With the record set for release next month, W. Y. Huang has returned with ‘Give It Time’, a brand new single which further introduces the release’s themes and tone. “If pain’s the only constant / then the variable is me,” Huang sings over a hushed folk arrangement, “still I multiply my failures / and subtract my victories.” The opening lines of a song addressed to its own performer, looking to extend the kind of patience and empathy we might offer others to oneself. “This was the first time I wrote a song to myself,” he explains. “There were things I needed to hear and feel to journey through this chapter in my life, and this was my attempt at giving that to myself. Perhaps it might help someone else coping with tough times as well.”

Give it time,
everything will be just fine
everything that’s on your mind
that’s inside out will turn around
just give it time

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Today sees Kylie V return with ‘Anomaly’, a brand new single which builds upon the foundations of the EP. With help from Josh Eastman (bass, keys, synths, additional guitar), Tegan Wahlgren (violin) and Jess Jones (drums), Van Slyke weaves a picture of a break-up in all of its weight. Stark and tender tones exist side by side, the competing desires to go back and move on marbling into complicated patterns. The wish to do things differently, to make amends, to experience reconciliation or never think of the past again. The vocal range has long been a key facet of the Kylie V sound, and here it is utilised to capture such an ambiguous situation, as evocative in a near whispered hush as during the impassioned refrain.

I wanna build this from the ground up
I wanna be forgiven
I want you to see me
we could have been an anomaly

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Enter The Wizard Clip, a brand new Dear Other record that might just be their most ambitious to date. The album is based around the historic exorcism in Middleway, West Virginia of the same name. “The truest ghost story ever told,” according to Rev. Alfred E. Smith, which started when a dying stranger appeared at the house of one Adam Livingstone asking for a Catholic priest, though passed away before one could be found. The usual phenomena followed—disembodied voices, broken crockery, snuffed candles without apparent cause—as well as a more distinctive detail. The disticntive sound of heavy shears, and people reported half moon shapes being cut into the fabric of their clothes.

Dear Other give this story its full due, each song detailing a development as explained in the maximalist titles. Take opener “Clip Mysterious. Sing in me Holy Ghost, and by the intercession of Servant of God Father Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin, in me tell the tale of Adam Livingston, Early American, his passion, his house, his conversion to your Holy Church, in Jesus’ name, Amen! Amen!” But their lyrics push beyond the source material too, the opening line finding time to reference peer-reviewed papers and the Dreamworks Animation logo, pushing an already strange record into something pretty unique.

The tale unfolds with this blend of the playful and the eerie, Dear Other’s sense of humour shining through. “Let’s review the principle facts,” goes ‘Witches, Run!’ “You believe yourself under attack by a demon or a spirit that’s attached to your house.” But their attempts to banish the entity, all decidedly non-Catholic, fail miserably. “You try the Methodists? Of course you’ve tried the Methodists. You try the Presbyterians? Oh, but they didn’t help you none.”

The band’s own musings are no less funny. “I don’t think houses get haunted no more / ’cause everyone rents,” goes the opening verse of ‘Houses Haunted’. “It seems to me owning the thing is prerequisite / for a dead occupant / to take effect.” But however sharp and wry, the ironic overlay never undercuts the story, a feature of the band’s wholehearted commitment to the project at hand. What emerges instead is a picture of a haunting in all of its intricacies. A ghost shot through a prism and separated into its multitudes of meanings. Bizarre, disturbing, vaguely ridiculous. A matter of human fundamentals. Love and pride and terror and faith, not to mention epiphanies both dreadful and glorious.

The Wizard Clip is out now and you can get it from the Dear Other Bandcamp page.

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Orpine is a band born of such a shared spirit. Calling the south home, Eleanor Rudge lives a stone’s throw away from River Ouse. And based in Newcastle, Oliver Catt is just down the road from the River Ouseburn. Despite the distance between them, the pair had crossed paths in the past—shuffling around different bands, singing on one another’s records—only to lose touch. But the connection was seemingly more resilient than even they knew, because years later Rudge reached out again, and a trip to Black Hill in the Scottish Borders saw not just a rekindling friendship but the beginning of a meaningful collaboration. The birth of Orpine.

