Their first release since 2016’s And Then Like Lions, Blind Pilot‘s forthcoming album In The Shadow Of The Holy Mountain finds the Oregon outfit having undergone something of a necessary hiatus. “I was struggling with a lot of fear surrounding expectations of who I was supposed to be,” lead Israel Nebeker says, “I’d lost my path with music.” The time away allowed Nebeker to travel to Scandinavia to reconnect with his Sámi heritage, as well as visit places like Mexico City as part of a humanitarian group helping migrants. “I got the idea to write a song that looks at ideas of ownership and othering, and what it does when we tell people, ‘This is our home, not yours’.” he continues. The new record flowed out in less than a month. Lead single ‘Just A Bird’ introduces the new sound, one possessing all the heart which won fans over to Blind Pilot in the first place, but an extra sense of focus for those energies. Watch the visualizer by Lotte Budai below:

In The Shadow Of The Holy Mountain is out on the 16th August via ATO Records and you can pre-order it now.

Coolhand Jax – Everything Changes All of the Time

After moving on from surf-psych band Sunshine Brothers Inc., Los Angeles-based songwriter Jake Weissman took to the road across America and started working on new demos. The songs would eventually make up the first Coolhand Jax releases, which came out via Spirit Goth Records, and the project has never looked back. Latest single ‘Everything Changes All of the Time’ shows Weissman’s knack for combining bright rhythms with intimate emotion, following a challenging conversation during a car ride which turns towards themes of loss and death. But far from emerging as something bleak, Coolhand Jax instead wrap these ideas in a rich, wistful sound that highlights the romance of such themes. Finding some comfort in the concept of change, if only to feel a sense of movement.

Cooza – Blonde

In June, UK folk songwriter Cooza released Getting Better At Knowing You, a brand new full-length on Folk Boy Records. Described as an album “written for and about his sister Ellie,” the songs might have emerged from a period of mourning, but their intent is to do more than evoke feelings of grief. Because while loss sits at the heart of Getting Better At Knowing You, the record actively works against the totality so often ascribed to the experience. Ellie might not be here in the way she once was, Cooza seems to be saying, but she is far from lost. Single ‘Blonde’ is our first taste of this affirming album and the tender, incredibly intimate emotions found therein.

Getting Better At Knowing You is out now via Folk Boy Records.

G. Himsel – Sweet William

You might know Geoff Himsel as the songwriter behind Portsmouth, New Hampshire trio Bird Friend, but after finding his groove in recent times and writing an abundance of material, he has decided to begin releasing music under the solo moniker G. Himsel for the first time. With an album on the horizon, Himsel has unveiled single ‘Sweet William’ for a glimpse into the world of his sound. A sonic representation of the New England landscape, where expansiveness meets intricate detail and whispered subtleties, resulting in something patient, delicate, and fully attuned to geographies both physical and emotional.

hey i’m outside – Frontyard

“You’re in an overgrown front yard at sunset. The worldwide vibe is kinda off right now but you gotta try anyway.” That’s how Medford, MA’s outfit hey i’m outside describe the vibe of ‘Frontyard’, the first single from their upcoming album. The tone is heartfelt if a little woozy, as though clinging on as everything we know shifts off-kilter. It finds a person trying to preserve the small joys and points of interest they stumble across, even if the attempt is doomed to fail. “saw you in the front yard / looking at flowers, just about dark,” as the first verse plays. “I lined up my camera, I tried to compose / but a fragment of time can only come close.”

Jacob Furr – Take Care

“I was thinking about an old junkyard/antique collection that I know of and how those objects were all once important to someone’s life,” explains Jacob Furr of new track ‘Take Care’. The Texas-based songwriter uses the energies and meaning inherent within such ephemera as a springboard to explore care in a wider sense. What results is every bit as warm and compassionate as anything Furr has written to date, serving as a reminder of both the power of kindness and the need to cultivate such feelings to stave off the selfishness and cynicism so prevalent in these days. “Take care of the well that’s in your heart,” as he sings, “draw deeply on its waters but don’t let down your guard / Because the darkness comes without / The darkness comes within / and it’ll try to take everything you’ve been given.”

