Decribed as “an anthology-like collection” which displays wide-ranging influences including everything from jangle pop and art rock to tin pan alley, americana and progressive folk, Deep Country is the forthcoming album from Albany outfit Bruiser and Bicycle, to be released this autumn. Lead single ‘Waterfight’ shows how this myriad of inspiration registers within songs as well as between them, pairing retro folk with ample melodies and art pop sensibilities to create something inventive and dynamic. But don’t mistake variation for overabundance, because for all the innovation, the track sees Bruiser and Bicycle dial back the maximalist approach that marked their previous record Holy Red Wagon. The result is rich, endlessly surprising and grounded within the natural experimentation inherent to any collaborative act.

Watch the video filmed and edited by Derick Noetzel and directed by Keegan Graziane below:

Deep Country is out on the 8th October and available to pre-order now.

Eric Angelo Bessel – Scavengers

“Plays with our understandings of reality, presenting a version of physical existence which bends toward the esoteric.” That’s how we described the work of American-German visual artist and musician Eric Angelo Bessel back in 2023. Album Visitation offered what we called “spacious soundscape[s] loaded with the weight of reflection yet simmering with a certain foreboding too, the past and future weighing on the present as shadows, echoes emerging from within a granular fog.” This autumn will see Bessel return with Mirror at Night, a brand new album on Lore City Records which again collapses the distinction between the past and the future into something flat and beguiling. Listen to the nocturnal, ambiguous lead single ‘Scavengers’ below:

FONTINE – Home Right Here

Back in July we previewed Good Buddy, the new album from Winnipeg-based songwriter FONTINE forthcoming via Birthday Cake Records, with the lead single and title track. A song which sat “at the intersection of big rig bravado and unashamed sentimentality,” as we put it, “using a blend of good time rock and bedroom pop sensibilities to explore ideas of love, friendship and self-actualisation.” With the record’s release edging closer, FONTINE is back with new single, ‘Home Right Here’, and the song is no less emotive in style. As the title suggests, the track is a meditation on home in all of its dimensions, be it specific locations, special people or even particular times of life. “Running down to the well, through the forests and the fields, with my cousins at my heels,” as the first verse opens. “In the garden with my mom, pulling weeds all day long, picking sweetgrass from the lawn.”

Heaven For Real – Hold Me Back

Hailing from Halifax, Nova Scotia and now based in Toronto, Heaven For Real is the brainchild of twins Mark and J. Scott Grundy, offering a genre-bending style of music that draws on everything from post-punk and art rock to psych, ambient, electronic and jazz. The project’s most collaborative release to date, new album Who Died & Made You The Dream pushes this swirl of influences further than ever before, stylistically mirroring the dream logic of its themes to moves between genres with fluidity and subconscious intention. Ahead of release this November via Mint Records, Heaven For Real have unveiled single ‘Hold Me Back’ by way of introduction. A song decidedly dreamlike in style, both in terms of its slightly off-kilter haze and the coiled cryptic meaning which seems to edge closer with every repeated listen.

on relinquishment, I remember the cycle
pinwheel of interest
gone with the wind my genoa sail
on relinquishment;
I surrender to the cycle
fixed on the distance
cured through imagination
on relinquishment;
I remember the cycle

Watch the video by Jordan Minkoff below, though those with a sensitive disposition be warned, it features haunted hair:

Who Died & Made You The Dream? will be released on the 7th November via Mint Records and you can pre-order it now.

Jackie West – Offer

“Content to understand change as a kind of potential, and occupy the present in all of its fluctuating strangeness.” That’s how we described Jackie West‘s Close To The Mystery last year, a full-length which followed its lead character “through a city in the aftermath of a relationship,” as we continued, “the various rented rooms in which they find themselves representative of those liminal days between what was and what will be.” Now the NYC/Hudson-based artist is back with ‘Offer’, a brand new single on Ruination Record Co. which is perhaps simultaneously the most ambitious and laid-back song West has written to date. An almost ten-minute epic that pairs conversational spoken word vocals with a warm and catchy melody, unfolding like an internal monologue as it moves between casual observations, quantum theory, Socrates and a hundred other subjects. “‘Offer’ is about many things,” as West explains:

It’s about propaganda—how it’s difficult to trace a message back to its source; how there’s never been much room to ask why and what do you mean by that? We tend to take things at face value and then wonder why all we see is a mask. Offer is about learning to accept your blindspots and realizing we all have them/ how we see someone is generally how we see ourselves, so we must have compassion for ourselves first—real forgiveness and letting go—to see another clearly. Offer is about being attached to the story, generational trauma, seeing it and loving it enough to say, “you’ve been with me, my mother, grandmother and great grandmother for so long,” now you can go back to them—”I don’t need to live according to your script anymore.

