Single ‘Man’s World’ occupied the angry end of this spectrum, railing against the patriarchal structures of society and the cruelties and violence it too often imparts on women. Which is not to say there’s no playfulness in the song, Cat Clyde’s distinctive blend of emotive folk rock and boisterous rockabilly creating a sound that’s able to convey more than one mood simultaneously. This nuance and depth is what marks Mud Blood Bone, matching the ambition of its thematic concerns, always shifting, changing and making space for more than one emotion.

Take the difference between the wistful, crepuscular folk number ‘Dark Blue’ and racing catharsis of ‘Wanna Ride’, not to mention the cool bluesy swagger of ‘Hold My Hand’. Then there’s ‘My Love’, a cover of Marty Robbins’s 1960 classic which sweeps and flows like some grand landscape of its own. “I heard the original Marty Robbins version of this song in 2023. Hearing it felt like a great clue in my search for meaning in love,” Clyde explains of the latter. “It reminded me of the love that surrounds me in the natural world, and how it all lives within me as well. That love is accessible to me in every tree I touch, in every bird song I hear, in all the places I go, in the earth below me, the sky above me—it’s all a mirror to the love that lives within me, the love from my ancestors, from my past lives, my gods and my guides and beyond.”

But while this stylistic variety might appear scattershot on first glance, spend any amount of time within the record and an internal logic begins to emerge. A cyclical pattern which rejects linearity to mirror nature itself, Cat Clyde finding both energy and solace within the peaks and troughs of organic life. Which is how the hectic, mischievous personality of penultimate track ‘Press Down’ can lead into the slow croon of ‘Another Time’. There are times for frantic, joyful motion, others for reflection, periods of dieback and growth. A sentiment brought to life in a single elegant verse of the album’s closing track. “Hold me close now baby / Press your cheek to mine / Pull me deep into the dream / So I can live inside,” Clyde sings, “Like a flower in springtime / That must bloom and die.”

Mud Blood Bone is out now via Concord Records and you can get it from the Cat Clyde Bandcamp page.

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Well, it turns out the album is titled The Great Golden Gloom and is set for release next month. vireo have now returned with a brand new single to further our whet appetites. Originating in a simple banjo loop, the track came to life through a gradual process of deepening, with lead Chris Beaulieu and drummer Anthony Capozzi staying up all night adding different layers of sound to the loop using whatever was to hand. Multiple guitars enter the fray, as well as bells and a floor tom, not to mention a pie plate mic’d through a distorted amp and recordings of scribbling and paper being torn. “From that base, we sculpted a song,” Beaulieu explains. “Suzanne [Gomes] added flute and vocoder vox to tie it all together.” A fitting process for a track described as concerning the limits of one’s capabilities, and one which creates a sound as rich as anything vireo have put out to date.

The Great Golden Gloom will be released on the 14th November.

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With the promise of an album on the horizon, LUCKY have now returned with brand new single, ‘Friends’. Produced and mixed by Joe Santarpia (Mac DeMarco), mastered by Timothy Stollenwerk (Kevin Morby, Woods, Rose City Band) and again released via Royal Oakie Records, the song taps into a buoyant rhythm to bring to life a sense of fondness suitable for its title. St James’s vocals harness this energy to great effect, their affirming spirit shaded by a slightly wistful quality too, as though aware that good times are always on the verge of ending but determined to hold on for as long as possible. But when the chorus comes around and the full swagger of the sound kicks in, such concerns are left by the wayside, the listener swept up along with everything else by LUCKY’s unadulterated joy.

Artwork by Alexandra Bowman, photo by Scott Padden

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The Minor Moon signature is their ability to take these influences and bend them into unexpected forms, swerving from the path well-trodden to create something very much their own. “I have always been a sucker for songs with big dynamic shifts and weird, unexpected structures,” Cantor tells Glide Magazine. “It can be easy for me to want to push and twist every Minor Moon tune into an epic journey, but that can sometimes get in the way of what’s best for the song.”

The record begins with a perfect example of this. ‘Hold Me Up (Liar)’ sees a languid, loungey atmosphere give way to graceful harmonies and sincere lyrics, punctuated with sudden stops and shifts, periods of just stark guitar and near silence. The band say that the song “paints a series of impressionistic images that explore how a person experiences their sense of self as time passes,” and aims to explore the notion that “throughout our lives we actually live many lives and say goodbye to ourselves many times.”