The result is Grown Ungrown, an album released by Heist or Hit that celebrates the intangible links of friendship and happenstance by looking to nature. “Forgoing the trappings of contemporary life,” we wrote in a preview, “the album is a celebration of the natural and organic—tapping into the great rhythms of nature so as to create a space in which their own emotions can ebb and flow.”

The idea is made clear in opener ‘Same Tree’, the simplicity of the title image evoking the compassion and warmth of the record as a whole. “We fell out of the same tree, together,” Catt sings in the first line, a kind of origin tale for the band. Their paths down might have been different, each hitting different branches on the way, and their paths at the bottom might go in opposite directions, but the togetherness is rooted deep.

Indeed, rather than lamenting separation and time spent apart, Orpine find comfort in the knowledge that thing shift and change. “A song ostensibly about loss and mourning that nevertheless finds the time to cycle through various moods and states,” single ‘Sodern’ is “a seasonal track that finds not only comfort in the patterns of life, but something like awe.” There is no clear binary of together and not, just as there is none between summer and winter, growth and ungrowth. But there is some wonder in these grand patterns of life.

It’s with this mixture of wistfulness and joy that ‘Climbing Black Hill’ unwinds, its quiet ruminative tone inflected with gladness. “Climbing Black Hill,,” they sing, “there is life in my veins, there is sun on my face / Being there still when I’m having bad days, see the clouds float away.” ‘Hands’ offers a slower, more morose mood, but still the motif of movement and flow brings comfort, while the lopsided stagger of ‘Geese Migrating Overhead’ is full of uncertainty and indecision, but soon finds an ethereal, almost transcendent state that pulls away from crippling fears and mundanities and takes flight toward warmer climes.

We might live in an age where technology can link even the most separated friends, but the danger is that a cheap copy emerges, a kind of simulacrum of a relationship with no substance or depth. Orpine reject this in favour of something less immediate but more intuitive. Something spiritual even. A sense of closeness encoded in memories and deeper still, some wilder part of our being where the feel of wind and rain and early morning sun carry their own familiarity. And with it a sense of rightness, of purpose, of moving toward what is correct. The sensation that geese surely feel when the small changes coalesce and the time comes once more, lifting upwards to soar overhead.

The penultimate ‘Two Rivers’ marks this feeling with a return to the Ouses and their synchronicity. There’s a hushed tone to the song, something between simple and scared, but the sense of movement is still very much present. For even if we cannot migrate, there are other ways to be together.

Yesterday I sank to the bottom of the Ouse
And Caburn faded from view
Sinking real slowly I was enveloped in
The silky silt and nothingness

Easier to be
Than to be gone

Grown Ungrown is out now via Heist or Hit and available from the Orpine Bandcamp page.

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Starting this month, Downes plans to release a new Haunted Continents single every month for an entire year. Looking to establish a thematic and narrative depth, the tracks serve a higher purpose than merely earnest emotion. “These new songs give breath to narratives that teem with dark humor and humility,” says the bio, hinting at the ambition of the project, “taking the listener from debaucherous parties in the underworld all the way to the ghostly desolate bedrooms of former lovers, long since vanished.”

The first of these singles, ‘What You Were Born For?’, which serves as a case in point, taking the emotional intensity of folk songwriters like Noah Gundersen and setting it to an indie rock tempo. The result is a sound as stirring as it is heartfelt, and able to craft a good variety and range of feeling without sacrificing lyrical depth.

The track comes complete with a B-side, ‘Modern Love’. More restrained and patient, the song draws upon something of an emo style, exuding a tenderness familiar to the early 00s heartbreakers such as Death Cab For Cutie.

Haunted Continents can be found on iTunes and Spotify, so be sure to follow them over the coming months, and you can find the past releases on the James A.M. Downes Bandcamp page.

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“This isn’t about forgetting death, or even really ‘moving on’… [but instead] coming to a deeper understanding of one’s life… how a person can be so shaped by another, and how such an impact can and should be a source of immense pride and joy”

During an interview around the release of Quiet Energies, Bonnetta told us that we should expect a lot of new music from him in the coming months, and we now have the first song into which to sink our teeth. ‘Northern Arm’ sees an expansion on some of the themes on Quiet Energies, while also harping back to the remote romanticism that made Spirit Guides so special. As Bonnetta explains:

“The idea of being on the arm of someone still seems romantic to me and the idea of trying to maintain that alone in the woods even more so. Can two people entertain themselves with love forever? In our days of constant distraction can a real, clear love even exist?”

