Following on from 2023 full-length Painting of My Time—which used, as we put it, “layers of additional instrumentation to combine cathartic rock ‘n roll directness with post-punk atmosphere and the creative flair of art pop”—Melbourne‘s Floodlights have announced a brand new album, Underneath. The outfit have made a name through a willingness to engage with wide cultural themes, though the new record sees them tending further than ever towards the personal, paring back the layers of its predecessor to allow for a more unguarded, intimate sound. Single ‘The Light Won’t Shine Forever’ shows the sense of forward motion inherent within this unburdened style, pressing forward with an affirming momentum.

Watch the video, with concept, direction and animation by Ava Clifforth, below:

Underneath will be released on the 21st March via [PIAS] Recordings and you can pre-order it now from Bandcamp.

Frog – MIXTAPE LINER NOTES
VAR. VII

Not resting on their laurels after the success of 2023 full-length GROG, everyone’s favourite New York duo Frog are returning next month with new album, 1000 Variations on the Same Song. The record, to be released on Audio Antihero and Tapewormies, runs the gamut between indie rock, alt country and smoky lounge cool, and packs the expected density and diversity of references from a Frog release. But beneath the surface, it lives up to its title. “1000 Variations on the Same Song is a theme and variations,” as Daniel Bateman explains. “There are times in your life as a songwriter where you’ll start a bunch of stuff that all sounds alike, which can be a problem, something that you want to excise from yourself. This time I decided to embrace it and take it as far as it could go.” Latest single ‘MIXTAPE LINER NOTES
VAR. VII’ lands on the folky side of the album, though embodies the spirit of the release quite nicely.

Half Gringa – Glacier Walker

Writing of Half Gringa‘s Ancestral Home back in 2023 we described how “it is tempting to view the end of the world as a singular event, a doom unique to the generations living today. But the truth is there is nothing special in our turmoil. People have always confronted loss on an unimaginable scale. With [single] ‘Sevenwater’, [Isabel Olive] affords this truth the reverence and mourning it deserves.” Described as addressing “mythology, mortality, and everything in between,” Half Gringa’s latest full-length Cosmovisión is in many ways a continuation of this project, and, inspired by the glacial melt Olive witnessed during a trip to Iceland, lead single ‘Glacier Walker’ again takes on the climate catastrophe through the prism of anxiety and all of its associated emotions.

Cosmovisión is out on the 28th March via Teleférico Records and you can pre-order it now from Bandcamp.

Kristin Daelyn – Patience Comes to the Bones

“I used to hurry everywhere, / and leaped over the running creeks. / There wasn’t / time enough for all the wonderful things / I could think of to do / in a single day. Patience / comes to the bones / before it take root in the heart / as another good idea.” So wrote Mary Oliver in her poem ‘Patience’, the principle inspiration for the lead single of Kristin Daelyn‘s forthcoming record, Beyond the Break. ‘Patience Comes to the Bones’ introduces a collection of songs which looks to carve a space of reflection and peace within the tumultuous present, approaching the dissatisfaction and suffering common to us all from a decidedly compassionate angle. Supported by guest appearances from Dan Knishkowy (Adeline Hotel), Danny Black (Good Old War, Gregory Alan Isakov) and Patrick Riley, Daelyn’s soulful vocals and intricate, intimate guitar welcome the audience into the space so that we too might re-examine our lives from new angles and come to appreciate the fellowship to be found in the universality of longing.

JPW & Dad Weed – It’s Happening

This April sees the release of Amassed Like a Rat King, a collaborative album between JPW (Jason P. Woodbury) and Dad Weed (Zachary Toporek) which sees a long held mutual admiration precipitate into a collection of songs neither artist could have created on their own. “These songs were born out of a lot of tender moments and connection, weekends spent indulging in unguarded joy and musical energy,” Woodbury explains. “There was a special thing that seemed to happen between us, which felt distinct from our individual projects — a shared ‘third mind’ situation.” The resulting album covers a vast stretch of stylistic ground, moving through seventies soul-rock and nineties alt-pop with an exploratory intuition, but latest single ‘It’s Happening’ highlights the psych-inflected cosmic folk which underpins everything.

