The answer, at least for now, is coming in the form of O Belong, a new album due for release on the 26th April (not coincidentally the second birthday of Fox Food Records). Recorded at home at the start of this year, the release feels very much like a progression for Good Good Blood. You’ll have to wait the whole thing but we are lucky enough to bring you an exclusive stream of the lead single, ‘Soak’.

‘Soak’ sounds like a song which began at the intersection of the first two albums, utilising the lo-fi folk aesthetic of the first release but with more of the experimental tendencies of the second, but quickly went off on a tangent, a new, third direction for Good Good Blood. Layering simple guitar, deep percussion and ambient drones, Smith creates something lush and warm without compromising on his lo-fi ideals, Warren Hildebrand’s production allowing the track a full-bodied feel without smoothing over any of the small details. The result is a genre-straddling gem, hovering between the Bandcamp generation bedroom pop and radio-friendly pop folk.

Lyrically, the song follows Hymnal EP‘s lead, managing to sound at once sweeping and intimate, the vague declarations both sincere and meaningful, like late night promises you’d only dare voice to a single, special person. The trick, I think, is how Smith balances vulnerability and assuredness. By lowering his guard to share personal sentiments of love and hope and faith he grows paradoxically stronger, defenceless by choice, because he no longer wants or needs the insulating, cumbersome weight of protective layers.

“Soak

Your soul in rain

I feel your pain

For what it’s worth.

I hear

You sing a song

Called ‘O Belong’

This ain’t your curse”

O Belong is set for release on the 26th April and you can pre-order it now via the Fox Food Records Bandcamp page, including on cassette.

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The release opens with ‘The Pines’, which begins with an electronic strum (like a real-life version of the odd sound of fellow Fox Food alumni Sabbatical Wilderness) before being joined by sparse, echoing percussion and Smith’s gentle vocals. The song plays like the sort of conversation you have with a loved one when returning home from some happy event, heartfelt midnight melodrama triggered by a giddy buzz of goodwill and brief romanticism for life. As such, the song comes off as a statement of understanding, a commitment to another no matter what. When he sings “We are killing all the love we’re waiting for”, you get the impression ‘we’ is the most important word of all.

‘Not Enough’ is more dramatic, the instrumentation simple and rhythmic, the hurried crashing of a digital sea as heard from beneath swells of ambient drone. Here Smith’s vocals are submerged within the texture of the song, flowing into spaces before ebbing away in time for the next surge. Natural rhythms are present in the lyrics too, detailing the twitchy yearning for more born of anxiety around separation and death, although this is done in second person, anchoring the song in a semi-omnipotent position of understanding. ‘Genevieve’ fumbles into existence, the weird whirs and idiosyncratic sawing clicking into sun-bright life, the track playing like a summer pop song put through the glitchy filter of some esoteric machinery. Closer ‘Our Father’  ends things on a restrained note, a quiet folk song of hushed vocals driven by a strangely insistent guitar. The lyrics detail how a simple and noble quest to escape loneliness instead sends heartache spiralling outwards like a contagion, a decision to pursue more acting as the first trip of a strange Rube Goldberg machine of solitude and grief.

“When our fathers wait
They will wait alone
When our sisters play
They will play alone 

They’ll mourn the son
With his blue
And he’ll be gone
Searching for new”

You can buy Hymnal EP now from the Fox Food Records Bandcamp page, and be sure to check out the previous Good Good Blood release too!

Cover photo by Catherine DeGennaro

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Vagabon is the recording project of Lætitia Tamko who, along with Eva Lawitts (bass) and Elise Okusami (drums), makes a robust blend of indie rock and bedroom pop. Persian Garden, which came out last November, is a mini-album centred on the departure (and continued absence) of a friend or loved one which pushes and pulls in all directions, as if straining against some emotional shackles (self-imposed or otherwise). Opener ‘Cold Apartment Floors’ is a good example. The lyrics and instrumentation conjure a disconsolate air for the most part, but brimming beneath is a sense of something else, a certain charge in the guitar and Tamko’s vocals which add another dimension, hinting at a greater depth to the whole situation:

“I know its my fault, I gave up on everything
and I see you happy, it warms my heart.