‘Northern Arm’ finds the band pushing further into dream pop territory while still retaining the folk influences and strong songwriting that has marked their career thus far. Electronics are utilised more than one might expect, coupled with sharp riffs and background vocals, though Bonnetta’s recognisable voice glides over the top of the instrumentation in what could be celebration or lament, echoing strongly like a shout in the woods.

‘Northern Arm’ is forthcoming on Tin Angel Records and you can pre-order it now via Bandcamp. Evening Hymns are set to tour Europe this September and you can find the full run of dates below:

Sept 16th – Hamburg – Golem
Sept 17th – Berlin – Privatclub
Sept 18th – Darmstadt – Golden Leaves Festival (with Lanterns on the Lake)
Sept 19th – Munster-Pension Schmidt
Sept 20th – Koln – Die Wohngemeinschaft
Sept 21st – Amsterdam – Paradiso
Sept 22nd – Paris – Pointe Ephemere (with Chris Cohen)
Sept 23rd – Coventry – The Tin at The Coal Vaults
Sept 24th – London – Shacklewell Arms (with Mauno)

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Passing Place is a new six-song EP that Smith wrote between March and May of this year. ‘The Dawn Chorus’ opens with a gentle ambient swells before the entrance of Suzy Jivotovski’s trumpet, heralding a beginning better than any morning birds. The title track follows with an up-tempo clamour, though the AM feeling perseveres, Smith’s vocals hazy and soft and supported by trumpet which lifts in quiet triumph, replicating dawn optimism. ‘Not the Answer’ sees a slight shift, the mood falling a few shades darker, Smith’s lyrics pushing things darker still. That said, the song never becomes gloomy, the music acting as a counterbalance to his words, preventing them from slipping beneath the surface.

“Praying for tomorrow
Today has brought
Nothing but loss
Your loving holds my sorrow
And I am so lost
And at the cost
Of the morning frost
My holocaust”

The darkness should continue on ‘No Sadness/Furrowed Brow’, though once again an inexplicable sense of optimism seeps through the cracks. Here we find a narrator troubled by death and urging a lover to continue without him (“When I’m gone / Live a long life”), a subject which should be melodramatic at best, though with help once more from Jivotovski’s trumpet Smith manages to make it golden, shifting the focus from death onto life, from self onto other. The instrumental ‘Flowers in the House’ follows with jubilant church bells before closer ‘Vessels & Vapours’ draws us back into love-driven anxieties, the narrator willing his lover to move on without him. Again you get the sense the words are drawn from intimacy and tenderness as opposed to self-pity, the final words of a ghost too light and free to think of himself, too fond not to think of his other.

“And when they
Turn over all the embers
Oh I know you
You’ll not be far away
And you’ll be torn two
The vessels that your blood flows through
Are strained capillary

Go, go, oh please go
And leave me here alone”

While, with all its desperate pleading and introspection, it’s hard to describe Passing Place as a happy album, it does possess a certain joy that bubbles from each song. And it’s this feeling that stays with the listener, lingering in the mind, maybe helping them stand a little straighter or look a little harder for the light in their lives. To mix the metaphor of the closing track, Passing Place is almost like a ship sinking in reverse, a vessel damaged and stressed but not defeated, the hull shedding the weight of water and bobbing to the surface, battered and bruised and barnacle-ridden, but touched by sunlight for the first time in too long.

You can buy Passing Place now from the Fox Food Records Bandcamp page, including, as always, on a rather lovely cassette (but be quick, they’ve almost gone!).

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As the opening title track suggests, Braver is a slight departure from her traditional acoustic folk beginnings. Falling somewhere between pop and indie folk, ‘Braver’ is imbued with a determination and grit seen only in those oppressed for too long, rising from an even-toned beginning into an impassioned climax, as if shackles are shaken free across the runtime. The song comes complete with a video which carries the following quote from Abigail Adams: “If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.” That should give a little more context.