Magana – Half to Death

Magana‘s new EP Bad News is the closing instalment of a loose triptych based upon the seasons of the year. If Teeth represented spring and Dreams autumn, then Bad News occupies the tail end of winter. That period of stillness where life is building up the conviction to spring forth once again. The resulting sound, as highlighted by opener ‘Half to Death’, is a restrained brand of pop which strips away some of the adornment of previous Magana releases in favour of something more direct. Putting the narrative-based lyrics front and centre and amplifying a mood that proves at once warm and starkly emotive.

quickly, quickly – Enything

The recording project of Portland, Oregon’s Graham Jonson, quickly, quickly might have originated as a vehicle for hip hop beatmaking, but soon evolved far beyond such confines. Debut full-length The Long and Short of It offered an endlessly inventive sound which reached for everything from folk and jazz to psych and electronic influences and never once stayed still. Now preparing to release follow-up I Heard That Noise via Ghostly International, quickly, quickly has released new single ‘Enything’, and the evidence suggests the project is still undergoing its perpetual evolution. Upbeat rhythm is matched with a reflective air, the tone wistful, the groove playful, the delivery perhaps as earnest as anything Jonson has offered to date. “I wrote this song from a fictional place of dumb love,” he explains. “There is a place you can find yourself in where you are so infatuated with a person you would do anything to impress them, even to a fault, drastically changing yourself to match the idea of someone you barely know.”

Watch the video below, directed by Graham Jonson and filmed by Anthony Sims with animations by Benny Bursell:

I Heard That Noise is out on the 4th April via Ghostly International and you can pre-order it now.

Robert Ascroft – Devil Opens The Door (feat. Kid Congo Powers)

In recent months. we’ve covered a series of singles from Robert Ascroft‘s forthcoming album Echo Still Remains, each track seeing the Rochester-based musician, producer, director and artist collaborate with different guests to bring his seductively shadowy style to life. After Ruth Radalet (on ‘Faded Photographs’), Zumi Rosow of The Black Lips (‘Empty Pages‘) and Britta Phillips (‘Where Did You Go?‘), now is the turn of Kid Congo Powers. A member of The Cramps, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and The Gun Club as well as a solo artist in his own right, Kid Congo Powers is the ideal match for the album’s tone, imbuing new single ‘Devil Opens The Door’ with all the dangerous allure and dread its title suggests. Watch the video directed by Ascroft himself below:

Echo Still Remains is out the 14th February via Hand Drawn Dracula and you can pre-order it now.

(T-T)b – Hey, Creepshow

Boston’s (T-T)b have carved out a niche combining the hectic energy of Anamanaguchi with indie rock and power pop. 2021 EP Suporma typified how the project manages to push chiptune beyond its assumed limitations, and now the trio are back with Beautiful Extension Cord, a brand new full-length album to be released this April with the good folks at Disposable America. Lead single ‘Hey, Creepshow’ gives a taste of what’s to come. A song packed full of intricate details which nevertheless carries its own momentum and weight, retaining the chiptune sounds of the past but as one element among many rather than the central novelty. What results swings between atmospheric lulls and fond singalong choruses, and comes to form its own cathartic release.

Wryn – Snake

This spring, Californian songwriter Wryn is releasing their new full-length Shapes on Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records. It’s an album born of a personal process of change and self-actualisation which reckons with gender and past experiences in order to mould life into a more truthful, fulfilling shape. Latest single ‘Snake’ gives a glimpse into the release, namely folk-inflected indie rock which uses fury as a kind of fuel to drive a newfound sense of agency. “A call to something older and deeper, it taps into my own personal experiences of not just systemic violence but the intimate and interpersonal kind,” as Wryn explains. “Having experienced assault in my past, this song was a way to transform my own pain into a call to action. ‘I can’t wait for an answer before I get free.’”

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Hailing from Montana and now based in Nashville, songwriter Ava Swan combines pop and country sensibilities into something capable of elucidating personal feelings while capturing the alarming state of the world. Latest single ‘Oh My’ focuses on a more hopeful side of this style, exploring how good things can and do happen no matter how bleak the wider picture. It’s song written after a period of depression during the first years of the pandemic which learns to appreciate the small joys amid fear and monotony, ultimately embracing the notion that the worst is not always going to happen.

The mineral mother of all that we know
Covers everything in sight
And quietly she whispers in an ancient voice
“Anyone can fall in love at any time”

‘Oh My’ is out now and available via Spotify.

