“There’s something of Kraftwerk in the sound, a smidge of Suicide and no small amount of Lou Reed, though the blend of digital and organic tones is clearly the product of a singular imagination.” That’s how we described the work of Turin-born, Toronto-based ‘poetic jazz rock’ songwriter Fortunato Durutti Marinetti back in 2023, writing about the album Eight Waves In Search Of An Ocean. Now FDM is returning with new album Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter, what label Quindi Records describe as “his most sweeping, absurd, and emotionally acute statement to date,” and lead single ‘Full of Fire’ hints at the maximalist style at its heart. A song which takes inspiration from iconoclasts like Annette Peacock, Rickie Lee Jones, Donald Byrd, Brigitte Fontaine and Fabrizio De André to paint love as something equal parts fond and fatal.

Green Gardens – Stroom

Leeds ‘feudal indie rock’ outfit Green Gardens have been sharing new material in recent weeks, with singles ‘Year of Love’ (which saw the band, as we wrote, “swapping out some of the grand scale in favour of increased intimacy”) and ‘Ghost of a Tree’ (a song “embodying the spirit of a band who make no distinction between the intimate and the sublime,” as we put it, “positioning an individual’s loves and losses within an almost geolgical span of time”) introducing a slightly new direction for the outfit. The releases have been building up to the announcement of Thistlesifting, a brand new full-length coming later this simmer via Tiny Library Records, and now Green Gardens have unveiled latest single ‘Stroom’ to further whet appetites.

Watch the video made by Joel Johnston and Chris Aitchison below:

Thistlesifting will be released via Tiny Library Records on the 25th August and you can pre-order it now.

Greg Freeman – Curtain

Later this summer, Burlington, Vermont songwriter Greg Freeman is returning with Burnover, a brand new full-length via Transgressive Records and Canvasback Music. It’s a record which pairs laidback country twang with indie rock momentum, furthering the singular style Freeman introduced back in 2022 with previous LP I Look Out. New single ‘Curtain’ captures the mix of playful lyricism and charged energy which makes up the release, Sam Atallah’s piano driving proceedings but Freeman’s vocals stealing the stage. Assured and surprising verbose, like a stream of consciousness unfurling with equal parts conversational immediacy and poetic grace.

My thoughts die out slowly on the blood swept plains where I see you every night
And to the lonely hours, it’s like burning the furniture to keep the house bright at night

The night is getting late and the horns have all been blown
And the drummer’s looking cock-eyed on his rusty metal throne
And I’m somewhere in the distance and you’re somewhere at home

Watch the video directed by Carl Elsaesser below:

Burnover will be released on the 22nd August via Transgressive Records and Canvasback Music and you can pre-order it now.

John Also Bennett – Easter Daydream

His first album for Shelter Press since 2019 solo debut Erg Herbe, John Also Bennett returns this July with new full-length Ston Elaióna. The record—titled ‘in the olive grove’ in Greek—sees the US-born, Athens, Greece-based composer, flautist and multi-instrumentalist blur the lines between the ancient and the contemporary, the physical and metaphysical, with electroacoustic compositions every bit as precise and spacious as fans of JAB will have come to expect. Lead single ‘Easter Daydream’ welcomes the audience into the world of the record, a soundscape built from subtle bass flute and synth which allows the real world to bleed in. Namely the bells from a procession captured during Orthodox Holy Week down the road from Bennett’s apartment in Athens, sounds which have a strangely dualistic effect on the mood, both haunting the track and charging it with immediacy.

Michael Beach – Poison Dart

We’ve long followed the work of Naarm/Melbourne-based songwriter Michael Beach, with 2021 record Dream Violence winning a place among our favourite albums of the year. “Beach reaches into the grab bag of rock history and fashions what he finds into something timely and unique,” we wrote. “Imagine Neil Young meeting The Velvet Underground on a dark and hopeless night in our late-capitalist hellscape to muse on the meaninglessness of existence.” Such a description might have captured the record’s searing heart, though does a disservice to the overall tone of Beach’s work. Because while there is an undeniable darkness, it is often sublime in nature, and certainly anything but nihilistic in its intentions. A fact made clear by new record Big Black Plume, coming soon via Poison City and Goner Records, which works with perhaps the only form of optimism left.  “I was wrestling with the beauty and intensity of the natural world and coming to grips with the human destruction of it,” as Beach explains. “I have an overwhelming sense that humans will come and go, and the world we depend on will outlast us.” Listen to new single ‘Poison Dart’ now:

Watch the video below, directed by Alexandra Millen with cinematography from Claire Giuffre:

Big Black Plume will be released on the 25th July via Poison City and Goner Records and you can pre-order it now.

Omo Cloud – Ultimate Love

Later this month sees the release of Mausoleum, the debut album from Cole De La Isla’s Omo Cloud on Dusty Mars Records. The album sees the San Diego songwriter reckon with their past with the intention, as per the title, of burying it and moving on. The result, as shown by lead single ‘Ultimate Love’, is every inch as bittersweet as that might sound. Enduring the painful process of returning to old traumas in order to redefine the present and future. “I feel like I spent a lot of my teenhood being very angsty and existential and cynical in a lot of ways, but I don’t want that to be the takeaway of the record at all,” De La Isla explains. “I feel the takeaway is actually a very optimistic one. We’re all capable of growth and change, and it is a lot of work, but it is worth it. I want people to trust their gut. I want to help people connect with hard emotions—and I want people to be inspired.”

