“Has it been a year or two? Will it be cotton or leather?” asks Abigail Lapell in new single ‘Anniversary Song’. “Mercury and iron, carbon, silver / bind us together.” Taken from the Toronto singer-songwriter’s forthcoming album Anniversary on Outside Music, the song encapsulates the marriage of symbolism and tangibility used across the record. Romantic chemistry as both otherworldly magic and physical reaction. Not that the love on the album is merely of the romantic sort, with a series of personal milestones prompting Lapell to contemplate the phenomenon in all its guises, offering a picture of relationships and commitment with all the complexities left intact.

Agent blå – Rain To You

Last month we wrote about ‘Discount’, the lead single from the upcoming album Stab! by Gothenburg‘s Agent blå on VÅRØ Records (Sweden) and Kanine Records (US). What we described as a song “simmering with eerie menace and charged with forward motion, splitting the difference between familiarity and strangeness.” With the album coming later this spring, Agent blå have returned with second single ‘Rain To You’ to build upon these beginnings. Squally and loaded with momentum, it looks to small details as sources of comfort within an otherwise overwhelming world, and submits itself fully to forces large and mysterious.

Never spoke it with a sober mouth
I’m drawn to the chaos, my sanity grown shy
Keep clinging to no time
You’re the moon to me
I was rain to you

Al Harper – Plaster of Paris

Later this month, San Francisco-based songwriter Al Harper will release album The Analemma Observation League via Take a Turn Records. An album which draws upon the solar phenomenon of its title to explore themes of change and growth. Analemma refers to the figure of eight plot made if one was to chart the sun’s position in the sky from the same position at the same time of day across an entire year, rendering what might otherwise seem a linear process into an infinite loop. Working in such a spirit, Al Harper draws on a variety of memories and experiences to offer the past not as some line trailing ever further into the distance, but rather something forever orbiting around us. Lessons to learn from, patterns to take comfort in. The suitably sunny sound of latest single ‘Plaster of Paris’ is the perfect introduction, and comes complete with a video shot by Harper and Craig Barclift and edited by Simon Linsteadt:

The Analemma Observation League is out on the 23rd February via Take A Turn Records and you can pre-order it now.

bedbug – postcard

We’ve long followed the work of bedbug, charting how Dylan Gamez Citron has taken the project through a trilogy of acclaimed bedroom pop albums before metamorphosing into a full band for a self-titled EP in 2022. This year sees bedbug return with pack your bags the sun is growing, a full-length album which builds more fully upon this change of direction to push the project closer to Cap’n Jazz than the hushed aesthetic from which they originated. A style which only furthers Citron’s ability to weave the personal and the political into a seamless whole. Vitally none of the heart or intimacy is lost in this transformation, as single ‘postcard’ attests, and while any project inevitably passes through various life stages as time goes on, you get the sense Citron and co. are rising towards their fullest potential. The first bedbug to ever sprout wings.

Dead Slow Hoot – Take It Or Leave It

Specialising in a style of atmospheric alt-rock that’s at once melancholy and anthemic, Sheffield/London outfit Dead Slow Hoot draw on a variety of genres to create something unique. Previous releases have drawn on poetic folk, shadowy post-punk and epic post-rock, sometimes within the same song, and new single ‘Take It Or Leave It’ is no different. Opening with just pared-back guitar and banjo, it eventually builds to a dramatic crescendo of wailing guitar and crashing percussion, straddling the line between an intimate acoustic ballad and a monumental rock song. The song is about “making necessary compromises for the good of your partner and growing together through that,” the band explain, “[and also] a more general realism, accepting the ‘competing intentions’ that you might have with another person… and actively engaging with them to make something better.”

‘Take It Or Leave It’ is out now via streaming services.

Emma Geiger – Reverse Bloom

We’ve featured Durham, North Carolina-based songwriter Emma Geiger several times over the last year or so. First with 2022 EP Haven, and then with several stellar singles. Excitingly, Geiger is now putting the finishing touches to her debut full-length, Reverse Bloom, which features those singles alongside four brand new tracks. To further whet anticipation, she has released the title track, a song which moves its focus away from romantic relationships towards the difficult loss of a friendship. Someone Geiger was formerly close to wrote a song detailing the dissolution of their friendship, and this is an exploration of the following emotions. “When I first heard it, I felt her anger, frustration and bitterness,” she describes. “That friendship meant a lot to me, and losing it really shook me. It brought up a lot of questions about who I am, and who I was in that relationship.” Watch the video filmed by Archer Boyette and directed by Boyette and Geiger herself below:

Reverse Bloom is out on 26th April. ‘Reverse Bloom’ the single is available now via the Emma Geiger Bandcamp page.