Lefty Parker – Illusions

Taking inspiration from titans like Townes Van Zandt, New York-based troubadour Lefty Parker has released a number of records over recent years, establishing a hushed and heartfelt style tuned to the key of classic folk. Often beset by the weight of loss and longing, yet never quite ready to surrender its romantic hope. Next month sees the release of Ark, Parker’s brand new full-length album produced by Buck Meek and put out by Airloom, and single ‘Illusions’ gives an indication of what to expect. With Meek joining too, the song is restrained yet all the more striking for it, delivered from a state of chronic uncertainty familiar to those down on their luck, though shot through too with a kind of heartbroken fondness for life, no matter how cruel or uncaring it might sometimes be.

Ark will be released on the 21st October via Airloom.

Neti-Neti – Grace In Rot

The self-described “lo-fi ritual project” of vocalist Amirtha Kidambi (Elder Ones, Mary Halvorson) and percussionist Matt Evans (OHYUNG, Ben Seretan), experimental duo Neti-Neti aims to collapse the distinction between the personal and the political via improvision and collaboration. Forthcoming release Echo of Being / Grace in Rot was recorded over a single day, Kidambi and Evans tapping into both individual grief, collective trauma and well-worn traditions to charge the process with a sense of momentum and fluency. Single ‘Grace in Rot’ highlights the palpable energy of the sound and the emotional urgency which follows. “‘Grace in Rot’ heaved its way out of us during the last take of the session,” the pair explain, “an unexpected flame of physicality that came after a long day and a deep discussion about the evil and cruelty we witness daily in the world.” The result is visceral, cathartic and transportive, threatening to unravel under its own chaotic impetus while always reaching towards transcendence.

vireo – catching minnows

Following on from single ‘Cloudgazers’ released back in 2024, a single we described as “a soft and gauzy song that evokes the act of the title with warm textures, gentle electronics and little squiggly guitar lines,” Pittsburgh-based indie pop outfit vireo are gearing up to release a brand new full-length later this year. For now, single ‘catching minnows’ serves as a curtain raiser to the release. Turning to the natural world in the face of personal challenges, the track could be said to embody the vireo project as a whole. One attuned to the curative power of the environment and the small beauties therein, packed full of brightness and wonder as though written in honour of the joy of being alive.

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This is no doubt helped by the fact the song’s subject is taken right out of Steele’s own life. “Between 2010 and 2014, I worked as a sound technician, pushing faders for legends and locals alike,” he explains. The job included weekly punk and metal shows on Sunday nights, and by that stage things had a tendency to catch up with him. “After a week of working a day job, gigging, and doing sound on other nights, not even the loudest, most energetic punk show could stop me from nodding off at times.”

‘Falling Asleep at the Metal Show’ is therefore both an apology to a specific metal band and a celebration of a wider scene, and indeed the entire concept of a ‘scene’ and their ability to forge a sense of community.  But also a country song in a more general sense. Picking up the pieces after hard work and dreams collide, and realising upon sifting through the rubble that there is only ever one winner in such a smash.

Well the stacks are pushing air
The head banging boys are swinging their hair
I’m still in my seat
The bands’ on fire but I just wanna leave
Going through the motions
When you can’t tap into the flow
Here I am
Falling asleep at the metal show

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Alexander is back with Harland, a new eight-track album to be released this week on Sports Day Records. The record, at least partly inspired by trans-Canadian travels which included stops at an isolated Quebecois cabin and tree planting near Vancouver, is a mellow, earthy brand of pop music which expands upon his first release. Packing together the excitement and anxiety and loneliness of new beginnings, he manages to create smooth music without compromising on depth, the sharp edges removed but not forgotten. Serving as a great introduction to the album, single ‘Staring at Photographs’ is a track that’s “both weary of and attracted to nostalgia”, balancing the comfortable respite memories can bring but all the while aware that time is linear and we’ve got to keep on moving forwards. While this may suggest an anxious itch, the song is in fact a laid-back jam. Rather than hanging around to become troublesome, you get the sense that the emotions here are flowing evenly and constantly away from their source, a gentle eddy that might never stop but looks serene and pretty under the right light.

Harland is set for release on the 22nd of July via the good folks at Sports Day Records. You can pre-order via the Harley Alexander Bandcamp page. Harley Alexander is heading out on his first US dates this summer too, so have a gander below to see if he’s stopping near you:

Art by Selina Latour

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The Wall Street Journal premièred the lead single, ‘Amerika’, last week, a track which frontman Paul Murphy says was inspired by Walt Whitman. His poem ‘America’ is a hopeful 1888 view of the nation (“Centre of equal daughters, equal sons / All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old”), something Murphy tries to channel in the lyrics, although the Amerika-with-a-K spelling also brings to mind Kafka and his abstruse, crushing systems. The result is something decidedly of the now, a track about being an individual in the arrangement, torn between romanticism and cynicism, hope and dread. About finding shelter and not giving in. Check it out below:

The Great Detachment will be released on the 4th of March. You can pre-order it now via Dine Alone Records.

Photo by Norman Wong

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Opener ‘Lookin for Love is a good introduction to the record, with it’s easygoing  charm and grateful lyrics backed by radiant instrumentation and peppered with psychedelic oohs and aahs reminiscent of Evangelicals. ‘Running Thangz’ is more cosmopolitan, the soundtrack to the coolest 80s crime show never written in which both the good and bad guys wear shades and leave one too many buttons undone on their shirts.