Mausoleum is out on the 27th June via Dusty Mars Records and available to pre-order now.

Pacing – Nothing! (I wanna do)

Led by Katie McTigue, Pacing has been catching our eye for a number of years with a sound at once fun, idiosyncratic and deceptively heartfelt. “[Pacing] follows in the playful, tongue-in-cheek tradition of the likes of Kimya Dawson,” as we put it back in 2023, “yet always nudges the ideas further to be more than mere twee humour or sardonic fun.” After a number of successful collaborations and a high profile tour with Cheekface, this summer sees McTigue return with PL*NET F*TNESS, a new album on Asian Man Records, and latest single ‘Nothing! (I wanna do)’ suggests Pacing is firing on all cylinders. Inspired by a brain-numbing commute along Highway 85, the song is described as “a classic upbeat depression banger” (“we are all entitled to one per album, and I’m using mine now,” as McTigue says), and embodies the mission which has long lurked beneath the surface of the project. Because, when you peel back the wry humour and off-the-wall personality, it becomes clear Pacing is asking how we are supposed to live beneath the weight of all that is asked of us. How might we find meaning in a banal world?

Watch a live video for the single below, with gig footage by Hali Tauxe and b-roll by errbody:

PL*NET F*TNESS is out on the 25th July via Asian Man Records.

R&D – Everything Becomes a Sign

We’ve long followed the work of Dan Knishkowy (Adeline Hotel) and Rebecca El-Saleh (Kitba) in their own respective projects, with the latest Adeline Hotel full-length Whodunnit making our list of favourites from 2024 and the Kitba’s exceptional self-titled record winning our praise in 2023 (“Proof that art can offer a picture of identity more nuanced than simple labels,” we wrote of the latter. “A deeper understanding reached via an embrace of confusion. Identity as an ongoing thing”). So it is most welcome news the pair have teamed up under the moniker R&D to create improvised, instrumental songs which further delve into the themes they have explored individually. Because while upcoming album I’ll Send You a Sign marks something of a departure from what we might expect from Knishkowy and El-Saleh in terms of style, its thematic concerns feel more like a continuation or deepening. Take the spare, probing single ‘Everything Becomes a Sign’, which mines patience and sensitivity for all of their exploratory potential.

Rival Consoles – Jupiter

We’ve featured a number of tracks from Rival Consoles‘ forthcoming album Landscape from Memory in recent weeks, with tracks like ‘Catherine‘ and ‘Known Shape‘ finding Ryan Lee West working at the intersection of the human and the digital, crafting soundscapes full of euphoria, melancholy and restless motion. With the release approaching via Erased Tapes, West has shared latest single ‘Jupiter’. A song which embodies the album’s spirit in its combination of repetition and variation, its intricate detail and overarching brightness. “At the heart of this piece is a call and response,” as he explains. “The main idea is changing but the response is always the same, this is connected to life and nature. I wanted the music to feel like materials, bending, distorting, shimmering, colourful shards of glass and metal. To me it feels like the sun touching objects with its warmth and power.”

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Toronto-based indie rock outfit Arenas are gearing up to the release of their debut full-length Truth Come Alive this spring, and new single ‘Quitting’ gives an indication of what to expect. Described by the band as “a snapshot of the fear associated with giving up on something,” the track uses a blend of playful energy and tangible weight to celebrate the cathartic joy of throwing in the towel. The result owes as much to acts like Pixies as it does contemporary post-punk, and packs a real punch with its sardonic charm. In a world of productivity and parasitic middle managers, giving up might be one of the last radical acts left available to us.

Brown Horse – Corduroy Couch

We featured Brown Horse‘s debut album Reservoir when writing about our favourite releases of 2024, praising their sometimes nostalgic, sometimes Gothic brand of folk rock. Maintaining the sense of momentum, the band are wasting no time with their second full-length, All the Right Weakness, which will be released this spring via Loose Music. Lead single ‘Corduroy Couch’ is available to listen to right now, a song which melds alt country and slacker rock to offer the same sense of sincerity, urgency, specificity and strangeness which marked the previous release.

We watched The Matrix on a corduroy couch
The smell of the ocean was drying on your skin
Your big retriever’s name was Hank
And I know I’ll miss him

The Burning Hell – Bottle of Chianti, Cheese And Charcuterie Board

Writing of the album Garbage Island back in 2023, we described how The Burning Hell lived up to their name, making “everything from tongue-in-cheek anti-folk to racing indie rock,” to offer “a bright and mischievous ode to a pre-apocalyptic world.” Coming soon via You’ve Changed Records and BB*ISLAND, the new Burning Hell album Ghost Palace continues this mission, albeit with the requisite correction that the world it is being released into is now comfortably mid-apocalypse. Single ‘Bottle of Chianti, Cheese And Charcuterie Board’ finds Mathias Kom, Ariel Sharratt and Jake Nicoll in a familiarly impish mood, pouring scorn on materialist bourgeois distractions with an oddball lyrical journey. Strangers named Jason, collectors of medieval swords, a Buddhist book club in the sky frequented by long-haired former tennis pros and part-time Rabbis. No, it’s not a new Pynchon novel. The Burning Hell are back.

Watch the video directed by Graeme Patterson below:

Ghost Palace is out on the 7th March via You’ve Changed Records and BB*ISLAND and you can pre-order it now.

