A collaboration between long-time friends Katherine Dohan and David B. Greenberg, New Jersey‘s Ambrosia is a project based around spontaneity and sincerity. Their Tears EP draws on elements of bedroom pop, indie rock and psychedelia to realise this goal, their style as stirring as it is playful and full of affirming joy. With its upbeat rock rhythm, eponymous opener ‘Ambrosia’ shows the duo at their most energetic, while ‘I Saw Your Heart’ offers a more cryptic tone—an off-kilter pop sure to win over fans of acts like Dear Nora.

Billow – Swimming Pool

Based in Veselí Nad Moravou, Czechia, Billow is a lo-fi pop three piece led by Lenka Zborilova. Ahead of latest EP IV coming later this month on Z Tapes, they have unveiled a brand new single, ‘Swimming Pool’. Taking an altogether lighter tone from previous album III, the single is indicative of the intimate warmth of the new release, though its fond textures are shadowed by a pervasive melancholy too.

Crake – Winter’s Song

Exploring grief and cruelty through an evocatively cryptic style, Humans’ Worst Habits by Leeds-based outfit Crake take Nan Shepherd’s focus on the natural world and add the unsettling dark of Shirley Jackson. A collision of the organic and metaphysical which sees lead Rowan Sandle conjure a world both alien and very much our own. Such a paradox is just one of the complexities at work on the record, and is nicely captured by latest single, ‘Winter’s Song’. “That time I saw the moon rise / And I swore it was a sun set,” Sandle sings. An image remarkable or ominous, or perhaps both simultaneously.

Fontanarosa – OH ID

Are You There ?, the debut album of Lyon-based Fontanarosa, is coming next month on Howlin’ Banana Records and lead single ‘OH ID’ gives a glimpse into the excitable sound which awaits. Combining agitated post-rock angles with smooth pop energy, the band practices tight execution within an off-the-wall playfulness, leading to something of many moving parts that will get your parts moving too. Check out the video by Documavision below:

Are You There ? is out on the 18th March via Howlin’ Banana Records.

Frog Eyes – When You Turn on the Light

Despite supposedly splitting up four years ago and repurposing as Soft Plastics, Toronto-based indie rock stalwarts Frog Eyes are set to return this spring with a brand new record, The Bees. Lead single ‘When You Turn on the Light’ captures the idiosyncratic style lead Carey Mercer has made the Frog Eyes M.O. A song somehow both sprawling and understated, partially inspired by the time Mercer painted a fresco on the wall of his rented Vancouver apartment. “A hellish umber landscape” which poisoned the air with paint fumes and accelerated if not wholly caused Mercer’s subsequent eviction. Check out the video directed by Derek Janzen below:

The Bees is out via Paper Bag Records on the 29th April and you can pre-order it now.

Granny Smith – Out Of My Head

The recording project of Toronto‘s Jason Bhattacharya, Granny Smith is a one man band indebted to the classic pop of yesteryear. Latest track ‘Out of My Head’ is a bite-sized meditation on the dissociative episodes Bhattacharya faced after being put into a coma by a series of seizures. An unreal swirl of piano and dreamy vocals are underpinned by a variety of bass lines shooting off in different directions. “I wanted to express the feeling of having multiple narratives going on at once,” Bhattacharya explains, “trying to listen but your mind is telling you a thousand things.”

KMRU – shela

Under the moniker KMRU, Nairobi’s Joseph Kamaru has made a name crafting expansive yet intimate compositions through a layered variety of ambient, drone and field recording styles. A sound at once thoroughly immersive and thematically probing, examining the relationship between people and their surroundings, as well as change both spatial and temporal. Taken from latest release there was nothing in between, ‘shela’ exists within the slipstream of the present moment. An energetic bustle already haunted by its coming absence.

Melanie MacLaren – Deep Dark Sleep

Writing of single ‘Graveyard Shift‘ last summer, we described the music of Nashville-based songwriter Melanie MacLaren as “indebted to the past and the present without being beholden to either, managing to possess the timeless country spirit without sacrificing any sense of immediacy.” The final single from her EP Kill My Time, ‘Deep Dark Sleep’ continues this style. Its classic wistful tone rooted in the acoustic guitar, the sound made richer with washes of synths, all coalescing around the piercing clarity of MacLaren’s vocals.

Kill My Time is out now and you can find out more from the Melanie MacLaren webpage.

Ross Jenkins – Small House

Next month sees the release of Free All Day, the latest album Vancouver-based songwriter Ross Jenkins. Building upon the DIY style first shown on 2019’s Green EP, the records sees Jenkins joined by Ryan Jewell (drums) and Barry Walker Jr. (pedal steel) and making his richest, most considered songs to date. Spacious first single ‘Music is Sweet’ showed both the sharp writing and easy-going confidence which informs the new album, and latest track ‘Small Houses’ not only doubles down but opens up new avenues too with a subtle mysticism.

Sadurn – snake

Originally the solo project of Genevieve DeGroot, Philadelphia‘s Sadurn have evolved into a quartet and announced their debut album on Run For Cover Records. Recorded in a DIY studio the band created in an Airbnb in Pennsylvania’s Poconos Mountains, Radiator sees everything that was good about the lo-fi early Sadurn recordings polished up, dusted off and matured into a folk-inflected style that draws as much genuine emotion from its melodies as it does its introspective lyrics. Lead single ‘snake’ is a good example and you can check it out below:

Sooner – Thursday

Ahead of the debut album Days and Nights on Good Eye Records, Brooklyn’s Sooner have unveiled a brand new single, ‘Thursday’. The track is an encapsulation of the band’s style. A melding of dream pop lightness with heavier alt/shoegaze elements, the vocals of lead Federica Tassano proving equally malleable in their ability to pivot from soft croon to urgent energy as they chart a toxic relationship. Juxtaposition lies at the heart of the Sooner sound, and ‘Thursday’ is the perfectly bittersweet introduction.