Jae Soto – Standing

The solo moniker of Brooklyn-based songwriter and producer Justina-Maria Soto, Jae Soto creates music which exists at the intersection of the traditional and contemporary, with classic songwriting sensibilities merging and interacting with various electronic styles. Released via Switch Hit Records, new album Leave the Light On demonstrates the inventiveness and potential of such a style, showing how an exploratory sound need not lack a sense of meticulous crafting. Single ‘Standing’ is a good place to jump in, introducing the themes of growth and self-care that run across the record. It’s a song which represents “an earnest reflection of the solitary, empty feeling a person can have after coming out of a long, stressful period where they were operating in survival mode,” Soto explains. “It can sort of feel like you’re living as a ghost since the rest of your life hasn’t caught up to shape around the new person you’ve become. Ultimately, the message is ‘I’m still here!'”

Julie Doiron & Astral Swans – Last Night I Saw My Love

Following on from the successful collaborative EP Split with Chad Vangaalen, Astral Swans are now preparing to release Split 2, a second joint EP this time with Canadian songwriting royalty Julie Doiron. Released via Stoner Bird Records and as a limited edition lathe cut vinyl via Red Spade Records, the EP finds two artists at the height of their abilities, however contrasting their styles. Doiron with her earnest invocations of love, Astral Swans with an altogether more sardonic slacker contemplations. Focus track ‘Last Night I Saw My Love’ captures the full nuance of the style—an ode to a lover delivered over great distances which chugs and croons its fondness with a building momentum.

Luke De-Sciscio – Only A Woman Knows

Most people might take a few months to themselves on entering parenthood, getting to grips with the inevitable life changes, but for prolific songwriter Luke De-Sciscio, the process only served up a deeper source of inspiration. Where previous LP Papa painted a couple on the precipice of their new life, latest album Theo sees them fully immersed within it. A collection of songs written and recorded in snatched moments during his daughter’s first six weeks, the record offers an unusually immediate picture of new fatherhood, something furthered by the live-recorded style. Single ‘Only A Woman Knows’ demonstrates the release’s delicate power, where anxiety and self-doubt bubble on the surface of a new wellspring of love.

Madam Sad – Hope For You

Madam Sad, that’s Hamilton, Ontario-based duo Maddison Schreiber and Evelyn Charlotte Joe, is a project which exists in defiance of poverty and disability, functioning both as a source of healing and a way to spite the challenges life has placed in their way. New single ‘Hope For You’ shows the heart which underpins the Madam Sad sound, as well as its willingness to confront difficult things with a compassionate face. “The song title is a way of holding myself accountable to make sure I am always hoping for the happiness of those who have hurt me,” as Schreiber says. “I also do get to a more genuine place where I feel compassion for an ex-lover’s success, and that’s a nice kind of sad.”

‘Hope For You’ is out now via streaming services.

Marisa Finley – Hallelujah (Movin Through Ya)

Exploring the timeless themes of love, loss and growing up, the work of Canadian singer-songwriter Marisa Finley uses a hazy, reflective sound to further its wistful charms. Her debut single ‘Hallelujah’ sees her team up with friend and collaborator Peter Mol, a musician and producer known for work with the likes of Father John Misty and Quincy Jones, and the result is as richly heartfelt as it is melancholic. An indie pop song bathed in ambient textures and sound recordings, as though Finley’s voice emerges through the cloudy fog of her accumulated past to make itself heard. What she has to say delivered with a heavy heart, charting the experience of falling in love prematurely and the slow process of realisation, though always with an assured fondness that respects the time which has passed.

‘Hallelujah (Movin Through Ya)’ is out now via streaming services.

Soot Sprite – I Went Swimming

Next month sees Exeter trio Soot Sprite return with I Went Swimming / Home Among Your Bones, a brand new 7″ double single on Specialist Subject Records. Through releases like album Poltergeist and single ‘Lazy‘, the band have established a cathartic, often confrontational style, calling out the slights and injustices of modern living in search of a sense of self-worth. ‘I Went Swimming’ applies the style to personal relationships, its thundering momentum and impassioned delivery typifying Soot Sprite’s willingness to stand up to all that is toxic and wrong. The track is about “recognising a red flag in your relationship and emotionally shutting down to that person and cutting things off,” as lead Elise Cook explains. “Some people describe this as getting ‘the ick’ but that feels like a trivial term. Sometimes we have to learn from our mistakes and protect ourselves and that’s exactly what this is about.”