Byland & The Bones of J.R. Jones – Jubilee

“Trac[es] the disappointment and exasperation loaded into any search for belonging, while arcing towards a sense of acceptance.” That’s how we described Heavy For A While, last year’s album by Albuquerque-born, Seattle-based artist Alie Renee Byland, AKA Byland, praising the release for its willing to allow “competing and seemingly contradictory emotions to occupy the same space.” With a tour with Deep Sea Diver on the horizon, Byland has teamed up The Bones of J.R. Jones for new single, ‘Jubilee’. It’s a duet that utilises the chemistry between the vocals to great effect, mining a sense of hushed intimacy in its slow bloom before the poignant drama of the weighty finale.

Constant Follower – Almost Time To Go

Towards the end of 2024, we introduced The Smile You Send Out Returns To You, the forthcoming album from Glasgow‘s Constant Follower, singles like ‘Whole Be‘ and ‘All Is Well‘ highlighting how the band have adopted a newly ethereal sound to explore a myriad of themes from parenthood to addiction and recovery. With the album’s spring release fast approaching, Constant Follower have unveiled new single, ‘Almost Time to Go’. Berlin’s Andy Aquarius adds harp, crafting a sound shadowy yet shot through with light, carrying a message of endurance in a typically compassionate manner.

The Coral Gables – Heavy Load

New York-based trio The Coral Gables have made a name combining country twang with good old fashioned rock and roll, not to mention a distinctively smart lyrical style. Latest single ‘Heavy Load’ is the perfect introduction for the uninitiated, bringing to life an existential wander around the streets of Washington DC by riffing on the Bob Dylan classic ‘Mississippi’. I’ve been through the wringer / I’ve been through hell,” lead Kenny Hoffman sings in the opening lines. “I’m walking through a city / That I used to know well.” The sound itself is full of warm country tones and easy-going confidence, yet Hoffman’s vocals carry a tangible edge. Something which sits at the intersection of desperation and wry fatalism, the voice of a man baffled by the world occurring all around him.

I’m doing what I can
Doing what I must
I’m serving my sentence
And the sentence was just
It’s not an undue burden
I’m reaping what I sowed
I’m carrying a heavy heavy heavy load

Dayydream – Fucked Up

Led by Glasgow-based visual artist and musician Chloe Trappes and featuring Loup Havenith (drums), Samuel Rafanell-Williams (lead guitar) and Dillon Salvi (bass guitar), Dayydream is a project which straddles shoegaze, slowcore and indie rock to create a sound both hazy and deep. Latest single ‘Fucked Up’ embodies this style, its title perhaps belying the song’s inviting warmth but describing its confessional tone to a tee, the sound suspended with a light mist yet not without its own internal force. The drums lead a gradual build across the track’s length, but any expectation of a shoegaze crescendo is unfounded, instead allowing a more understated, emotive air to be the lasting impression.

Molto Ohm – Sponsored #1

Molto Ohm is the new project from Italy-born, Brooklyn-based artist and composer Matteo Liberatore which examines the contemporary moment—where the rise of digital connection seems inversely proportional to relations within the physical world, and the fabric of society is changing if not disintegrating altogether. The electronic sound combines dance beats and shimmering melodies with vocal samples and environmental sounds, leading to something ostensibly intimate but ultimately alienating in its synthetic form. Ahead of debut album FEED on New Focus Recordings, single ‘Sponsored #1’ introduces the style. A track which “delves into the commodification of self-care,” as Liberatore describes, “where the quest for mental well-being is shaped by algorithms and consumer-driven promises of a better you.”

FEED is out on the 21st March via New Focus Recordings and you can pre-order it now.

Pink Must – Morphe Sun

Based on mutual genre-bending inclinations and a deepening chemistry, Pink Must is the new recording project of Brooklyn-based sound artists and musicians Mari ‘More Eaze’ Rubio and Lynn Avery. Forthcoming via 15 love, their self-titled debut is both something of an introduction and mission statement. It establishes an interplay between polish and dissonance, as well as an often wryly sardonic vocal style and conscious resistance to easy labelling at every turn. Take opening track ‘Morphe Sun’, a glitchy song Avery describes as “almost a remix of itself” which presents a vainglorious figure from the perspective of a friend who can’t help but find some part of their personality charming. “u hated the sunset / didn’t match the shade of the palette / u wore that day / could have been worse,” as the second verse goes. “reignited / the taste of smoke in teeth / gotta confess i kinda found it sweet.”

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Hailing from California and now based in Glasgow, Alvidrez is a composer and writer who works at the intersection of faith and defiance. Album Antiphon, coming next month on Memorials of Distinction, is built around their renunciation of American evangelicalism, its mix of folk, ambient and drone both reaching back into the past and presenting an epiphanic present. Lead single and opener ‘Hymn For The Corner’ is the perfect example, its rich yet hazy sound conjuring the softened fog of memory, yet its core holds the immediate sense of bright revelation. The old dogmas might have revealed themselves hollow, but Alvidrez is here to show wonder exists beyond the orthodox.

tired of heaven
tired of chemtrails
signing the papers
for a house in this dark land
no one could tell me
how to sing all my songs
it’s a hymn that will show me
that I’ve got it all wrong

Any Other – If I Don’t Care

Any Other, the recording project of Italian singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Adele Altro, will release their third album stillness, stop: you have a right to remember later this month on 42 Records. Latest single ‘If I Don’t Care’ serves an encapsulation of their idiosyncratic sound. “This song is about me learning to let go of things that make me angry,” Altro explains, “both personal and societal stuff. It’s reasonable to be angry about inequalities, but at some point you need to distance yourself from that stuff just a little, otherwise it will impact your mental health in an even more negative way.” But anyone expecting a song full of calm wisdom couldn’t be more wrong, with Altro reaching this newfound understanding via a mixture of frustration, impatience and defiance, all bound together to reach an urgent, building catharsis. Watch the video below, produced by 42 Records and EDERA (Milan) and directed by Giulio Rasi, with art direction by Cecilia Grandi.

stillness, stop: you have a right to remember will be released on 26th January via 42 Records. Pre-order a copy from their webstore.