‘Sacrificial Animal’ hits another vibe altogether, the gliding harmonies held together with bluesy barroom folk rock a la Dr Dog. But, as we’ve come to expect with Minor Moon, the song is more than a simple good time jam. Instead, Cantor explores his Jewish heritage, confronting spirituality and secularism head-on, landing on the confused no man’s land that is the twenty first century where both poles come with exhausting baggage. “Maybe I feel betrayed,” he sings, “by the holy and the profane / Both will burn me out either way.”

‘Out Into Where You Are’ feels classic and classy, a slow dance in soft lit ballroom at the heart of a sparkling black city, while ‘It’s Okay’ finds Cantor on a remarkably normal day, distracting himself from existential anxieties by browsing products in a supermarket, casting himself in an imaginary TV show. These kind of ruminations form an important strand of the album, and represent another way that Minor Moon anchor their folk rock in the contemporary moment. An Opening is an album about “becoming, affirmation, disorientation, chaos, and calm,” Cantor tells Atwood Magazine, “it’s about being the container of more than you can bear alone.”

The theme is picked up on ‘New Blood (Dark, Dark, Dark)’, presenting a world that’s advancing faster than we can adapt to it. The voice is sad and wistful, as though some intrinsic human thing is being bartered away with the convenient automation of society, though there’s defiance too, new life rising to face the inhuman future with the same joy and curiosity as ever.

If ‘I’ve Known You For a While’ is a refusal to let go, then ‘The Mark’ is a more considered approach, stripping things back to guitar and Cantor’s voice, lap steel and piano just ephemeral adornments before horns blare in triumphant chorus. The transformation is complete perhaps by the record’s paradoxically-titled closer ‘An Opening (Parting Song)’. The song is one last grand and patient folk rock song that winds and glides with real feeling, and by its end the inconsistency of the title works itself out, learning that conclusions can be introductions of a sort too, breaks in the ways of things that allow new possibilities in.

An opening
At the faultlines in this dream
This is a parting song I’ll sing again

An Opening is out now via Ruination Record Co. and Midwest Action and you can get it from the Minor Moon Bandcamp page.

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Now King has teamed up with Disposable America once more to release the second Saccharine album, Hollow Space. Looking set to continue the immersive sincerity of previous releases, the record serves as an exploration of hope within dark times, finding meaning and grace in situations where such features might first appear absent. “Hollow Space explores the idea of change, both physical and mental,” King explains. “It confronts the idea that in nothing there will always be something.”

While the record isn’t out until the end of September, we’re delighted to share the lead single, ‘Pumpkin Guts’, as something of a taster. The song is perhaps a little louder than those on the previous Saccharine release, the intimacy of King’s vocals complemented by more expansive instrumentation. Or rather, the instrumentation grows more expansive across the length of the track, opening with nothing more than a simple guitar strum before unfurling slowly into something full-bodied and atmospheric, the reverb eventually coming to swallow King’s final words.

Photo by Peter Madden, Jr.

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‘Graveyard Fields’ puts some rock and some blues into the classic country formula, lazy electric guitars buzzing around like big fat flies in the late afternoon. The track is about locations near his home in North Carolina, namely the Pisgah National Forest near Asheville and an area called Black Balsam Knob, and is imbued with a decidedly Appalachian brand of creeping mysticism. “I see a dead moon rising, over graveyard fields” Gustafson sings, “I see a dead moon rising from the top of a hill, and I feel like I’m drowning in my own wishing well”. Just one track in and fans of Phosphorescent’s more recent countrified work will already find lots to like. Follow-up ‘Empire Builder’ is spangled with banjo and lyrics about leaving the state on the Empire Line and and taking to the high seas, while ‘Black Flower Blooming’ is one if the album’s most straightforward singer songwriter folk songs, all wrapped up in evocative country instrumentation.

“Got a way out and climbed the highest mountaintop
thought about walking down then took to jumping off
grew some wings and flew away with ketamine
looking back to her those days are like a bad dream”

‘The Gold Is Deep’ is a banjo-led back-porch folk song that wobbles into psych territory, its reverberating vocals like the pleasant but delusional visions of striking rich that flicker in shimmering campfire flames. ‘My Companion’ sounds like a classic party folk song, the banjo joined by fiddle a, while ‘Capitol Blues’ is a sparse instrumental. There’s a real backwoods country feel on ‘Wildflower Perfume’, in which the narrator takes a flower to remind him of home, before another instrumental ‘Nostalgia’ rises from its ashes. My current favourite, ‘Stained Glass Eyes’, has more than a shade of Dylan, a folk song that feels urgent and impassioned and reverberates in your soul, the streams of lyrics working on multiple levels, from basic gut-level poetry to lofty metaphysical musings.

