The title track kicks things off, with Hoffman “using the impatient frustration of a slow-healing injury to delve into unpalatable truths about herself and the desires therein,” as we continued in the preview, “baring vulnerabilities and reckoning with their implications without sacrificing a certain playfulness.” The song also introduces the newly rich eggcorn sound, the album seeing Hoffman record with a full band for the first time. Bandmates Ali Gummess (violin) and Karen Moran (viola) feature throughout, Peter Craft and Alex Doolittle added drums, while Brian Mello (lead guitar) and Ben Tudor (upright bass) also make cameos. “I’ve always felt very protective of my songwriting,” Hoffman says. “It feels very private and sacred and I’ve been scared to have other people influence the process but this has been rewarding both interpersonally and artistically.” A process which feels very much in keeping with the thematic concerns of the record.

Yet for all of its collaborative spirit, eggcorn is a personal project, and Observer Effect is an inherently personal record. ‘Solo Party’ is an examination of social isolation and the ways we can change in short spaces of time, ‘Phorest’ an intimate picture of romantic longing, while ‘do 2 u’ combines both moods into something more complicated, where the twin desires for company and peace sit side by side. ‘Hitler Was a Vegetarian’ “finds Hoffman examining her own imperfections with unerring candour,” we wrote in April, “as its title suggests, the song explores the ways in which individuals exist as systems of contradictions, with objectively cruel people still capable of tenderness and vice versa.” The tender ‘Sunday Morning Visages’ on the other hand is haunted by the absence of another person. “Sometimes the breeze is the brush of you moving / hallucinate your approach on the carpet,” Hoffman sings in the opening lines, the rest of the track essentially chasing that invisible body back through time. Recalling all the things that were, reimaging what might have been. Exploring the ways in which we preserve moments from the past, the ways we curate them in our heads, and ultimately how such experiences can come to govern our lives long after their physical existence has ended.

What if you knew you only had one day
would you do anything differently
squander the moment in search of the moment
foment my legs and splay them open wide
or twisted tight

Observer Effect is out now via Spirit House and available from the eggcorn Bandcamp page.

Cover diorama by Caroline Dewison, Cover design and photography by Ginger Fierstein

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“Specialising in a style of atmospheric alt-rock that’s at once melancholy and anthemic, London outfit Dead Slow Hoot draw on a variety of genres to create something unique.” So we wrote when covering single ‘Take It Or Leave It’ last year, and DSH’s forthcoming new full-length Orbits Intervened takes things even further to become perhaps their most ambitious release to date. A collection of sprawling songs large and detailed enough to carry a range of narratives and thematic concerns, touching on everything from personal heartbreak and grief to the cultural trauma of things like the Magdalene laundries scandal. Lead single ‘Sleeping Before The Big Day’ hints at the release’s nuance and depth, a song full of tension despite its patient rhythm, caught between resistance to change and the desire to surrender to its constant flow.

Orbits Intervened will be released on the 5th June.

eggcorn – Hitler Was a Vegetarian

Last month we introduced Observer Effect, the new album from eggcorn coming soon on Spirit House. “Taking its name from the phenomenon where an observed system is disturbed by the very act of being observed,” we wrote, “[the record] sees songwriter Lara Hoffman explore the ways in which reflecting on one’s life and surroundings can shape our experiences.” After the title track used pop-inflected chamber folk to “bare vulnerabilities and reckon with their implications without sacrificing a certain playfulness,” latest single ‘Hitler Was a Vegetarian’ again finds Hoffman examining her own imperfections with unerring candour. As its title suggests, the song explores the ways in which individuals exist as systems of contradictions, with objectively cruel people still capable of tenderness and vice versa. “I am tender but that doesn’t make me nice,” as Hoffman sings at the climax of the song. “And I’m sorry and I’m sorry and it’s not fair to you.”

Ella Hanshaw – One More Hill

Born in 1934, Ella Hanshaw started playing guitar aged twelve, playing and singing for her family on their farm in Procious, West Virginia. From then until her death in 2020, Hanshaw wrote hundreds of songs, first heartsick ballads inspired by her favourite country singers and later Gospel songs she believed to be sent directly from God. Despite her obvious talents and huge repertoire, Hanshaw’s music was never recorded professionally, or released publicly, at least until now. Gathered from both home and church tape recordings by Hanshaw’s granddaughter, and released by the fine folks at SPINSTER, Ella Hanshaw’s Black Book brings together two distinct collections of her work. Side A features the Gospel songs, while Side B the country ones. Lead single ‘One More Hill’, recorded with Hanshaw’s band the Hallelujah Hill Quartet, opens the collection and is a good example of the its prevailing theme, what the label describe as “love and longing for what we cannot quite touch—not yet, anyway.”