Astrid Sonne – Boost

Later this month, London-based Danish composer Astrid Sonne will release her third record, Great Doubt, via Copenhagen label Escho. For an artist who has made a name in experimental and ambient fields, the album represents something of an evolution, adding vocals and beats for the first time in a foray into the realms of arty pop and contemporary singer-songwriter styles. Latest single ‘Boost’ is one of the record’s instrumental tracks, but the beats are front and centre, charging things with an energy fitting of the title. “I made ‘Boost’ lying in my bed, it’s a quite energetic track coming from a not very energetic place,” Sonne describes. “There’s a sense of release to Boost and a feeling of not caring too much, which can be good sometimes when you need to seek out new settings.”

Fela Dakota – Pour Your Soul

Describing themselves as “a trapeze artist of the midnight-thoughts,” Fela Dakota is a singer-songwriter from Bath whose work smoulders with intensity. Released by Folk Boy Records, ‘Pour Your Soul’ is their debut single and a bold introduction indeed. Built on a minimal background that evokes a dark and cavernous void, Dakota’s vocals arise from this abyss with a combination of romantic grace and tortured fervour, swinging from a quivering whisper to a full-throated roar that lights up the negative space with incandescent feeling. The result is an arresting song that falls somewhere between lament-like hymn and desperate cry into the night.

‘Pour Your Soul’ is out now via Folk Boy Records.

Loic Moonmattress – Sleepless in Eugene

Released as part of the Sunseekers collective, ‘Sleepless in Eugene’ is the title track of a new three-song EP by Edmonton artist Loic Moonmattress. Effortlessly straddling ambient, hip hop and folk styles, the song blurs the line between personal intimacy and wide open space, channelling that strange nocturnal headspace where everything is at once immediate and reflective. Such a liminal space speaks to the themes of the song too, which finds its narrator in a kind of limbo—between youth and adulthood, love and loneliness, consciousness and dreams. “I finished [the track] alone in Whitby, Ontario and very far away from the places and people that inspired it,” Loic Moonmattress explains. “I think of it like a letter to those places, those people, and those times.”

Malachi Graham – Spare Me

With album Caretaker on the horizon, we’ve featured Portland, Oregon-based songwriter Malachi Graham several times in recent months, most recently with single ‘Wonderful Life‘. Another example of Graham’s willingness to delve into the uncomfortable corners of personal relationships to better illuminate the love and suffering therein. Latest track ‘Spare Me’ is no less affecting, a song described as a “relationship meditation and post-mortem” which rakes the coals of a toxic relationship to find both pain and complicity. The work of Malachi Graham doesn’t emerge from its investigations with simple findings or much by way of comfort, and feels all the more authentic as a result.

Middle Sattre – Hate Yourself to the Core

We’ve been anticipating Tendencies, the upcoming record from Austin-based outfit Middle Sattre ever since single ‘Pouring Water‘ had us making comparisons to Sufjan Stevens and Typhoon. Follow up ‘Stop Speaking‘ was no less evocative, with lead Hunter Prueger drawing on the experience of growing up queer in the Mormon church to castigate the cruelty of conservative voices. With the album set for release next month, Middle Sattre have returned with another single which challenges such poisonous influence. Namely, ‘Hate Yourself to the Core’ explores how no-one escapes from such an environment untouched, with pernicious views sinking into the subconscious no matter how differently you might feel. “I think a lot of people have a hard time understanding internalized homophobia,” Prueger explains. “There’s this idea that if you’re gay, then you can’t be homophobic. I wanted to write a song that very clearly lays it all out and explains how this can happen.”

Watch the video below, directed by Maya Lam with performance and choreography by Stephanie Shin:

Tendencies will be released on 9th February. Order it now from the Middle Sattre Bandcamp page.

Mol Sullivan – Goose

We previewed GOOSE, the forthcoming debut full-length album by Mol Sullivan back in November, with ‘Still Tryin’, introducing an exploration of a nascent sobriety. “[The single] uses a hushed, bruised style to welcome the listener into a raw period of life,” as we wrote, “but there’s a glimmer of something else too, a newfound freedom to move towards some better future. Set deep in those early days of a new beginning where everything feels possible yet tenuous and a little too vivid to bear.” With the record out later this month, Sullivan has returned with the title track to not only further develop the themes of personal introspection but introduce the spirit guardian that lends the album its name. It starts bright and folky, but soon slides into tricky complexity, emotions captured perfectly with the tense and idiosyncratic chamber pop instrumentation.

Am I a swan or just a goose
I’d bet the latter, grab my purse
it’s not so difficult a choice
between a joker and a fool
without giving them a voice
do you want an ocean or a pool?

Watch the video by Andrew Spohn below:

GOOSE is out on the 26th January and you can pre-order it now.