“Dry eyes, a deep glass, a quiet rage
Violence is nice when you have no place

Oh, you prince of pride
You have me, you hate me and

I cannot take this anymore
I am not what you want me for

I have no weight, have no weight”

‘Blue’ is slower and more delicate, though again the song grows in conviction as the instrumentation swells, and ‘The Hunt’ questions the flimsy façade of masculinity explicitly, the lyrics unflinching. “And is this what makes you a man?” she sings, “To take me in and let me stand / Then cut me down so you can hunt”. ‘Used To It’ is a gentle electro-pop ballad that threatens to boil over without ever quite managing it, before closer ‘Wet Lungs’ sees a return to a piano-led sound, the vocals tender and graceful and echoing in the spaces between notes. Again, the song builds toward a climax, as if Fowler is propelled forwards by her own words, drawing strength and emotion from their sound and order.

“And I don’t need moonlight to tell me it’s evening
And I don’t need wet lungs to know that I’m sinking
And I could use help from you
But how can I ask you to
Climb so far down”

Braver is out now and you can buy it from the Sal Fowler Bandcamp page.

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So it was a lovely surprise when the band emailed us about a new collaboration with Icelandic band Benni Hemm Hemm. Faults is a lush album of Celt-flavoured folk which draws upon a wide range of instruments and vocal styles, not surprising considering that both Second Hand Marching Band and Benni Hemm Hemm consist of impressively-numbered ensembles (see the list of members here and here). Opener ‘Cling Onto Those You Love’ emerges in orchestral swells, the strange, cryptic lyrics made clear by the titular refrain. ‘Dawn Raid’ begins with Malcolm Middleton-esque gloom, details of a mundane life coupled with a dejected outlook and general unhappiness (“Shuffle on shoes and light / A cigarette path as you scramble for life / I was the plan until today walked in”), and though it warms with the addition of vocalists and further instrumentation, the track never quite escapes this sense of grief:

“You leave me with no light in your eyes
You leave with no pulse in your neck
And you hover from one foot to the next”

‘Grandstanding’ is wracked with self-doubt, asking where one’s artistic endeavours fits amongst the classics, while ‘In a Serious Way’ is positively chirpy with its triumphant horns and harmonies, before ‘Shipcracks’ sees the tempo drop in favour of considered writing and clever worldplay, swelling into something carefree before the halfway mark to become a classic travelling song about looking back and moving forwards and marking the moment as it is lived, all at once.

“Skies on sea and shit from birds on the canopy
I’m lying, sunbathing on the deck, burning my neck
And I don’t remember if I’ve ever done anything else
I’m listening to shipwrecks and silence, and seagulls
Silence and shipcracks”

‘Misery’ is a strum-along folk song shot through with a sense of mischief, while ‘Skeletons’ is stripped back for the most part but comes alive in the closing third, urging us to choose a life of risk and wonder over seclusion and fear (“It makes more sense to know nothing / than to take a chance and clip your wings / So come on, I’ll take you round”). ‘Retaliate’ is deceptively intricate, an organic folk song full of poetic turns, a story reduced to a series of evocative images and implorations. The self-titled closer is simple but profoundly affecting, the staggered harmonies sounding like echoes or ghosts, words passing from times before us and after and fundamentally the same.

“The faults create mountains and cracks in our face
They won’t cover our mistakes in a million days
We take rocks to the summit as if we were great
Though the sky won’t fall, the earth still shakes”

If you like your folk and/or indie pop to come with French horn, glockenspiel, accordion and goodness knows what else, then Faults is probably the album for you. You can buy it now from Bandcamp, including on CD (though the special editions have sold out because of our positively glacial response time in writing about the album).

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The track begins as a slow, warm folk song sung in a tone somewhere between forlorn and contemplative, though soon morphs into something more dramatic. Starting with the middle verse, where Okusami’s guitar and vocals slow like a steadying breath, the song slowly emerges into something wider and richer and full of impassioned life, all culminating in the maelstrom of noise that sees the track out.

“Close your eyes
we’ll take the first step at the same time
into that dark unknown
beyond these bulbs
if we ever emerge again
think of what we’ll tell them
when we were nowhere, we were nothing”

You can grab the track on a pay-what-you-can basis now on the Oceanator Bandcamp page, and be sure to keep your eyes peeled for any future releases.

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