Eyesore & The Jinx – Float Like a Jellyfish (Sting Like a Subtweet)

“[A song which presents] the gym as the encapsulation of the country,” we wrote of Eyesore & The Jinx‘s ‘Nocturnal Athletes (Ode To Bruno)’ by back in September when previewing their debut album, Jitterbug, “where an assortment of lonely and overworked people run without going anywhere, lift with no purpose beyond some abstract penance, and stare at screens playing Top 40 videos on a loop.” With the record’s release fast approaching, the Liverpool-based outfit have shared final single ‘Float Like a Jellyfish (Sting Like a Subtweet)’, and fans will be reassured to learn it is every bit as twitchy and cutting as we’ve come to expect. Light-hearted, mischievous and a little hyperactive, winding taut with anxious energy to evoke a decidedly contemporary unease.

Jordan Whitlock & Memory Spells – Take My Hand

Memory Spells is the new project of songwriter Matt Bauer which takes the orchestral indie folk he puts out under his own name further towards “his love of contemporary TV, film and video game scores, cinematic post rock, early post punk, and 80s film music.” His latest collaboration is with San Diego songwriter and producer Jordan Whitlock, whose intimate writing and impressive soulful vocals have been wining fans all over. Suffused with the lush, shadowy grandeur of Lynch at his most romantic, latest single ‘Take My Hand’ is what the duo describe as “Emmylou Harris meets Cigarettes after Sex,” not only offering a new dimension to Bauer’s work but opening up a whole world of its own.

You can find out more on the Memory Spells website.

The Lostines – Full Moon Night

The recording project of New Orleans-based songwriters Casey Jane Reece-Kaigler and Camille Wind Weatherford, The Lostines are preparing to release their debut full-length Meet The Lostines this spring on Gar Hole Records. The album draws plenty from the Louisiana landscape, but ultimately conjures a world of its own. One in which time and space has gone a little strange, and a whole host of periods and places layer atop of one another to form something larger than the sum of its parts. Lead single ‘Full Moon Night’ typifies the result, where retro folk harmonies and spectral synths bring to life a languid longing for a love now past.

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Take brand new single, ‘Empty’, released along with a video Emma Geiger directed together with Archer Boyette. “The idea for the video started with the pomegranate without knowing why, just feeling connected to it as something beautiful and strange,” she explains. “But it holds a lot of significance that fits with the song’s themes. It is a symbol of death, abundance, love, and is also in the myth of Persephone, who after eating the seeds of a pomegranate is doomed to spend part of the year in the underworld with Hades.”

Boyette adds vocals to the track too, joining Michael Grigoni (pedal steel) and Emma Kelly (violin) in helping Geiger bring a delicate yet evocative sound to life. The sense of ambiguity is again a key facet, where apparent dualities are challenged and contradicted in much the same way as in the story of Persephone. “The story in ‘Empty’ feels parallel to this myth,” as Geiger continues. “The entrapment in love despite a desire to escape; being convinced by the other to stay. There seem to be endless parallels between the world we created in the video and Persephone’s fate; the river as a boundary between earth and the underworld; the pomegranate pulled from it as though sent from the underworld; submerging in the river as both departure from earth and rebirth. It’s interesting how these myths subconsciously shape our perception of the world.”

No I don’t want to let go
No I don’t want to leave
But I’m not one
To know when I should grieve

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

Photo by Archer Boyette, album art by Adam Sniezek

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Together with bass from Zack Kardon (The Dead Tongues, Indigo De Souza), drums from Joe Westerlund (Sylvan Esso, Megafaun, Bon Iver), and guitar from Justin Morris (Sluice, Sun June), Geiger weaves an ostensibly calm, tender style of folk, though dip beneath the surface and you’ll find a more turbulent mood. The push and pull of competing currents which represent the unseen physics of any relationship. Take latest single ‘All Your Words’, where the contemplative tone belies the interior chaos which underpins the song.

Written during the confounding experience of leaving familiar people and places when the vestiges of fondness remain, ‘All Your Words’ blurs nostalgia and desperation into its conflicted sound. That strange tension between knowing change is needed and being unable to quite picture what might come next. Strings from Emma Kelly (Maple Glider) offer relief in the chorus, hinting towards the potential to move through this state, and the result feels like a memorial to a very specific period. “This song feels like a time capsule of my mental landscape from the time that I wrote it,” as Geiger explains. “It is about dissonance, distance, and wondering what shape resolution could take. It is less of a representation of how I feel today, but in certain moments I can still relate to the confusion I was overwhelmed with at the time.”

Photo by Archer Boyette

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A few weeks ago we wrote about Stolen Time, the upcoming album by Abigail Lapell on Outside Music, an album “built on solid 70s folk rock foundations while retaining the freedom to get experimental and expansive.” Ahead of its release, Lapell has unveiled new single ‘Land of Plenty’, a track that explores themes of escape and refuge to evoke both history and the contemporary moment. Lapell’s own family fled the Holocaust to North America, and the song’s mournful clarity plays like a hymn offered to those seeking their own safety and place to belong. Check out the video by Sam Tudor below:

Stolen Time is out via Outside Music on the 22nd April and you can pre-order it now.