“No, I own this floor – this dance floor is my home
Paint your world the colour that’s gonna make you twirl

OoOoOoOohhh we in the same zone
trust your body leave your mind peacefully at home”

‘Baby Blue’ sounds like the more recent Damien Jurado releases, while ‘Trust’ ramps up the tropical ambience and ‘Beautiful Brian’ takes us even further afield to a cosmic paradise, opening with a sound-clip declaring “the only thing I believe up there is the UFOs.” ‘The Finest Scent’ follows the planetary theme with spacey drone before evolving into a joyful pop song that could grace any commercial radio station.

Harley Alexander makes bright music with the sharp edges removed, doped, loose-limbed pop songs, dreamy from a lack of responsibility and washed out from too much sunlight and salt water. This is the sort of music you want to listen to during those small, glorious moments when Real Life backs off to allow an elated contentedness to settle, where the smallest things give you a sense of wonder and joy.

You can buy the album now from Harley Alexander’s Bandcamp page.

P.S. the artwork is by Sophie Wonfor.

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Indelicate takes the unsettling tones of the single and runs with it, putting the ‘dream’ into dream pop. Opener ‘Porcelain’ sets out the stall – a strange, off-kilter song that simmers away without ever boiling over, and is back by what can only be described as understated moans. If a song could ever be described as haunted it would be this one.

The lyrics across the whole album are abstract and unsettling. Their fragmented nature means that you are constantly picking up images and storylines in brief snippets, leaving you to try and piece together something coherent. Kind of like when your brain picks out faces in cloud and wood grain, you unconsciously form a narrative thread or ‘complete picture’, or rather a collection a bizarre Lynchian scenes that slowly merge to form a complete picture. It’s like taking a thousands of weird screenshots from Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet and Eraserhead to make one giant mosaic that is super-weird. Hyper-Lynchian.

You can buy the album over at Bandcamp.

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Nick Everett & Everybody is a three-animal totem pole of folk-turned-fuck it, a ceaselessly adroit rock tapestry read aloud in what must be the land of giants.

Everett has always been one to experiment and I have seen his music referred to as “noise folk” more than once. And so Elsethings is not a folk record quite as you know it. The band are not afraid to distort things a little, to take what could be an entirely respectable (but conventional) folk song and turn it on its head, to make it sound raw and brash and exciting. The first ten seconds of the album set the tone of things to come in this respect. Any expectations of a delicate and pretty folk record are smashed away with a chorus of yelps and the clatter of a drum kit (as an aside, Travis’ brilliant Cabin Songs bio makes a comparison between Adam White’s drumming and Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park – do yourself a favour and read it).

The album continues in this idiosyncratic vein, expanding on its nucleus of orthodox folk music and travelling down some previously untrodden paths. Everett’s vocals are probably the most delicate thing on offer and provide the perfect counterbalance to the record’s noisier elements. Hold On is perhaps the most accessible track on the album, with its almost pop-influenced chorus of “Sometimes its easier to wake up in the morning, drink my coffee and head right back to bed”. Although even this is accompained by the smash of percussion second time around.

You can download the album for however much you like on the band’s Bandcamp page, where you can also buy it on tape for a measly $8 CAD (about £5.15 in the UK). There is a neat little video of the making of the tape cases here. I would also strongly recommend his previous releases; old adventure/love songs (which is a far more conventional acoustic EP – one which Everett himself refers to as “Nick crying in his bedroom”) and rocky top.

N.B. There’s a really good interview with Nick Everett and Tyler Butler from a radio show called Northern Air on CJSR, a campus-based radio station that broadcasts out of Edmonton, Alberta. Listen to the show’s audio here for the interview. I’d also recommend checking out Northern Air on a regular basis, as it plays some really good acts that receive very little attention (at least here in the UK). If anyone knows Kristi then give her a trans-Atlantic pat on the back from us.

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Jon Samuel, signed to Hidden Pony, is the latest band member to go it alone. First Transmission is refrshingly upbeat record about space, earth, and our fascination with what exists beyond our reach. Samuel cites Kurt Vonnegut as a major influence, and his style of writing definitely shows this, with an almost whimsical acceptance (or at least not the doom-and-gloom familiar from most writers) of the sad or difficult that would suit Kilgore Trout or Malachi Constant. The product are songs that are filled with wonder while maintaining a ‘real world’ view of things, preventing proceedings ever slipping into triteness

The instrumentation is arranged to support Samuel’s voice rather than compete with it, producing a rather tender and personal sounding listen that suits his vocals well. There is a whole range of sounds on show, from simple guitars to sci-fi synths and backing vocals from Rah Rah’s Erin Passmore, which all gel together to form a rich and varied sound which furthers the sense of childish (in a good way) wonder at extraterrestrial existence.

Download two tracks below and get the album directly from Jon here.

MP3: First Transmission

MP3: To Love

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