The first glimpse of her debut full-length Swirl which is coming later this year on 22Twenty, ‘Auto Icon’ is the latest single from London-born, Paris-based songwriter Flora Hibberd. Recorded at the Bungaleau in Eau Claire, WI with Shane Leonard, the track pairs assured confidence with a certain ambiguity, Hibberd’s assured composed guiding the listener beyond the bright rhythm towards something more uncanny. Indeed, the album has been described as “a cycle of songs about codes and decoding,” with Hibberd drawing on her background as a translator of art history texts to seek out those instances where errors and happenstance come to take on a deeper level of meaning.

Watch the video by Victor Claass and Hibberd herself below, with cinematography by Lola Hewison:

‘Auto Icon’ is out now and available from Bandcamp. Swirl will be released via 22TWENTY on the 15th November.

Guidon Bear – Animal Child

Back in 2022 we wrote about Unravel, an album by Olympia-based folk pop duo Guidon Bear on Antiquated Future which saw Mary Water (Little Red Car Wreck) and Pat Maley (Lois, Courtney Love) continue a collaboration now in its third decade. The album offered a realistic, refreshing take on time passing and everyday suffering, “striving forward not out of some misplaced romanticism,” as we put it, “but the mundane and often painful process of simply continuing on.” Now the pair are back with Internal Systems as if to prove the determination of this spirit, an album “about trying to stay well in an unwell world,” as the label put it. Single ‘Animal Child’ taps into this spirit with all the invention and heart we’ve come to expect from Guidon Bear, capturing the experience of real life with a unique sound somewhere between twee folk and indie pop.

Kishi Bashi – Make Believe (feat. Linqua Franqa)

“This song started as a beat that reminded me of that proto-funk-rap from the early ‘80s,” explains Kishi Bashi‘s Kaoru Ishibashi of ‘Make Believe’, the latest single from upcoming LP Kantos. “The only way the verse vocals sounded appropriate was if there was that kind of rapping, so I gave it a go!” Inviting friend and collaborator Mariah Parker, AKA Linqua Franqa, to help, Ishibashi set to creating a song which combines hip hop and psych rock sensibilities to hint at the stylistic depth of the album. Because Kantos is an ambitious release, drawing on both cult sci-fi series Hyperion Cantos and the work of Immanuel Kant to produce something of an apocalyptic party album. When so many threats appear to be coalescing over humanity’s head, Kishi Bashi has returned with a timely reminder of how good old fashioned fun might be the key to fostering the kind of connection we need to escape intact.

Watch the video directed by Ryan Hover below:

Kantos is out on the 23rd August via Joyful Noise Recordings and you can pre-order it now.

knitting – Sleeper

This September, Montreal‘s knitting will release their debut album Some Kind of Heaven via Mint Records, the outfit working with Scott Munro of Preoccupations to bring their nineties-inflected alt-rock sound to life. The result is every bit as dense and noisy as you might expect from such an arrangement, but latest single ‘Sleeper’ offers a more restrained cut from the record. A meditation on Mischa Dempsey’s experience growing into their trans identity, the song maintains a hazy style but swaps out some of the usual knitting intensity to offer more intimate, earnest emotion.

Lia Kohl – Car Alarm, Turn Signal

Chicago-based cellist, composer and multidisciplinary artist Lia Kohl has made a name blurring the borders between music and sound art, utilising an array of media and styles to create soundscapes able to evoke existence in all of its magic and mundanity. Which is to say, new record Normal Sounds is at once normal and very much not, or else it is extraordinarily normal—with Kohl turning her attention to the acoustics of everyday living and presenting them back to the listener as something as something new. The titles give a clue as to what each track offers (‘Tennis Court Light, Snow’, ‘Ice Cream Truck, Tornado Siren,’ ‘Airport Fridge, Self Checkout’) but the first single turns towards the road. ‘Car Alarm, Turn Signal’ represents “an attempt to capture the overlapping polyrhythms of the streets around my house,” as Kohl explains, with Ka Baird joining on flute to bring the soundscape to life.

The video by Kohl herself performs the same action as the song itself, focusing on a seemingly mundane aspect of a street with such attention that its strange beauty is revealed.