Constellation Myths – Young Lions (Constantines Cover)

Massachusetts trio Constellation Myths are hard at work on a follow-up to last year’s debut Everything and Time, but found a moment to record a take on the Constantines classic, ‘Young Lions’. The Constellation Myths version strips the taut menace from the original in favour of a half-paced country tone. What was gruff fervour is recast as wistful reflection, though the track is no less emotive as a consequence. Listen to the cover below:

Drench Fries – Out My Window

The recording project of Seattle-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Levi Nattrass, Drench Fries made a splash back in 2019 with EP Ballad Salad, a record which combined retro pop polish with a folk rock twang. Ahead of follow-up Being Silver which arrives later this month, Nattras has unveiled the single ‘Out My Window’, a track which builds upon the previous release to realise its fond examination of friendship and love. Think classic country regret made hazy by the sea mist of the West Coast, with dollops of indie rock fuzz and playful pop synths adding an idiosyncratic charm.

If I need you would you come through, if I called would you pick up?
When the going gets a-rough I’m tired of trying my luck
Six white horses on the hillside, seven ravens in the sky
coming towards me as I turn away and try to insist
on leaving tonight

Emma Geiger – Flock

Ahead of a new EP Haven on Ghost Mountain Records this spring, Durham, North Carolina-based songwriter Emma Geiger has unveiled her latest single, ‘Flock’. Written at dawn amid the aftermath of a relationship and cross country move, the song’s gentle rhythm embraces the strange halfway quality of crepuscular light. The fleeting moment between night and day that carries its own inherent stillness. Geiger’s vocals emerge within this space neither soft or stark, their tone caught somewhere between hesitant and assured in their reflective mood, though always swelling with the promise of change.

Haven is out via Ghost Mountain Records on the 1st April and you can pre-order it from the Emma Geiger Bandcamp page.

Jess Williamson – Texas Blue

Now based in LA, but a Texas native, Jess Williamson‘s latest release is an ode to her home state. A two song cover EP, Texas Blue features a take on Townes van Zandt’s ‘Loretta’ and the ‘Texas River Song’, a traditional song of unknown origin which Townes also made his own. Williamson is joined by Ben Schwab (guitar, bass and organ) and Noah Jeffries (mandolin and fiddle) to flesh out both tracks into timeless folk songs, and in doing so, as the press release puts it “reckons with a state, and state of mind, that feels so close but so far away, and breaks a spell that these songs, and Texas’s big, starry skies, have held over her for so long.”

Mousey – Pudding and Pie

Based in Christchurch, Mousey is the recording project of Sarena Close. Described as “the cold, damaged heart” at the centre of the record, ‘Pudding and Pie’ closes the book on a toxic friendship with all the ups and downs such a process entails. Over six minutes the track shifts from quiet fury to racing energy and back again, the elastic rhythm relaxing outward before snapping to taut attention and eventually rising into a big spacey crescendo. “I think this song is the longest because the torture this person put me through meant there was so much emotional fuel to burn and so much to say,” Close explains. Little could survive such a burning, a wound cauterised in the heat and light.

I won’t be your patsy schmuck
I won’t be your spitting cup
I won’t be your dumping truck
Flags up, don’t push me no more
I’m tired, I’m tired

Steven Lambke – Every Lover Knows

Speaking of Constantines, their very own Steven Lambke has a a brand new solo record Volcano, Volcano coming later this spring on You’ve Changed Records. Described by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson as “an invitation, an exploration of potential, an opportunity for listening and thinking and relating that holds space for otherwise thinking and shared meaning-making,” the album feels like the essence of Lambke’s career distilled into a collection of songs. A record built on trust, community and experimentation, fuelled by those small, fleeting moments of joy amid an otherwise difficult world. Lead single ‘Every Lover Knows’ introduces the style, acknowledging ever-present hardships but bursting with life.

The truth is
every truth is tested
by the world
until it’s busted, twisted, or frayed,
as every lover knows

Young Prisms – Outside Air

Later this month, San Francisco‘s shoegaze outfit Young Prisms return with Drifter, their first record in a decade on Fire Talk Records. Latest single ‘Outside Air’ shows a band transcending the throwback pastiche of the genre and realising a sound fully their own. Described as a song about “about the struggles and difficulties in modern marriage, monogamy, and parenting at a young age,” the track draws on the Californian wildfires that blazed during recording to evoke the suffocating damage resentment can wreak within a relationship. But in reflecting on these truths, the oppressive forces are challenged by a commitment to perseverance and quiet improvement. Check out the video directed by Gio Betteo below:

Drifter is out on the 25th March via Fire Talk Records and you can pre-order it now from the Young Prisms Bandcamp page.

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