Sailor Honeymoon – Bad Apple

After winning comparisons to The Ramones, Kim Gordon and Bikini Kill with debut single ‘Cockroach’, South Korean punk trio Sailor Honeymoon have returned with new track ‘Bad Apple’. The song is the first teaser of a debut EP pencilled for release in the spring on Seoul and London-based label Good Good 굿굿. The band’s entire ethos revolves spontaneity and freedom, offering a sense of ragged, fun abandon as the perfect antidote to the dominant force of K-pop and the pristine polish it champions. ‘Bad Apple’ is an ideal entry point for the uninitiated. A raucous song which stares down a bigoted ‘friend’ without so much as a flinch. Watch the video directed by Kim Taeyoung below:

‘Bad Apple’ is out now via streaming services.

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Clancy is joined by Stefano Pilia, Dominique Vaccaro, Andrea De Franco, Kyle Knapp, Andrea Belfi, Francesca Bono and Enrico Gabrielli in bringing this to life. Single ‘Had It All’ gave a glimpse of the aesthetic, “taking equal parts cosmic folk and spacious ambient styles,” as we wrote, “and applying them to a more traditional singer-songwriter sound.” But there is more to the album too, with influences as diverse as krautrock and the soundtracks of classic Italian cinema all bleeding into the mix. ‘Precipice’ captured some of this dramatic depth, balancing almost mechanical drums with a rising ambient backdrop.

Now James Jonathan Clancy is back with ‘I Want You’. Described as “a kosmische outsider ballad,” the track typifies the duality of earthly and metaphysical sensibilities that makes the album stand out. As though in leaning so far into bucolic nature, Clancy pushes through into some cosmic otherside where everything is charged with spiritual energy and nothing is quite as it seems. But within this mysterious space sits something altogether more familiar, as the vocals long and pine and profess their love.

Artwork and illustration by Michelangelo Setola

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Eli Frank is something of a fixture of the New York DIY scene, playing in the likes of Teenage Halloween, Punt and Winnebago Vacation. Latest project Bummer Camp is their first solo venture, an outlet for layered songs crafted from the basic ingredients of guitar, drum machine and loop pedal. Bummer Camp has just released its second EP, Big Deal, a record Frank says “tackles both the everyday and the everlasting impact of striving to create something meaningful.” Single ‘It’s a Pain’ is a good introduction, beginning as a taut indie pop song before exploding in cathartic noise in the final third.

Watch the video by multimedia artist Preston Spurlock below:

Big Deal is out now and available from the Bummer Camp Bandcamp page.

Diamond Grinder – Let Me Live with You

Back in June, New York‘s Diamond Grinder released their full-length Expectations via Perpetual Doom, an album which introduced the long-time (if intermittent) collaboration between songwriters Margaret Nygard and Eli Recht-Appel. Together with a huge, rotating cast of musicians, the pair create a folk-inflected brand of rock which manages to combine intimacy and dynamism, owing as much to seventies Americana as it does contemporaries such as Big Thief. Having just shared a new video directed and edited by Elizabeth Kroner for the slow-burning single ‘Let Me Live With You’, now’s the time to jump aboard the Diamond Grinder train if you missed it the first time around.

Expectations is out now via Perpetual Doom and you can get it from Bandcamp.

Duster – The Weed Supreme

Hot on the heels of the 25th Anniversary Edition of Stratosphere, slowcore royalty Duster have unveiled a collection of previously unreleased material, Remote Echoes, via The Numero Group. Or kind of unreleased, with some of the material having previously appeared on demo tapes Christmas Dust and On The Dodge. Single ‘The Weed Supreme’ gives an indication of what to expect, bathed in fuzz and possessing the trademark hushed vocals, proving so laidback so as to be almost horizontal.

Remote Echoes is out now via The Numero Group.

Family Man – FATHER JOHN

‘FATHER JOHN’, the latest single from Family Man, is an expose, an exorcism and an apology. Written about his experiences within LA’s private Catholic school system, lead Conner Root takes aim at both the callous dogma of conservative Christianity and the systems of privilege and white supremacy which underpins it. Family Man have made a name with their raw sound, but the intensely personal nature of this song breaks new ground. Years of toxicity and repression expelled with crushing force, castigating those who created such a reality, and making amends to the person inside Root who was waiting to live their life as it was meant to be.

‘FATHER JOHN’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Fortunato Durutti Marinetti – Clerk Of Oblivion

We previewed Eight Waves In Search Of An Ocean, the forthcoming album by Turin-born, Toronto-based Fortunato Durutti Marinetti on Quindi Records and Soft Abuse, back in September with single ‘Lightning On A Sunny Day‘. “An epic track that manages to weave real drama into its lazy sprawl,” as we put it, “evoking the titular image in its dreamlike blend of space and intensity.” The “poetic jazz rock” artist has now unveiled new track ‘Clerk Of Oblivion’, a song which turns its woozy electronic style towards the monolith of labour, sounding at once seething and stupefied, as though slowly whittled down by the weight of work. It uses the last few ounces of energy to try to communicate just how pointless and cruel the concept can be. “My only objective going into this song was to exorcize the spirit of Robert Wyatt’s The Age of Self, a major source of inspiration,” Marinetti explains. “But as usually happens, something else entirely formed.”