“Fifth wind brought a howl got me in a storm
I saw a lighthouse spinning at the edge of the world
like looking through a window to the day
I was born”

If that sounds as good to you as it does to me, you’ll probably want to check out this outdoors performance too. All that’s left then is for ‘Embers of Midnight’ to end on a lighter tone, a wistful, lonely-cowboy country track. “Ships set sail on clouds of grey,” he sings. “I close my eyes for a moment’s escape / Out of the hills into the blue, my silver star is fading”.

Montana is a great album and a must for anyone who likes their folk kinda strange and beamed out of the hills of Appalachia. You can buy it now from The Dead Tongues Bandcamp page.

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‘Vertebrae’ is a sparse and slow folk rock track, opening with susurrant percussion before the onset of guitars and Moss’ deep and cryptic lyrics, at once corporeal and metaphysical, skin & bone and the ever-rushing passage of time.

“Did you watch my vertebrae
Slendering out
Or did you watch your own?
Stretching skin over the bone
I’ve grown
Learning to be proud”

Fans of acts such as Small Sur and Elephant Micah while find lots to like. The really good news is that I’ve had the good fortune to hear the entire album and the quality doesn’t drop one bit.

Fable will be released on the 6th of May. If you like what you hear, lend your support by preordering at the Sam Moss Indiegogo page (including some super cool bonus perks – we particularly like The Book option), or via his Bandcamp.

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Moss has posted the first track, ‘Postman’, as a taster and it has certainly whetted my appetite. The track captures the themes of the album overall, which Moss says was created “during a period of rootlessness and floated with me across the time zones of the United States.”

Fable is due for release on the 6th May on Lost Honey Records. You can pre-order it on CD, vinyl or digital download via the Sam Moss Bandcamp page. Alternatively you can pledge help via Indiegogo to get some exciting (and imaginative) extras. Moss also has a growing list of tour dates which you can see at his website.

Photo by Emily Haviland Baker

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This new positive direction is clear from the start of How To Dance, the band toning down whatever indie rock leanings they had on their previous releases in favour of a full-bodied country sound. Opening track ‘Calvander’ pitches us right into the mix, a buoyant Americana song with snappy riffs and limber vocals and good-time horns. Though beneath this veneer lays the true value of Mount Moriah’s music. Heather McEntire’s lyrics have always been a cut above the standard fare, and here you get the sense she has honed her craft further still. Poetic yet simple, indirect without being indistinct, she conjures beauty from both the environment and the interior thoughts of her characters.

“Carry on and on and on on
With your cosmic reach
Newport river whispered fate
Spells cast with every crashing wave
Neon lines and a new name
Held up my palm and I offered up my face
Blue heart and a dark mind
Looking for any kind some kind of sign
I swear to God tonight
Those Jacksonville boys ain’t gonna find
Sweet Company”

As ‘Calvander’ suggests, the main theme of the record is one of belief, of finding meaning or hope in unlikely places, and ‘Precita’ is about just that, a chance encounter leading to something something special. “We turned into gold,” she sings, “and we turned into stars / The highest soul has the whitest spark”. ‘Baby Blue’ is a song about new beginnings, and while the refrain tells us that “nothing lasts forever”, the track is the antithesis of despair, urging us to appreciate good times while they’re present and to live in the moment. Though the lyrics feel intimate and personal, McEntire dedicates this sentiment to all who need to hear it, as shown by one of the album’s liner notes:

‘Chiron (God in the Brier)’ is an upbeat track, filled with a positivity captured perfectly in the opening line (“Light came knocking, knocking on my door and I got no need for you no more!”). The track is rich in imagery and symbolism, its golden hours and harvest moons and crows and stags and ravens all very much loaded and meaningful. To push further, the titular Chiron is a notable centaur from Greek mythology, set apart from others for his abilities as a healer and oracle and his noble sacrifice of immortality (to become the constellation Centaurus), while Chiron Healing is a technique involving the understanding and repair of energy which surrounds us (including past emotions and experiences), facts which show just how far you can descend into these songs if you so choose.