Festiva – Ghosts and Lichens

Carver Arena-Bruce has long released music under the moniker Festiva, with albums like Songs I Don’t Sing for Anyone showing off the Portland, Maine singer and guitarist’s bold, cathartic garage rock style (“If there were a Venn diagram with Sonic Youth in one bubble and CCR in the other, Festiva’s [sound] would be in the middle,” as Arena-Bruce puts it). But the project also has a full-band iteration, with Noah Grenier-Farwell (drums) and Simi Kunin (bass) of Amiright? joining to help realise Festiva’s full noisy potential. Out via Repeating Cloud, new full-length Everything In Moderation shows how powerful this can be, with songs like ‘Ghosts and Lichens’ matching Arena-Bruce’s singular vocal style with a sense of heft and volatility.

Florry – First it was a movie, then it was a book

Philadelphia‘s DIY country superstars Florry have a new record on the way via Dear Life Records. It’s their second effort since bandleader Francie Medosch transformed what was once a solo project into a bona fide folk rock band, and early signs suggest it could see Florry hit yet another level. “A portrait of a ripping band cresting towards the height of their powers,” as the label describe it, “uniquely equipped to capture a wildly loving, barn-burning camcorder clip of a turbulent trip with your best friends, without dipping into nostalgia bait.” Released a couple weeks ago, single ‘First it was a movie, then it was a book’ confirms this hype, a freewheeling country-fried rocker that kicks off the album with limitless energy and dedication to the vision of what Florry means both to Medosch and the community that has formed around her.

First it was a movie, then it was a book
They chopped my life up, put it on tv so I had to take a look
Well that Holly Hunter is so relatable, when she screamed I cried
if I wasn’t feeling so empty baby Id give that movie five out of five

Watch the video directed and edited by Jon Cox below:

Sounds Like… is out on the 23rd May via Dear Life Records and you can pre-order it now.

Laila Smith – Diorama

Something Dreadful’s Going To Happen, the upcoming release from musician and artist Laila Smith, is more than your average EP. Not only are the songs themselves experimental in their own right, adding avant garde noise sensibilities to what are ostensibly folk arrangements, they are also accompanied by an immersive video game available on Smith’s website. Lead single ‘Diorama’ introduces the project, matching an interactive experience to the song to further its explorations of trauma and the power dynamics which shape us on both personal and societal levels. “I’ve created a digital twin of the physical diorama featured in my album art,” Smith explains, “an explorable environment where fans manipulate a miniature version of me through rooms filled with objects from my personal history.” Taking inspiration from the art style of 90s era internet, the work takes on a strangely retrofuturist vibe, harkening back to a time where the online space felt like fertile ground for a better, more creative future. As Smith puts it: “it’s an attempt to reclaim digital space as somewhere strange and sacred rather than optimized and consumable.”

‘Diorama’ is out now via streaming services.

Rival Consoles – Known Shape

“Might be the project’s most impressive [record] to date, focusing in on small details while retaining the grand sweeps of melancholy and euphoria too.” So we wrote of Landscape from Memory, the upcoming from Rival Consoles on Erased Tapes. The release sees Ryan Lee West delve into what he calls “a scrapbook of discarded audio snippets,” building from the flashes of memory and inspiration found within. Embodying the spirit of the release, latest single ‘Known Shape’ shows how Rival Consoles retains a sense of humanity within its digital sound. “I’ve always been obsessed by controls on machines because they produce beautiful sounds and they have their own rhythms,” West explains. “The drums are made from rotating switches and the synths are set in motion by invisible mechanical rhythms. Machines have a special connection to the human spirit, which is both good and bad but above all restless. There is a constant searching in ‘Known Shape’ for some kind of answer or emotion.”

Sally Anne Morgan – I Saw a Heron

The music of North Carolina artist and naturalist Sally Anne Morgan is inextricable from the landscape in which she creates it. Her blend of traditional instrumentation and more modern composition is an exploration of the people, places and nature that surround her home at the edge of North Carolina’s Pisgah National Forest. Morgan’s forthcoming record, Second Circle The Horizon, is a direct example, an attempt to translate both the rhythm and randomness of the natural world into a language more musical. “I wanted to capture the feeling of walking outside and encountering organic nature sounds,” she describes, “some with patterns, some with a randomness that also verges on its own kind of pattern.” Our first taste is ‘I Saw a Heron’, a piece built of fiddle, violin and piano that feels as fresh and lush as a spring morning walk through a sunlit valley.