The Burning Hell – All I Need

Back in June we mention Garbage Island, the latest album from Mathias Kom’s The Burning Hell on BB*Island. Making “everything from tongue-in-cheek anti-folk to racing indie rock,” Kom and co. offered what we described as “a bright and mischievous ode to a pre-apocalyptic world.” Now the outfit has teamed up with Joe Nicolosi for a brand new video for the track ‘All I Need’ to further develop these themes, producing what’s been described as “a cross between WALL-E, Blade Runner and The Brave Little Toaster.” And if that sounds like a bizarre blend of the playful and dystopian, then Nicolosi has done his job. Welcome to The Burning Hell.

All that I need is just you and the sea
And some food and fresh water and something to read,
An endless vista, the fancy pen I got for my bar mitzvah
And a semi-decent pair of water skis:
That’s all I need

Garbage Island is out now and available from The Burning Hell Bandcamp page.

Cinder Well – Two Heads, Grey Mare

This coming April sees the release of Cadence, the new album by Amelia Baker’s Cinder Well. The record promises to build on Baker’s signature stark and doom-laden experimental folk, leavened with more expansive arrangements that evoke the early 70s heyday of LA’s Laurel Canyon. Indeed, California, where Baker grew up, is one of two coastal focal points of the record. The other is her adopted home of Country Clare in Western Ireland, a region whose folklore inspires lead single ‘Two Heads, Grey Mare’. It’s a song about the shape-shifting selkie (a seal able to shed its skin to become human) and the mysterious ancient power of the moon and the tides. Watch the video, made by Jordan Carroll in the Peak District, below:

Cadence will be released via Free Dirt Records on 21^st April. Pre-order it now from the Cinder Well Bandcamp page.

DM Stith – Doomed!

Taken from forthcoming LP Fata Morgana on Historical Fiction Records, ‘Doomed!’ is the latest single from DM Stith, a track which finds the singer-songwriter in new terrain. Written after moving from Brooklyn to Rochester on the shore of Lake Ontario, the song feels suffused with fresh perspective and creative clarity. “Where am I?” he asks in the delicate opening line, before answering himself, “I wandered upstate rising up / evaporating out of my life.” Stith’s music has always held a diaphanous quality, but here the airiness feels more effortless than melancholy, Thomas Bartlett’s production adding an impressionistic elegance. That said, as the title suggests, ‘Doomed!’ is not without anxiety. It’s symptomatic of a record that, despite its lighter tone and subtle pop sensibilities, is ultimately a deep and candid exercise in self exploration.

I shed my skin all over again
All my memories and
All they represent
They hug me like a hurricane wheel
Exploring every inch of me
Hug me like I’m doomed

Esther Rose – Chet Baker

Following recent albums on Full Time Hobby and Father/Daughter Records, country singer-songwriter Esther Rose has announced Safe to Run, her fourth LP, on New West Records. Created in the last two years following a move from New Orleans to Santa Fe, the record promises to be yet another advance on Rose’s already impressive catalogue, introducing pop hooks and a newfound sense of confidence, even as it continues to narrate the messily graceful stories of a life in progress. Lead single ‘Chet Baker’ shows this off expertly—a song written from the depths of a memory rabbit hole induced by a random DM on social media, telling the story of a decade old dive bar and car crash in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Watch the video by Joshua Shoemaker below:

New West Records will release Safe to Run on 21st April and you can order it now form the Esther Rose Bandcamp page.

Floodlights – Lessons Learnt

We’ve been fans of Melbourne‘s Floodlights for a couple of years now, taken by their evocative writing and fusion of post-punk, indie rock and a subtle dusty twang. The band have recently announced a brand new record, Painting of My Time, an album which promises to be both a continuation and an evolution of their signature sound. Latest single ‘Lessons Learnt’ is the perfect illustration, adding layers of additional instrumentation to combine cathartic rock ‘n roll directness with post-punk atmosphere and the creative flair of art pop. As usual, the lyrics are both conscientious and furious, exploring themes of empty promises and recurrent mistakes that can be read at the personal level or as a commentary on Australia (or indeed the world) as a whole.

Lessons learnt, lessons forgot
How can history repeat so often?

Painting of My Time will be released on 21st April. Pre-order a copy now from the Floodlights Bandcamp page.

Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys – Heaving

A self-described “art pop ambient noise band” based in Berlin, Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys make music that’s full of dramatic atmosphere and enigmatic mystery. Following a trilogy of albums released over the last few years (which you can find on Bandcamp), the band have announced a new LP, titled Heaving, which promises to bring a new physicality to their sound. “I wanted this album to be less ethereal somehow,” Kruger describes. “Rooted in the depths, of my body, of my lover’s body, of the earth, where it is dark and wet […] a lot of the lyrics deal with touch, smell, taste. The body, and all it holds, imagined intimately, almost as landscape, but also for what it is.” The single and title track is a great example, a dark and magnetic piece full of disembodied sighs and distorted guitars. Watch the surreal video by Lena Nerinckx below:

Heaving releases on 7th April and you can order it now from the Lucy Kruger Bandcamp page.