‘Cardinal Cross’ provides another rabbit hole down which to tumble, referencing the cardinal grand cross of astrology. Essentially, a grand cross is formed when the four planets are equidistant and separated by 90 degrees, meaning the different aspects of a person are straining in opposite directions to create a tension-filled stalemate, and a cardinal grand cross ramps things up further as the cardinal signals of the zodiac are identity-based. As such, the track finds McEntire asking such questions (“Are you the woman you wanted to be?”) together with further abstract references we’ll leave you to figure out (cohosh, cinnamon, pendulums and heron to name a few). One of the beauties of How To Dance is that it’s as abstract as you want it to be, working on a variety of levels to ensure that no listener is alienated no matter how much work and faith they want to put into the symbolism on show.

“Eyes to the skies now slowly lift the veil.
Are you the woman you wanted to be?
The inner is outer, the inner is free!
Are you the lover you wanted to be?
Eclipse is a mirror, the mirror is me!
Grand, Grand Arsenal, Cardinal Cross!”

‘Fox in the City’ is a slow song where the past lingers like a low fog, the lyrics littered with references to North Carolina’s Carrboro, while ‘Higher Mind’ finds us jumping all over America, from California (“Honey Lake, 395”) to Macon, Georgia. While the song feels like the detailing of a personal journey, there is an overriding sense of community here, as if McEntire if sharing her story in preparation to hear our own. “We all got vices cause the pain still flows,” she sings, “we all got things we’re afraid to show. Do you have something to show?” This sense of unity is important to the record and Mount Moriah as a whole, transcending the lock of personal experience to be something directly relevant to us all, placing the mystical aspects into better context. McEntire isn’t looking to the gods and stars and natural world for some arcane secret she can wear around her neck. She’s looking and pointing and asking questions, never settling for what is accepted as normality or truth. She’s standing right there next to you and suggesting you do the same.

And this is where the record really clicks. We said earlier that the music works no matter how much work you are prepared to put in, but the phrasing is misleading. No amount of effort will obtain the true meaning because the meaning is not in the symbols but rather in the questioning. The imagery does not add up to any steadfast truth, because for us or anyone else to say, categorically, x means y would be to impose the very restrictions McEntire and Co. are trying to escape. The title track confronts this with graceful subtlety, a series of gentle questions which get to the heart of the societal pressure that tries to enforce a rigid existence.

“Baby, do you like to dance?
Do you like it slow or sorta fast?
Got a lot of people telling me how to dance”

So for all of it’s intricacies, which are undoubtedly interesting and rewarding to explore, the record is a simple one. How to Dance is crafted from spirit and faith, carved out of a high, wide hope capable of healing any wounds, giving us the courage not just to survive, but to live.

You can buy How to Dance now from Merge Records, including a rather lovely limited-edition coke bottle clear vinyl. Mount Moriah also have a Bandcamp page if that’s more your thing.

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“Lush positions himself on the outside looking in, avoiding any danger of appropriating suffering by making the song very much from his own POV. The result is a track disbelieving but not surprised, a modern tragic ballad shot through with senseless loss.”

The rest of the EP continues with the theme of tragedy, like updated versions of classic heartbroken folk songs. ‘How’d the Night Get So Low?’ is gentle and haunting, finger-picked guitar ticking over behind Lush’s vocals, the words echoing ever so slightly, as if sung from an empty room. The track is reminiscent of Jesse Marchant’s writing, an intense regret clawing from below. ‘O’The Fire’ has more of a folk rock vibe, the instrumentation driving the song along, although the track is one of pain and loss. Here a mother wakes to find her house ablaze, her children lost within the halls. “There was smoke in the hallway,” he sings. “Smoke on the stairs/And a great bright light, like no other pain/Was it god or the devil calling my name?” ‘Bullet in a Broken Gun’ loses the percussion in favour of a country-style strum along, complete with Lush’s familiar harmonica. The tale here unfolds from a dense tangle of lyrics, the classic existential cowboy song of working hard and dying young, the narrator channelling all his doubt to ask if there is anything more to life than hard labour and liquor.

“So they turn to drinking and hoping to die,
Hoping god forgives them when they finally arrive.
But there ain’t nothing forgiving bout living nine to five,
Don’t take a man who’s seen the world to know it is a lie.”

Closer ‘Miranda’s Birds’ is a beautiful song where the past is reduced to a series of nostalgic images and gesture, regret and loss and lingering love. The track is the perfect summation of Oscar Lush’s music – evocative and well-written and detailed beyond measure, timeless folk songs dated only by their strong root in the present, their hard gaze at the past.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind is out now on Hawk Moth Records and you can buy it from the Oscar Lush Bandcamp page, including CD and cassette options.

Artwork by Jane Lush

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