Slow Mass – Freeze Frame

Next month sees the release of Low On Foot, the new album from Slow Mass on Landland Corportage. Their first since 2018, the record finds the Chicago outfit bigger and bolder than ever, their line-up increasing to six members (and subsequently seven after recording) and their sound pushing in all directions. Single ‘Freeze Frame’ bears the fruits of this evolution, a sound at once weightier than anything they released previously yet also more tender and heartfelt. Because Slow Mass haven’t merely taken their work down one specific road but added depth to everything, meaning their current iteration can be heavier and more delicate all at once. The juxtaposition is fitting for ‘Freeze Frame’, a song all about the tension between who you are and who you might have been, holding space for those desires to change as a person while learning to embrace one’s own identity.

Watch

Low On Foot is out on the 16th May via Landland Colportage and you can pre-order it now.

Symbol Soup – Miniatures

Back in 2023 Symbol Soup released full-length Slow Puncture via Sad Club Records, an album “brought to life with a decidedly American aesthetic, following a lineage rising in the 90s from songwriters like Mark Linkous and persisting through a myriad of contemporaries,” as we described in our review, “but one which draws parallels between the US and Rea’s hometown of Milton Keynes. A city with a short history inside a country with a long one, designed purely for modern living and possessing the strange balance between potential and hollowness of any ahistorical space.” New single ‘Miniatures’ is again concerned with place and a person’s identity within it, specifically how overly familiar surroundings can come to make a life seem rote and insignificant. But with Symbol Soup’s signature blend of melancholy and warmth, the song manages to reposition such feelings into something like relief. Perhaps being small isn’t the worst thing in the world?

Watch the video by Hello Mary below:

‘Miniatures’ is out now via Sad Club Records and available from Bandcamp.

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With 2023 album Cleaning Up With Big Mess, Copenhagen‘s Big Mess introduced a genre-spanning style which tapped into the unbridled joy of good old-fashioned punk rock, and new release Terry EP indicates they have no intention of slowing down. The record is out now via Specialist Subject Records, and opener and title track shows off the vibe of the collection. Repurposing Kirsty MacColl’s hit into a power pop gem, ‘Terry’ distils the wry humour and bite of the original into their purest states. The result races into life from the off and never lets up, harnessing MacColl’s cheeky defiance as its own form of momentum, and proving as cathartic as it is fun.

Ciao Malz – Clementine (Elliott Smith cover)

Back in December, Ciao Malz released their debut EP Safe Then Sorry, a four-song grab bag that veered between alt-country twang and woozy pop confidence. Now Malia DelaCruz is showing another dimension to the project with a cover of Elliott Smith’s ‘Clementine’, recapturing the hushed intimacy of the original in all of its sincerity and narrative depth. “‘Clementine’ is probably my favorite Elliott Smith song,” as DelaCruz explains. “The way he picks up on a bartender singing and turns it into something so eerie and beautiful is wild. The harmonies are something I’ve always wanted to nail, and I love experimenting with them when I’m recording. And yeah, sometimes it’s just fun to channel Elliott Smith for a while.”

You can find Ciao Malz on Bandcamp.

Committeemen – Therapy

Consisting of DJ Gilmore-Innis (vocals/guitar), Ken Dannelley (drums), Matt Kast (bass), and Graham Bell (guitar), Houston punk rockers Committeemen owe as much to post punk royalty like Gang of Four as they do contemporaries Osees and Parquet Courts. But, they’re no cheap copy, managing to recombine this range of influences into something wholly their own. With a new EP on the way via Rue Defense, single ‘Therapy’ highlights the searing intensity of their sound. Taking aim at the burgeoning ecosystem of quacks and narcissists which seems determined to tell us how to live, this is blistering punk complete with yell-along chorus, treating this vapid, insidious cohort of podcasters, Youtubers and televangelists with the contempt they deserve.

Daily Toll – Killincs

Described as “eleven songs traversing three years of forged friendships, collaborative experimentation and a shared love of growing through words and song,” new album A Profound Non-Event sees Sydney post-punks Daily Toll take the next step in their evolution, building upon what came before with a growing sense of confidence and conviction. With the release coming this June on Tough Love, the trio have shared lead single ‘Killincs’, and the track embodies the sound of a band striving towards their most truthful form while appreciating such a quest might prove unending. “The light reflects an upside-down image of a life I might never visit,” as lead Kata Szász-Komlós sings. “Too far to touch, not far enough to forget.” And as the song progresses, its verbosity belying the relatively understated, assured tone, it becomes clear the unresolved is something to be accepted, even embraced. As a later line states: “I have the key still, but I’ve buried the path.”