Public Interest – Undone

Led by Chris Natividad (also of Marbled Eye), Public Interest are a post-punk band from Oakland, CA. Although they operate at the dense and gloomy end of the spectrum, their music has a dark and driving pop momentum that brings a glorious anarchic energy. Later this spring the band will release a new record Spiritual Pollution on German label Erste Theke Tontraeger and lead single ‘Undone’ gives a taste of what to expect. A dingy and sinuous slice of post-punk that’s full of razor-sharp guitars and pounding percussion.

Westmoreland – If It’s Over

With full-length album Latino Ballroom on the verge of release, Westmoreland (AKA Seattle-by-way-of-Texas‘s Zach Alva) has unveiled new single, ‘If It’s Over’. Written in the aftermath of losing a parent, the record is one born of grief and the long process of dealing with bereavement, and the new track highlights the grace and heart with which Alva approaches such themes. A slow, lush song of patient richness, coloured by the assured certainty of love but a sense of searching too. As though working through the maddening ambiguity of loss in all of its guises, demanding an answer one way or another.

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But amid the bleak, deadened mood stirs something else. A tension that promises to escalate into something oddly anthemic. The sharp insistence of the guitars and the blare of trumpet only accentuates this mood, and the vocals rise to an impassioned cry in the repeated line that serves for a chorus. “It’s a crisis that I’m going through!” Nowhere is this more apparent than in the shredding final third, where the tension breaks and Equal Parts show off a noisier, cathartic side, all tangled guitars and crashing drums. It’s nothing if not a striking opening statement, and we can’t wait to see what the band do next.

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Now the band have returned with a new double A-side single, The More I Am / Overflowing Cup on Tiny Town Records, which they say again sets out to “explore narratives of ingrained cultural views, personal doubt, and self reflection.” But despite these thematic similarities, the new songs take a slightly different lyrical approach, dialling back the autobiographical nature of previous work in favour of sentiments more general though no less pressing.

The more upbeat of the two, ‘The More I Am’ feels like a contemporary reimagining of Flying Nun era New Zealand jangle pop. The song follows its narrator’s journey from vindictive cynicism to sincerity and empathy, its driving beat, wiry guitars and the distinctive vocals of lead Louis Parsons making for something genuinely stirring.

Backed with plaintive harmonica, ‘Overflowing Cup’ takes a more introspective angle, building from gentle guitar into a shuffling indie rock song. “Perspectives and opinions
have obscured my view, ” begins Parsons, singing from a position of mock close-mindedness. “As I look through my window I can only see half of what I used to.” It’s a sense of irony you might expect to find on a blazing punk song, but which Floodlights handle with a cutting composure and clarity, even as the energy grows toward the finale.

The single come complete with a video by Melbourne filmmaking collective Dogmilk Films, which sees the metaphor of the album’s title manifest as a bubbling green ooze. Watch it below:

The More I Am / Overflowing Cup is out now via Tiny Town Records. Get it on 7″ record or as a download from the Floodlights Bandcamp page.

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After the success of Backyard, Floodlights (Louis Parsons, Ashlee Kehoe, Joe Draffen and Archie Shannon) headed to Head Gap Studios in Melbourne with Nao Anzai to record their debut full-length, From a View. Again released with Spunk! Records, the album takes the successful Backyard formula and expands it across eleven tracks, giving Floodlights license to delve a little deeper into their favourite topics. The result is a record with a focus on both the national and personal, grappling with historical violence and abuses of political power, as well as the importance of self-expression and having the conviction and bravery to be yourself.

But From a View is never as heavy as that might sound. Although never straying into the knowingly numb-skulled pub rock of some Aussie contemporaries, Floodlights still know how to rock out, even when dealing out difficult home truths. Poisonous irony oozes from every pore of ‘Tropical Fun’, which details entitled Australians unleashed on the streets of Indonesia. “Pampered like royalty, and why shouldn’t we be?” Parsons sings. “They should be thanking us for fuelling their economy,” part of an Aussie tide “Boozing through the sun, polluting the air / with a mongrelised ‘thank you’ in the mother tongue.”