Half Stack – Cruisin USA

“The dusty cowboy aesthetic remains, but there’s more to Half Stack than that. Now they’re allowing their true spirit to shine through.” That’s how we described Sitting Pretty, the new album from the Oakland band on Forged Artifacts and Royal Oakie Records, in a preview earlier this summer. With this new freedom comes influences ranging from psych rock and power pop to honky tonk, and latest single ‘Cruisin USA’ taps into a little bit of everything to create a sound at once reflective and full of swagger. The dual vocals add a real chemistry too, and the result possesses an affirming spirit no matter how uncertain the lyrics might prove.

Laura Zarougian – Back To Piran

We’ve written about several singles from Nayri, the debut album from New York-based artist Laura Zarougian, recently, full of praise of her “one part Armenian cowgirl and one part indie rock” aesthetic. Now the album is out in the world, and we couldn’t help but feature one last song. A timeless slice of country, ‘Back To Piran’ is the record’s midpoint and an encapsulation of everything that’s good about it. A song full of longing and fragile strength, a commitment to remain connected to one’s heritage despite geographical distance. It’s a feeling far more genuinely American than any Hollywood cowboy. A ballad for diaspora everywhere.

Layperson – I Want To

The recording project of Portland, OR-based songwriter Julian Morris (Little Star, Post Moves), Layperson uses a welcoming folk rock sound to explore the strange contradictions of life. Next month’s new album Massive Leaning, a joint release by Lung Records and Bud Tapes, emerged in the aftermath of a break-up, though Morris consciously subverts the traditions of such records to offer a more nuanced picture. One where the vertiginous sense of loss and loneliness is in some way counterbalanced by a persistent hope. Take latest single ‘I Want To’, where Morris consciously refuses the temptation to return to familiar ground and instead opens his mind towards something different, and the buoyant sound comes to suggest a nascent spiritual awakening.

Baby, I want to
I want that feeling
The feeling that drives all the reasons
Baby I want to

Zoya Zafar – Tunnel Vision

Since the release of a self-titled EP back in 2013, Zoya Zafar has developed a delicate and often searching brand of folk music, probing into the uncertainties of relationships with equal parts vulnerability and strength. Produced by Gia Margaret, 2018 single ‘Sweet Talk’ saw Zafar’s sound evolve in an increasingly dreamy direction, something which carried through into this year’s ‘Wordz’. Her debut full-length album Some Songs is coming soon, and the Lahore-born, Orlando-based songwriter has unveiled latest single, ‘Tunnel Vision’ to further establish this sound. “True love / did it happen to be real love?” go the opening lines, “or just something to get through the night? / We don’t believe in paradise.” This confessional style is delivered on a pillowy arrangement, as though fragility and conviction are one and the same.

Tunnel Vision
I only see you
If I knew why,
It’d be the last thing that I’d do

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The duo, comprising of Roberto P. Siguera and Attilio Novellino, moved across Europe to record the album, including stints in Stockholm, Manchester, Munich and Turin. In addition to the orchestral scores, composed by Siguera and performed by Luton Sinfonietta Orchestra, both musicians also contributed a variety of instruments, including classical guitar, ancient Russian zither, piano, electric bass and guitars, e-bow, pedals and electronics. And this diversity has the desired effect. From the ominous distorted thumps that see out opener ‘Mount Kenya Imperial’, to the ghostly pulsing and mournful strings of ‘Sodermalm Phantom Cab’, the album is enveloped in an evocative and often unsettling atmosphere. At times it’s spacious and sad, others strange and surreal, a claustrophobic fever dream that unfurls mirage-like across the folds of your brain.

The album’s shortest track, ‘Eternal Now’ is slow and subdued, led by ponderous piano and a gentle ambience that threatens to grow like a cumulonimbus before dissipating as quickly as it arrived. But it’s a portent for the rest of the album, a sign that storm clouds (meteorological or otherwise) are always on the horizon.

Not that every song provides a cathartic release. ‘Black Concrete’ is taut and reserved, holding significant power in what it leaves unsaid, while ‘Night Avalanche’ feels like the onset of a blizzard, dark clouds obscuring the moon as snowflakes tumble like ash and the distant peaks begin to creak under the extra weight. ‘Submergence’ begins sparse and crystalline, developing into something twitchy and unsettling, a latent madness veering just out of sight, while ‘Ice Museum’ is as cold and cavernous as the title suggests, with the funereal solemnity of an empty cathedral.

Final song ‘Silent Fireworks’ also feels grandiose, but on a much smaller scale. It’s jaded and elegiac, like a late afternoon breeze shifting a lace curtain in an abandoned home, the owner long dead but the weight of history sitting heavy as the dust on the possessions within. It’s a very strong end to an album that keeps surprising to the last, music with such depth and feeling that it feels almost tangible.

You can get Black Box Animals on CD and download via Lost Tribe Sound on the Luton Bandcamp page.

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“The song is constructed from a multitude of small details, dreams and snapshots and sensations which knit together into a kind of abstract storyboard for good times. Or a vivid representation of life’s sunny side. A shiny plum indeed.”

Ben was kind enough to answer a few of our questions, so have a read below as we discuss imaginary audiences, sincerity in music and the poetry of Eileen Myles.

Hi Ben, thanks for speaking with us! How is life now that Bowl of Plums is out in the world?

I honestly feel wonderful! The release show last week was really, really nice and putting this record out has been a really opportune moment to reconnect with people + talk to some new folks. I’m a little bit relieved, also – happy to finally cross the finish line. I’ve been walking around beaming!