Watch the video directed and edited by Szász-Komlós below:

A Profound Non-Event is out on the 20th June via Tough Love and you can pre-order it now.

eggcorn – Observer Effect

Taking its name from the phenomenon where an observed system is disturbed by the very act of being observed, eggcorn‘s new album Observer Effect sees songwriter Lara Hoffman explore the ways in which reflecting on one’s life and surroundings can shape our experiences. Moving away from the synth pop sensibilities of debut Your Own True Love, the album adopts a pop-inflected brand of chamber folk which combines sincere compassion with unerring honesty, a sound able to probe deep into the heart of the matter and unafraid of getting dirty in the process. The lead single and title track is the ideal entry point, Hoffman using the impatient frustration of a slow-healing injury to delve into unpalatable truths about herself and the desires therein, baring vulnerabilities and reckoning with their implications without sacrificing a certain playfulness.

MF Tomlinson – Die To Wake Up From A Dream

Over a series of releases in recent times, Brisbane/Meanjin born, London based artist MF Tomlinson has challenged genre conventions, progressing beyond classic folk styles with the addition of psych, rock and other sensibilities. This summer will see him return with Die To Wake Up From A Dream, a brand new album via PRAH Recordings which continues this exploration of the possibilities of folk. Described by Tomlinson himself as a treatise on “resilience, hope and the frankly wildly psychedelic experience of being alive,” the lead single and title track shows one such possibility, drawing on everything from John Martyn to Talk Talk and My Bloody Valentine to create a sound which might originate in folk but ends up beyond any easy genre categorisation.

Watch the accompanying video—described as a “visual essay”—by Andrea Zvadova below:

Die To Wake Up From A Dream is out on the 11th July via PRAH Recordings.

sachi’s mirror – a new shape

The recording project of Oakland-based experimental violinist and composer Shaina Pan, sachi’s mirror offers rich, genre-bending soundscapes which use pedal effects to push the violin to new ground. Classically trained, Pan dipped a toe in experimental music as a vocalist and bassist for Bay Area art-punks Juicebumps during the pandemic, and is now reaching further across ambient, avant-garde and art pop sensibilities to weave her own compositions. Taken from debut release coral miracle church, single ‘a new shape’ embodies the style, a song full of space and intricate detail which grows with subtle grace. Spoken word samples further the mood, and the result feels like a doorway into some adjacent, ethereal world.

Serfing – no new friends

Consisting of Austin Weber and David Caploe (Singer of Hate Drugs, BEST DAD), LA‘s Serfing are preparing to release their debut EP to properly introduce themselves to the world. Lead single ‘no new friends’ is the first taste of what to expect. Painted in long, relaxed strokes, the track offers a dreamy meditation on making connections with other people, its languorous tempo able to draw out both the warmth and anguish inherent within such a process. “It’s hard to keep yourself from falling / falling in love,” as the opening lines go. “Spend enough time with somebody / falling in love.” But true to the ambiguous mood of a sound that could be taken as dawning fondness or anxious hesitancy, the lyrics soon offer conflicting thoughts.

Why even plant a tree to cut it down?
you know those roots are staying in the ground
better off just being no-one
than falling in love

The Taxpayers – Outline of Your Blood

We’ve covered a number of singles from Circle Breaker, the new full-length from  Portland, Oregon emo outfit The Taxpayers, in recent weeks, be it ‘At War With The Dogcatchers‘ with its search for love amid tragedy and cruelty or ‘I Am One Thousand‘, an ode to those afflicted by war and its adjacent sufferings. With the album now out via Ernest Jenning Record Co., The Taxpayers are releasing a new single, ‘Outline of Your Blood’, as a celebration. The closing track to the album which encapsulates everything which came before, stricken by discouragement and burgeoning doom yet unable to shake a sense of hope despite it all. As the title suggests, this is an album of cycles, the grandest of which being the circle of life itself, and no matter how dark the present, The Taxpayers want to remind you that new life is always being born too.

Circle Breaker is out now via Ernest Jenning Record Co. and you can get it from Bandcamp.

Wishy – Over and Over

“Everything fans of the band have come to love.” That’s how we described ‘Fly’ back in February, the lead single from Wishy‘s forthcoming EP Planet Popstar. “A song,” as we put it, “that looks to move beyond heartbreak with a mix of affirming energy and wistful longing.” With the EP coming next month on Winspear, the Indianapolis outfit are back with fresh track ‘Over and Over’. With vocal duties shifting back to Kevin Krauter, and Nina Pitchkites offering backing harmonies, the song sees fingerpicked guitar melded with breakbeat rhythms, offering a sound packed full of detail while maintaining a languid calm, and further marking Wishy as one of the most inventive acts working today.

The song comes complete with a video directed by Demi Fenicle, edited by Aaron Agler and with visual Effects by Stephen Orban, which you can watch below:

Planet Popstar is out on the 25th April via Winspear and you can pre-order it now.

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