And we said its not the end but she wore that white dress
and I changed, we are not the same but i thought you’d wait

So we sit on my cold apartment floor where we thought we’d stay in love”

From here the album accelerates with ‘Shadows’, an urgent track with ramshackle banjo and steel guitar supporting lyrics centred on wandering and movement (Vagabon is a meaningful moniker). The song has the breathless feel of constant action, Tamko stealing gasps between lines as she lets her words stream out in a desperate rush. ‘Vermont II’ deals with the longing that comes with a change of heart (“Freddy come back I know you love where you are /
but I think I changed my mind”) while ‘Heroine’ traces addiction through small towns and cold winters, detailing the disappointment of relapsing into old habits (“winter will never be the same now that you’re back to your old ways”), the guitars rising into squally chaos and forcing Tamko to wail behind the noise. ‘Vermont’ squirms in a different direction: backwards. Here the secondary character (Freddy?) is packing for Vermont, allowing us to see the narrator pre-mind change, wounded by deceit but trying to heal, if only to prove a point. ‘Sharks’ picks up from this point, capturing the slump in self-worth that succeeds lies and rows.

“Run and tell everybody that Laetitia is
a small fish

I’m just a small fish.

And you’re a shark that hates everything.
You’re a shark that eats every fish”

Vagabon make the special kind of sad and confused music that has the opposite effect on the listener. The sort of music that makes you feel part of something, a big sad and confused gang spread out all over the world, connected by shared experience and a sneaky feeling that life is worth living.

You can buy Persian Garden now from the Vagabon Bandcamp page. It was out on cassette via Miscreant Records but we’re waaaay too late for that. Check Ebay, maybe?

P.S. Lætitia plays guitar in Real Life Buildings, who we like very much.

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Human Behavior are an experimental, genre-bending band from Tucson, Arizona, led by chief songwriter Andres Parada. Following 2013′s Golgotha, Bethphage is the second album in a trilogy which combines classical folk music with drone and spoken word and Bibilical imagery to explore dark themes like death and unhappiness. In an interview with Valley Hype Parada was asked how Bethphage differs from his previous work:

Long answer: This album was written in sequence, a technique we’ve never done. It is two long tracks, split up by chapters. We tried to make this album a cinematic experience. It is also our first studio album, which allowed us to experiment in ways we haven’t before.

Short answer: It’s weirder.

Weird is a good word to describe Bethphage, with each of the various ‘Chapters’ flitting between styles and genres at will. For example ‘Chapter 2′ begins as a traditional folk song before morphing into a spoken word poem that itself gradual changes into a hymn. ‘Chapter 3′ is a western soundtrack akin to Ry Cooder which is peppered with abstract samples, from a man yelling “hey!” to a strange droney conversation between an adult and an upset child. The use of white noise over a classic folk sound is unsettling, a weird modern confusion against the comfortable nostalgia that folk music offers, changing a romantic lonliness to a sharp a threat of isolation, a seething radio silence. ‘Chapter 5′ is minimal yet expansive, bringing to mind vast empty spaces with nothing but dust, and ‘Chapter 6′ grows out of this, beginning with gentle vocals before becoming a ramshackled punk-folk song with the repeated refrain: “The end is nigh.”

Bethphage does not sit comfortably but its purpose is not to comfort, at least not explicitly. That said, the use of folk music as a medium to explore things such as depression and suicide and Catholic guilt suggests that Human Behavior are not nihilists. If they wanted to convince us all that everything is worthless and stupid and fucked then there are plently of other more suitable genres. Instead they attempt something more constructive, something that pulls no punches while criticising traditions while also acknowledging that they can form part of the solution. Bethphage is too honest to take a distinct and definite view of anything.

You can buy Bethphage from the Human Behavior Bandcamp page, grab a CD through Diet Pop Records, or a vinyl from Folktale Records.

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His Bandcamp page currently has two releases, last year’s In Passage and Ashame, which was released in April of this year. Both come highly recommended and are available on a pay-what-you-like download basis.

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