The writing/recording process sounded like an interesting one, with a collection of very different songs coming into being pretty much right across America (from Alaska and California to Brooklyn and Queens), so much so that you’ve describe the album as a “greatest hits album”. Was this your intention from the beginning?

I never intended to write the album that way. After a few years of bopping around, through touring and visiting my family out west and doing some different artist residencies, I had a pretty big grab bag of different songs that weren’t necessarily part of one larger body of work. Thinking of the “greatest hits” helped me conceptualise everything, and helped me find the thread of humanity that was common to all these tracks.

I also liked how it’s a little tongue-in-cheek – greatest hits albums are for people like Tom Petty and the Eagles, goliath recording artists whose songs top the charts. Calling my tiny little campfire of an album anything grandiose is an almost-funny joke.

Also – “Yellow Roses,” an album-length song/jam I put out on tape in 2015 was partly about really embracing a classic rock vibe, just laying super hard into dominant chords and multiple guitars. We kept thinking of the tape design as something you’d pick up in the discount music bin of a car wash, a 50 cent tape of a band from the late 70s that nobody had ever heard of. I think maybe the “greatest hits” idea started creeping in there a little bit.

Do you think you’d like to go back to any of the tracks and write a more cohesive album around it? I mean, will we see any of the trees from which the plums fell?

It’s possible! But I don’t have any specific plans right now. The thing I’m working on now is based on my teenage years in California when I was just starting to outgrow religion – I’ve been listening to Everclear a lot for inspiration, haha, so who knows.

The thing that strikes me most about Bowl of Plums is how you manage to capture those transient moments of wonder and joy. Do the songs arrive in your brain like that, in little golden instances? Or do you work hard to conjure that feeling through trial and error?

I actually find that the harder I work on something – especially its words – the less resonance it has. The title track, for instance, went through a number of lyrical changes over the course of a few months that I was never happy with – I ended up using the very first draft of lyrics, the words I scrawled down in a beat-up notebook while I was hunched over a table still awkwardly wearing my guitar. Something like first thought, best thought. Revision and fine-tuning is something that I admire in a lot of other singers and writers but for me it just seems to dull my instincts and pull me out of the soft, human dreams I’m trying to live in with these songs.

The other thing that strikes me, as was the case with your self-titled album, is the sincerity of your writing. There are a million and one things I could ask about this but one thing I do wonder is how much of this is a concerted effort on your part? Does sincerity flow? Is it your default setting? Or does it require practice and patience and hard work?

I think the sincerity flows, dude! And I think it flows in most people, too, but for various reasons we learn over and over again to be cool, a little distant, intellectual, whatever. Maybe it takes hard work to overcome those impulses.

Without sounding like too much of a stoner – – you can’t aim for sincerity, I don’t think. You can’t say, “I would like this thing to be sincere.” With that thought, you have automatically disqualified the sentiment from ultimate sincereness…you know? You say something, make something, and if it’s an honest exploration of a compelling subject, done with tenderness and maybe, like, a lack of guile, then it might be resonant and might appear pure-of-heart. But you can’t aim to make something sincere.

Would you say you experience increased anxiety when sharing songs so vibrant and personal? Like, all artists suffer the will-people-like-it? thing but it must be more difficult when you put so much of yourself and your experiences down so clearly (as opposed to, say, masking it with irony or diluting it with fictitious characters and events)?

I have certainly been scared of people not liking what I make in the past, but I think I’ve outgrown that fear – – I’m pretty confident in what I do and, more importantly, I know that it’s for sure not everyone’s cup of tea. I’d hate to disappoint my regular listeners with a turd of an album, but I would also never put something out that I wasn’t stoked about and proud of personally. So, no!

The thing that I’m REALLY anxious about is the album and the songs just not making much of an impact, just kind of vanishing into the ever-growing content void. I recently called Bowl of Plums a paper sailboat, carrying my heart, set out to drift on the ocean. It’s also something like setting off a cherry bomb in a metal trash can – I’ve lit the fuse and I’m just hoping that the explosion is physical and loud and satisfying instead of anti-climactic – – mm, yes, haha. That is the thing that worries me right now.

Fortunately this interview will help!

You shared an Eileen Myles poem with the release. Did you have the poem in mind when forming the album, or did you discover it later and think it relevant? Does poetry and literature in general play a role in your creative process?

I was reading Eileen Myles’ semi-autobiographical poetic memoir kinda book Inferno (a poet’s novel) the summer I wrote a lot of this material. Such a great book, really hypnotic and steamy and smelly – – very accurately captures something about New York City, I think. And it’s just so direct and fearless – proud, too. I think her writing and her poems just made me want to sing about things that weren’t easy, to push through.

Later on, after I had been recording for a while, I came across the quote I ended up using as the epigraph – having written numerous songs name-checking flowers and, in one verse, just naming a few, it was too perfect – it concisely summed up the sheepish and outlandish presentation of a bouquet of flowers that I believe this album to be.

I love books, love getting lost in them, and find that the best ones allow you a totally reckless intimacy that’s extremely special and rare. I always think about that idea that Whitman had where, while you read Leaves of Grass and hold his work in your hands, you actually holding him himself. My big project in making music is finding, celebrating, and creating intimacy and tenderness and my notions of what that all means definitely comes from books. And I hope there’s something like that for people who hear my songs.

You’re releasing an EU version of the record through Italian label Love Boat Records (which is a great idea, speaking as a fan of North American music stuck the wrong side of the Atlantic), and plan to tour there this summer. Why Italy in particular?