Normal Sounds is out on the 30th August via Moon Glyph and available to pre-order from Bandcamp.

lots of hands – rosie

lots of hands have kept audiences on their toes since their inception in 2019, releasing a string of albums, EPs and singles which float between rock, folk and electronic sensibilities without a care for typical genre conventions. The inventive, shapeshifting style has led to tour slots with the likes of Deerhoof, Cola and Claire Rousay, and live shows only see them push their sound further with sax and flute elevating it towards almost orchestral territory. Which is to say, it can be difficult to know what to expect from a new lots of hands release in the best way possible, and latest single ‘rosie’ is every bit as idiosyncratic and interesting as you might anticipate. Released via Fire Talk Records, the single opens as an intimate bedroom pop with melancholic textures and acoustic guitar before lifting towards something altogether more charged and weighty.

rosie walks in from the rain
with her lips she said
i don’t want no pain
i don’t mean any harm
i just wanna know
where i’m from

‘rosie’ is out now via Fire Talk and you can get it from Bandcamp.

MF Tomlinson – Mary (Big Thief Cover)

We’ve covered the work of MF Tomlinson several times in recent years, with album We Are Still Wild Horses winning us over with its attention to detail and bittersweet emotional landscapes. A style which makes the songwriter the ideal candidate to cover something like ‘Mary’ by Big Thief, a song which feels very much in line with the tone and themes Tomlinson and his band reach for. “I first heard Big Thief’s ‘Mary’ whilst on tour with Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever,” Tomlinson explains. “Late night driving, hyperfocused on the road appearing and disappearing in the narrow headlights, I was swallowed up by the quiet and immense power of the piece—an enormous turning wheel of emotion that summons your earliest and most fundamental places. It just felt fucking huge and at the same time incredibly close and tender. That feeling never left me, and so here we are with this recording.”

Silverware – No Expectations

The recording project of San Francisco-based artist, producer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Ainsley Wagoner, Silverware has long been something of a shapeshifting entity. Previous LP No Plans might have been best described as art pop, though drew from an array of different genres. Follow-up One True Light, coming later this summer on Ghost Mountain Records, appears equally uninterested in simple stylistic conventions. The result is fluid, unpredictable yet always finely crafted, with fittingly titled lead single ‘No Expectations’ introducing the spirit of the record. A vivid pop soundscape precisely mapped but intuitive in style, all anchored around the rich depth of Wagoner’s delivery.

Talk Bazaar – quiet yr mind

Talk Bazaar is the recording project of Brooklyn‘s Alex DeSimine, self confessed “multi-instrumentalist, big pillowy softie, film composer, collaborator [and] confidante.” Upcoming album WHATSPACE? takes all of these facets to capture what DeSimine describes as “the frenetic feeling of both isolation and community, of always trying to slow down and not knowing how to stop.” A whole host of guest musicians lend their talents to better achieve this aim, the wide collaboration a fitting feature of an artist always reaching for new sounds. The record’s closing track, latest single ‘quiet yr mind’ winds things down with an air of soft and smoky contemplation, with contributions from Rebecca El-Saleh (aka Kitba) and Mike Haldeman (Moses Sumney, altopalo, Mk.gee) encapsulating the richness of an album crafted with the kind of care and invention only possible with equal doses of isolation and community.

This Frontier Needs Heroes – Carolina Peaches

Hailing from Brooklyn, NY, but having spent time in Nashville and Jacksonville, FL and Barcelona among other places, Brad Lauretti of This Frontier Needs Heroes has written, recorded and performed music quite literally all over the world. A folk artist in the traditional sense, wandering and entertaining audiences with equal parts playfulness, protest and heartbreak while always pining for places left in the rear view mirror. Latest single ‘Carolina Peaches’ charts such an experience directly, portraying a life on the move in all of its ups and downs, and always haunted by that old love never quite bettered no matter how many miles of road pass beneath the wheels.

I want to live 1000 lives, but where do I want to die?
Somewhere where the peaches are falling from the sky
When I got back on that train lord I knew I wanted to cry
Was that my biggest mistake I guess i’ll always wonder why

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The opener sets the tone for Unravel, an album populated by what Antiquated Future call “songs about wanting to give up (but then deciding not to give up).” Striving forward not out of some misplaced romanticism but the mundane and often painful process of simply continuing on. This might register as a downbeat mood, with songs like ‘Attic Realm’ creeping with the slow discomfort of everyday life, Water’s lyrics playing like some dispatch from the edge of things, a view of the world offered from an odd angle. But other songs, such as striking single ‘Neowise’, glow with glimmering brightness, tapping into the ancient and the sublime as a mode through which human connection might be found. It tells the story of a rare celestial event, of coming together as a group to turn off the bright light and noise of the day-to-day in order to experience something bigger, something almost magical.

there’s a comet coming to us
every 6,800 years
in Belarus now, in Algeria, in Mexico
her bright ballpoint light appears

