – Moon

Consisting of a rotating band of musicians based in Portland, Fronjentress unites artists who share an interest in the styles and themes of country music. “Classic country for contemporary times” is how the project describes its output, utilising traditional instruments and tropes to create something rooted within the present moment. Out this week on Perpetual Doom, latest album Baby Got Problems displays not only the aching melancholy of classic country music but also its wit and wry humour, as demonstrated on lead single, ‘Moon’. “If they told us that the moon / could be our new home pretty soon,” it begins:

Well, I’d pack a single bag
and go drifting
because this world has gotten strange
I surely won’t miss the rain
from my lonely paradise up in space

Baby’s Got Problems will be released on 14th May via Perpetual Doom. Order it now via Bandcamp.

Old Moon – Eastern Skies

Old Moon is the project of Tom Weir from Lyme, New Hampshire, who next month is releasing a brand new album titled Cities of the Plain via à La Carte Records and Love Chain Tapes. New single ‘Eastern Skies’ introduces Old Moon’s style, opening as an electrified folk song stark and expansive enough to live up to the McCarthy reference of the album’s title, but soon evolves into gothic shoegaze clamour. Weir’s vocals emerge from this with a brooding intensity, as though suspended within the sound, or else conjuring the heavy, sparkling tone itself.

Otracami – Pipe Scream

The project of Brooklyn-based songwriter Camila Ortiz, Otracami pitches itself between open coastal landscapes and gloomy bedrooms, working to unveil the mystery within both worlds. Latest single ‘Pipe Scream’ evokes the building pressure of an interrupted flow, its spacious, dreamy sound belying the desperation beneath the surface. There might not be a crashing crescendo within the track itself, but the promise of release is ever-present, even if the dam holds for now.

pipe scream
until it’s not
water pools behind my eyes
until i let it fall

Photokem – Future Minister

Consisting of Nana Acheampong (vocals), Leah Blom (violin), Nico Fennell (instrumentals/production), Jack Kelly (instrumentals) and Evan Ryckebusch (cello/bass), Photokem is an Austin-based outfit formed in 2021 after the group read Acheampong’s writing in the University of Texas’ BlackPrint publication. None of them had recorded music before, and Acheampong had never sang in public, which makes the richness and detail of debut EP Luffon Bright all the more impressive. ‘Future Minister’ introduces the style, its arrangement moving from quiet folk and emo-inflected rock to vivid orchestral swells, all tied together by Acheampong’s conversational yet striking delivery.

Shrill Pill – Still Alive

Northampton, MA’s Shrill Pill introduced their new EP Sparky on Hand Over Foot Records with the plucky and raucous ‘Loud and True’, though the latest single shows a different side to the band. ‘Still Alive’ offers an altogether more restrained sound, its quiet folk sensibilities creating a space reflective and warm, but within this subdued mood the lyrics still hold a feistiness. “War stories and war trophies are not the same at all,” goes one verse. “One you win and one you tell your friend you love but never call / Memory is better than an elegy / Keep me in your thoughts but please don’t talk to me.”

Troy Everett – ripples / outcast

The music of Maryland-born, D.C.-based artist Troy Everett encompasses a whole range of genres. From orchestral strings and electronic beats to more metal-adjacent screaming, his work lifts elements from across the stylistic gamut to bring to life his reflective and vulnerable themes. New double single ripples / outcast is the perfect example of this range, the first a mournful classical composition, the latter a stark and confessional pop song which slots alongside the work of artists like G. Brenner. “I feel like an outcast in my own mind,” Everett sings as the song builds around him, frenzied beats and lush classical arrangements coalescing into something urgent and poignant.

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Though charting different territory, the latest DoomFolk StarterKit single, ‘Kristofferson/StarStuffs’ is similarly concerned with conflict and contradiction. “[The song] is about the way relationships reveal who we are and how we respond to that verdict,” Swick explains. “The narrator in this song gets their ego handed to them by the person they admire. This conflicting moment causes the narrator to re-think their understanding of self, but change doesn’t happen overnight.” The gentle sound evokes this headspace, warm yet almost hesitant in its rhythm, placing one foot in front of the other with a halting uncertainty.

But as the track unfurls, so too does the narrator’s candidness. What seemed like naïve hope begins to feel a little more like desperation, a need to be loved whatever the circumstances. The wish undermines the possibility from the beginning, and ‘Kristofferson/StarStuffs’ is therefore less a picture of self-contemplation than that of a relationship slipping through one’s fingers. A sense of loss felt keenly in the moment, though one perhaps required in the grand scheme of things. “Honestly, rejection is a happy and relieving ending here,” Swick concludes. “These two getting together sounds like a tragedy.”

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This year saw Swick team up with Nashville label Like You Mean It Records, releasing a cover of Gillian Welch’s ‘Look At Miss Ohio‘ as part of a sampler before moving on to create new DoomFolk StarterKit material. The process for these new songs is different from what came before, as highlighted by the latest single, ‘Sun Self’. Because while previous releases aimed to excise second-guessing, the new track is a collaborative effort, with Allie Cuva (Allie), Bennett Littlejohn (Bendrix Littleton, Hovvdy, Katy Kirby), Lou Turner and Trevor Nikrant (Styrofoam Winos) all lending their talents.

With its warm and reflective rhythms, the track retains the intimate tone of previous DoomFolk StarterKit releases, though there is a newfound tension too. The song “centers on the two-sided coin that is an introspective reflection,” Swick explains. A questioning of self-contemplation, or at least a firmer understanding of its implications. “[Introspection is] an absolutely healing practice that can carry destructive potential when one sits in it too long,” Swick continues, “where it moves from meandering rumination to self ruination.”

This lasting sentiment is shot through both the creative practice and the song itself. A reminder that stepping outside of one’s own thoughts is sometimes needed. That ideas and problems can be shared, others invited to help.

and it feels like
I should take a break from my brain

Cover photo by Savannah Kee, lower photo by Emily Barrett

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Then, last summer DoomFolk StarterKit released SleepyGhost, a five song EP that explored themes of apathy and conflict avoidance, which caught the attention of Nashville label Like You Mean It Records. A couple of weeks ago, this collaboration bore its first fruit—a brand new single ‘Old Times’. But that’s not all, DoomFolk StarterKit also contributed a track to the inaugural Like You Mean It Records sampler, a release the label describe as:

“Like strolling through the meat and cheese section of the grocery store in heaven, our samples are endlessly delicious and infinitely savory […] the culmination of a continuously growing and eager community of musicians hungry to collaborate and champion each other’s art.”

The track is a cover of Gillian Welch’s ‘Look at Miss Ohio,’ a song which shares a juxtaposition between peace and anxiety with Swick’s own work. “For me, this song depicts the story of someone choosing to embrace ambiguity,” he describes, “while living with the hope that it’s going to shake out alright, somehow.” Check it out below:

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