It’s honestly “just one of those things” – I’ve happened to build an audience in Italy specifically, thanks mostly to the tireless efforts of Andrea Pomini, a musician and music critic who downloaded my last album illegally when it came out in 2014 and ended up championing it as a good, if totally under-heard, record. Once he wrote about the self-titled album in a magazine called Rumore, I suddenly had a sizeable audience in a country I had never been to. Since then, I’ve just taken every opportunity possible to go there and play and do more.

Someone smarter than me might be able to figure out more specifically why my music is resonant there – I’m just happy that it happened.

Essentially, one person happened to hear my music there and believed in me.

If anyone in other countries would like to do the same, I am open to the idea! Would love to be able to tour Japan regularly, for instance.

On a semi-related note, do you ever think about your target audience when writing and recording? Like, aside from family/friends/enemies, do you have a hypothetical listener in mind? What do they look like?

There isn’t a specific person, I don’t think. At least not right now – there have been targeted individuals in the past. I might describe the audience I think of like this – – a crowded room, maybe 20% people I know and 80% strangers, as if I’m opening for someone (actually, I think I’m imagining the time I opened for Evan Dando). And I think about how to win them over, do something approaching beautiful, and ultimately be, um, of some help, I guess is how to say it. How to do right by a tiny sliver of humanity.

I do not currently imagine my many enemies but I think I would like to start doing that!!

Finally, could you suggest 4-5 bands you think we should be listening to? Feel free to name old classics or new buzz bands, whatever you find yourself returning to.

-I’m really into Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith right now and, by extension, really feeling modular synth videos on YouTube.
-I just watched two Bill Callahan sets two nights in a row and I’m completely obsessed, once again, with “A River Ain’t Too Much to Love” and his cover of Kath Bloom’s “The Breeze.”
-I’m really into Abdullah Ibrahim / Dollar Brand, specifically a track called “African Marketplace” that rules.
-The new Karl Blau country album wow, yes yes
-Looking forward to the Uni Ika Ai album coming out in the fall – this track is very good
-And like, just in case – if anyone hasn’t heard “New Day Rising” by Hüsker Dü it is pretty much the best song of all time

Bowl of Plums is out now and you can buy it from the Ben Seretan Bandcamp page, or on cassette from Hope For The Tape Deck. For those of you in Europe (and that includes us in the UK, at least for now), Italian label Love Boat is putting out vinyl and CD editions on the 8th July.

Cover photo by Dan Sullivan, main body photos by Sean Pierce

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[NB. The underground experimental scene (that contains acts like Texas Harsh Noisefuckers Black Leather Jesus) is a fascinating, one, and a real eye-opener to the boundaries of music (you could would do well to start here, a nice interview with Svartvit on InLog.org). Be warned, this is something of an internet rabbit hole, and reading about increasingly bizarre acts is strangely addictive].

Springtime Return is a great example of ambient music done well. Using field recordings in conjunction with drone, the pair create four tracks that are atmospheric, ethereal and haunting. There is an irony here: for a project conducted primarily on computers or other electronic equipment, and indeed a collaboration that took place across half of the globe via email, Springtime Return is fundamentally organic. It is so layered and nuanced that it sounds like nature; like something ancient and important yet simple, the earth spinning, time passing, drip of water as ice melts on spring’s return.

The release is available in two lovely modes: a handcrafted CD or a tape from Bookend Recordings. For those of you without the necessary spare change can download a digital version via Bandcamp.

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A lot of what I want to say about Asheville’s Wes Tirey and his latest EP, I Stand Among Trees, has already been said this year about Small Houses and John Moreland, and I find myself trying to avoid painting them as slight variations of the same thing, some identikit brand of man with guitar. This would be extraordinarily unfair, sort of like criticising Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy because they both use a pen and paper to share their stories.

The literary comparison is no coincidence – I Stand Among Trees is a literate EP, a collection of atmospheric and evocative songs that owe as much to the American masters of writing as they do to Dylan and Van Zandt.

This fantastic interview with Hearth Music gives an insight into the writing process for a few of the songs. It not only confirms my original thoughts but also giving a new point of view, especially on ‘Wild Beasts’ where Tirey’s citation of McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (one of my favourite books, like, ever) takes the track on to a whole new level of bare desolation, conjuring a hostile and empty landscape of insects and dust.

I Stood Among Trees by Wes Tirey

Indeed the whole EP can be viewed through this bloodly lens. Consider ‘Final Resting Place’:

“The concrete is a-crumbling
The blind man is a-mumbling
Everyone is running for their life”

…and:

“The drummer’s are a-drumming
Even Lucifer’s a-running
I saw him from the corner of my eye

Maybe Jesus is a-coming
Wouldn’t that be something
But who could live by such a lie”

You can almost hear the hooves of Glanton’s men, the terrible breathing of Judge Holden. This really is stirring stuff.

Obviously the EP isn’t about cowboys, but hopefully those who have read the book know what I mean (I told you I was struggling to sound original). Anyway, With I Stood Among Trees, Tirey claims his rightful place among my favourite folk artists this year, and I will certainly be keeping an eye on what he does next.

You can get the EP on Bandcamp for whatever price you think is appropriate. or you can get a lovely physical copy for $5 (also check out Tirey’s Home Demos while you are there). If you are a fan, there is also a very interesting Indiegogo called ‘Wesley in Italy‘ where you can get nice things in return for your coin that will hopefully send Tirey on tour next January around various Italian towns and cities.

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