The diversity of tones continues across the record. ‘Mountain’ is charged with a bristling energy, the promises of the lyrics delivered in a tone which could be sardonic or genuine hope, while ‘Lessons’ offers a more reflective air, its bright warmth grasping for fond memories within a difficult present. “But I’ve had some good times,” Water sings, “and I admire / how you ride your bike in the night / in your rain pants and your black boots and the moon so bright.” Likewise, ‘Your Apartment’ opts for a slow burning momentum, its weight building with every passing line but never quite tipping into the promised storm, while ‘Fund Ppl Without Weapons’ is far calmer, clear in its intentions (a simple repeated chorus of “defund the police” capturing its anti-facist, anti-white supremacist, pro-community message).

But no matter the sound or style, each of the tracks are bound by Water’s idiosyncratic observations and compassion in the face of our often troubling modern world. ‘Spiders’ is a good example, a song full of dark paths and deep water, a place to lose yourself, hide yourself, to perhaps never quite find your way out of. But it also holds a metaphor for Unravel as a whole. “I’m sure every spider on this short trail spent all day spinning webs just so when I crash through them I know they exist,” Waters sings in the chorus. Perhaps, in a world that can feel dark and vast and dislocated, all any creature can do is continue to build the small things they are able to, whether it brings them comfort or joy or simple distraction, just to prove they are still alive. “I’m sure every spider on this short trail,” Waters continues in the chorus’ second half, “spent all day spinning webs just so when I crash through them I know they persist.”

Unravel is out now via Antiquated Future and available from the Guidon Bear Bandcamp page.

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Blood Warrior – Wooden Shade
Rosie Tucker – How Sad, How Lovely (Connie Converse cover)
Fran – Company
JAYA – Learn To Swim
Taylor Hamilton – What Is Real?
Carver Baronda – If Nothing Else Comes Along
Rose Dorn – Deathwish
Milly – Crazy Horse
Guidon Bear – Washing Machine
Joey Nebulous – Pride Month
Dorio – Shortcuts
Special Friend – Before
Sarah Pagé – Lithium Taper
Old Amica – Condensation
Blushing – Dream Merchants
Patient Hands – Stasis
Bryce Kepner – Chances
Jake Bellissimo – why fit? (Jordaan Mason cover)

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Anyway, the result of all that is some pretty stellar indie pop, the kind of stuff that put Olympia on the map way back when. Their new album Downwardly Mobile: Steel Accelerator, sees Guidon Bear combine this pop writing wizardry with the woes and anxieties of adult life in the twenty-first century, what label Antiquated Future Records describe as “infectious and subtly complex pop songs about real-life nightmares, boot camps, late bills, and scraping by.” Take ‘Washing Machine’, an indie pop song that feels sharp and slick and snappy, all skittering drums and restrained guitar. The real star is Waters, delivering wry lyrics about the pains of living in rented homes (e.g.”our landlord’s carpet’s frighteningly pristine”) with a kind of simmering frustration.

This doesn’t mean the writing lacks invention. “What do you say when gravity up and walks away?” asks opener ‘Microgravity’, probably the most heartfelt speculative, borderline sci-fi pop song of the year, even if Waters’s words are more metaphorical than literal. It’s just one example of the unique lyricism on display, everyday observations married with the slightly absurd to capture a world that’s far more familiar than some grey hyperrealist description. The chorus on ‘Mailbox’ is another good example, mapping an olfactory route from home to a mailbox.

I smell gasoline walking to the mailbox with you,
I smell candy canes walking to the mailbox with you,
I smell chemicals walking to the mailbox with you,
but there’s no gas station, no Santa Claus, there’s no swimming pool here

Refreshingly, Downwardly Mobile: Steel Accelerator works really well as a cohesive whole, something that doesn’t seem such a concern in most streaming-era indie pop. Every other track is a short instrumental (simply named A, B, C, etc), which rather than cheap filler, wraps the longer songs in a bed of texture and tone. Think of it as the sonic soil from which the fruit-bearing plants spring in a neat row.

But as is often the case in nature, these plants have sharp thorns as well as moreish sweetness. With its off-kilter synth line and chipper xylophone, ‘Go Away’ is the definition of bittersweet indie pop. (“You can cry after lights out” songs Waters), while final song proper, ‘Magellanic Cloud’, has an oddly captivating stuttering rhythm that blossoms into a soaring chorus

Downwardly Mobile: Steel Accelerator is out now via Antiquated Future Records and you can grab it now from Bandcamp.

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