Another example is ‘Don’t Pick That Scratch’, which confronts Australia’s blinkered view of its colonialist past and present. “[It’s] a look at the amnesia of certain aspects of Australian history,” Kehoe tells Pilerats. “Reflecting upon cycles of fear, feelings of entitlement and the racist beliefs that can sit hidden in the underbelly of both individuals and a national culture as a whole.” ‘Matter of Time’ is similarly scathing, a song about politicians and people of power and how the richest countries in the world seem intent on speeding headlong into ruin.

They’re all howling
But it’s all just a matter of time for you
It’s all broken
But it’s all just a matter of time for you

Other songs have an even more personal focus. In what feels like a follow up to Backyard‘s ‘Nullarbor’, opener ‘Water’s Edge’ is inspired by a trip Parsons and Kehoe took across Western Australia, focusing on the wisdom accrued along the way. It begins laid back and contemplative, harmonica adding to the “Australiana” vibes, but builds a sense of forward motion as it advances, ending on a note of evocative feeling as Parsons sings the repeated final line.

‘Thanks For Understanding’ sees two people growing apart (“Something deep within my boot itches / but it can’t be scratched by you”), while closer ‘Happiness’ stresses the importance of having conviction in what you want to do, how you want to live your life. In a similar vein, ‘Proud and Well’ feels like a defiant statement of legitimacy, something that feels particularly important in our society that defines success in the absurd and arbitrary measurement of capital rather than personal contentment. As Parsons puts it to Pilerats, “Regardless of how late you discover your passions or how long it takes you to get there, you should find confidence and pride in being yourself. ”

Indecision, what fad today?
Condescending peers who’ve long found their way
There’s no shame in that, and I never said there was
So you can fuck off right off, and I’ll stay right here
‘Cause I’m happy with my life, and I’m proud of what I do
And I’ll keep not knowing, ’cause that what keeps me true
Yeah, that’s what keeps me true

From a View is out now via Spunk Records in Australia and New Zealand. If you live in the UK/EU, you can pre-order via Rough Trade or Resident Music. Of course, the album is also available from the Floodlights Bandcamp page.

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The EP opens with a short monologue by musician and activist Bunna Lawrie, a Mirning Elder and Whale Dreamer of the Nullarbor coast, a large area of arid country in southern Australia. He talks about the land’s healing qualities, particularly in regards to the sounds of nature there. The Mirning have a word for this nature sound—Mirrdinjar. “Everything that makes a noise from nature,” Lawrie describes,”the sound of the birds, the sound of the whales, the sound of the dingoes barkin’—it’s all Mirrdinjar, and it’s all healing.”

This segues into lead single ‘Nullarbor’, which follows a journey Floodlights lead Louis Parsons took across this plain, packing in his day job and travelling from Melbourne to Kimberley in search of some epiphanic moment. “If I trek a little further, into the dust, into the bush,” Parsons sings, “I’m stuck, but it’s something I will feel in my guts and in my blood.” The triumphant final section draws upon the patience of the wide open spaces, the sense of palliative perspective, the Mirrdinjar that Bunna Lawrie talks about at the beginning.

Nowhere to be
And I got time to kill

‘Small Town Pub’ is what Floodlights describe as “reflection on culture and conflicting ideas of national identity,” placing short shorts and Shane Warne next to the “ghosts of the gums” on stolen Aboriginal lands. The result is a country-shaded punk rock song, all squealing guitar and cantering percussion, that confronts difficult questions of national identity in a land of cultural genocide.

This historical awareness is a central pillar across Backyard, and separates Floodlights from many of the other Aussie punks and indie rockers. “Floodlights would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land that this EP was recorded on,” the band state in their notes. “The Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to their elders, past present and emerging. Sovereignty was never ceded.”

The closing title track is at once the EP’s brightest and most tender moment, what Floodlights call “a song about the network of support created by different people in your life.” It opens with grandfatherly wisdom, and carries that affirming momentum forward in a celebration of family and community in whatever shape it takes. “I am nothing without the wind behind my back,” Parsons sings, “but it’s the wind that blows that keeps me on my track.” Whether metaphorical or metaphysical, this idea of wind once more harks back to the healing force of Mirrdinjar, and ends an EP of complex emotions on a note of something like hope.

But where this wind comes from
Is not like a sea breeze
It flows constantly
From those close to me

Backyard is out on Spunk Records on 21st February and it’s available from the Floodlights Bandcamp page.

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