Days and Nights is out via Good Eye Records on the 25th March and you can pre-order it from the Sooner Bandcamp page.

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This self-titled release is Island Eyes’ first album, and fans of Janzen’s previous work will be pleased to find that he is still crafting exciting, experimental pop/rock music that incorporates a range of instruments and electronics. An obvious comparison is Spencer Krug’s Moonface output, especially earlier releases like Organ Music and Heartbreaking Bravery, although both acts are distinctive and unusual and probably share less in common than the majority of conventional bands.

The artwork goes some way to describing the themes and atmosphere on offer on Island Eyes, a mystical blend of nature and obscure, mythological imagery packed onto an island surrounded by sea. The narrative across the album has the feel of a classic quest – a pursuit of love, noble or otherwise, which begins on the very opening track:

“There’s a wind in my heart
There’s a sword in the air, on the ocean
I lay down, waiting for someone to love”

The entire album could be interpreted from this perspective, an epic captured in the protagonist’s poetic words or thoughts as he’s propelled across land and life by the voice and hands of his love (“As the morning sun wakes the sleeping wolves / I’ll be in your room; I’ll be in your home” continues ‘Pale Moon’). However, the odyssey is not a Hollywood movie with heroic deeds and happy endings. Instead it’s littered with confusion and menace, ominous imagery invoking random violence of nature and other forces, clear narrative replaced by the intuitive jumble of a dream. ‘Every House Is On Fire’ opens with a drum machine reminiscent of Handsome Furs and dives straight into the aforementioned unsettling imagery:

“I heard your voice inside the room
As all your storming clouds came in for you
I called your name, I called on high
But everybody’s houses are on fire

I won’t run, I won’t hide
In the dark of the night
Now I know, you were right
I’ll remain in the light of the sun”

If the first half of the album channelled a weird fantasy world then the second becomes dreamier still, as titles such as ‘You Had a Dream About Love’ and ‘October Mirage’ suggest. The latter again returns to the imagery of islands and swords, all shrouded in an oneiric fog like some fever dream of a would-be hero:

“To dream of the sea
Where I’m washed to the shore
With the clouds coming in
Like the waters before
I lift up my voice
To the ruinous waves
For the lights that once shone
Are beginning to fade”

The strange thing is that as things get weirder, you get the impression that the album is not really an epic at all. Or rather, it is an epic metaphor, an extended attempt to convey the modern-day feelings of the narrator through grand, legendary means. And the narrator could very well be Janzen himself – maybe the island in question Vancouver Island, the sea the Pacific ocean or the Strait of Georgia? What once seemed an interesting and magical tale becomes something more meaningful and unsettling: ‘Throw My Ashes Off the Pier’ deals with the admittedly morbid yet very real/common musings on how you want your loved ones to continue after your death (“O will you wait for me after I disappear? Or will you throw, will you throw all my ashes off of this pier, O my dear?”), while ‘Over Waves’ ends the release on an uncomfortable but cathartic note. “O I’m afraid of this heart,” Janzen sings, the track relatively bare in comparison to the electronic layers of the others, “I’m afraid of your ghost, I’m afraid of your love”. Here he confronts the uncertainty of every life, admitting his fear about pretty much every possible scenario while finding solace in the fact that this uncertainty binds us all.

Whether you want to listen to a fantasy, or a reality that can only be conveyed through the fantastic, this album will not disappoint. Island Eyes is out now via Legwarmer Records. You can grab a rather fetching cassette (see below) from the Island Eyes Bandcamp page.

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This really is a must for fans of Swan Lake or Wolf Parade.

Grab the album over at the Frog Eyes Bandcamp page.

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Dan Boeckner’s Handsome Furs (who I wrote about briefly back in April) have produced a strong contender for my album of the year in Sound Kapital. They have taken their work onto a new level and seem to have found their perfect niche – somewhere between indie rock and industrial music. This may sound a curious mix but rest assured, it works, both on record and live. I was lucky to catch the couple on tour back in April and was blown away by their ability to combine thumping keyboards with the familiar vocals of Boeckner, neither was required to be subdued to allow the other to be heard.

Sound Kapital is out now, available on Sub Pop and from all the usual outlets.

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Moonface is the latest of an ever increasing list of works involving Spencer Krug. If you are unfamiliar then all are worth checking out: Sunset Rubdown, Canadian ‘supergroup’ Swan Lake, Frog Eyes (now ‘Krug-less’) and the instrumental Fifths of Seven. Sunset Rubdown, originally used to release solo recordings, have formed into a fully fleged band so Krug has established Moonface as his solo moniker.

Organ Music not Vibraphone Like I’d Hoped is only six songs long but seeing as the shortest track is over 6 minutes long you don’t feel it is too short. Experimental is the obvious blanket term for the album but this doesn’t really explain the sound very well. High tempo electronic sounds are interspersed with Krug’s characteristic vocals (prehaps not at their yelping best but unmistakable nonetheless), producing what a few other reviewers have described as reminiscent of late 70s experimental music with the retro sounding drum machines. It’s probably best you just have a listen and decide for yourself, the highlight of the album ‘Fast Peter’ is available to download here.

Organ Music not Vibraphone Like I’d Hoped is available from Jagjaguwar.

Both Moonface and Handsome Furs are on Spotify for you to sample if you so wish.

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