The sky is filling up with red flags
And you can’t take that back
I went swimming in the water
And now I only see black

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Ah, 2002. Who could forget the International Year of Ecotourism, Mountains, and the Outback (in Australia)? If that wasn’t enough, the queen celebrated her golden jubilee, the king came back with a bang to win the World Cup, and Hollywood decided it would release (almost) nothing but sequels. Of course, there was also a lot of great music, and here’s a selection of our favourites.

Tracklisting:

1) Broken Social Scene – Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl
2) Say Hi To Your Mom – Kill the Cat
3) The Decemberists – July, July!
4) Spoon – The Way We Get By
5) The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Part 1
6) The Mountain Goats – The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton
7) The Libertines – Time For Heroes
8) Mclusky – To Hell With Good Intentions
9) Pavement – Baptiss Blacktick
10) Sleater-Kinney – One Beat
11) The Mountain Goats – No Children
12) Okkervil River – Westfall
13) Thee More Shallows – Where Are You Now?
14) Julie Doiron – All Their Broken Hearts
15) Múm – Green Grass of Tunnel
16) Iron & Wine – Faded From Winter
17) Carissa’s Wierd – So You Wanna Be A Superhero
18) Wilco – Radio Cure
19) Songs:Ohia – Didn’t It Rain
20) Sigur Ros – Untitled I

What did we miss from 2002? Let us know via the usual channels! Be sure to check out our posts on 2000 and 2001, and come back next month when we’ll be turning our attention to… 2003.

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A book within a book, Hystopia is actually the novel left behind by Eugene Allen, a Vietnam vet from a slightly-alternate version of the 60s where John F. Kennedy survived Oswald’s assassination attempt and is serving his third term in office. Opened and closed by various notes and testimonies from friends and family members, Allen’s work makes up the majority of the novel, a narrative imagining characters from his time in Vietnam once they return home. The kicker, though, is that while they are back in the States, they never really ‘get home’, with the war following them back to a dystopian (but far from unrecognisable) America ravaged by biker gangs and forest fires.

In an attempt to solve the crisis of PTSD and violence, the government turn to an experimental psychiatric method called ‘enfolding’, where veterans reenact traumatic scenes while dosed up on a tranquilliser, Tripizoid. While even the doctors working on the project believe the technique to be without substance, it proves paradoxically effective for many subjects and blanks memories of combat. “Confusion is undoubtedly an element of the curative process,” writes Means. “In most cases the patient does forget about it, becoming fully immersed in the reenacted trauma’s nullification of the real trauma”.

Which isn’t to say it’s a silver bullet. Indeed the novel opens with a “failed enfold,” Rake, a man filled with the sort of all-consuming rage and propensity for violence unique to men forced into the sacrifices of war only to end up on the losing side. We find him with Allen’s sister, Meg (whom he has almost certainly kidnapped, and has undergone some degree of enfolding too), as they drive across Michigan on an anarchistic rampage of murder, drugs and destruction. Eventually, they reach the home of Hank, Rake’s former sidekick who has developed a love of trees since enfolding, a man who tries to protect Meg and figure out a way in which they can save themselves from Rake.

The second strand of the story deals with another enfold Singleton and his colleague Wendy, government officials breaking protocol to meet up and fall in love, who somehow end up on the trail of Rake, as though their rule bending was in fact a conspiracy on the part of their superiors to engineer the operation. Again though, confusion reigns, with Singleton’s boss admitting that a key part of being a commander is having the “gumption to go back and revise history”, talking of writing operation plans after the operation in order to ensure they are correct.

This sense of counter-history runs throughout the novel, from Singleton and Wendy’s quest and Hank’s transformation into peaceful nature-lover, right down to Eugene Allen’s re-telling (re-imagining?) of his sister’s story. What becomes important for these troubled people is not discerning the capital-T Truth but rather finding a variation they can believe in. More often than not, this involves a sense of mission, the victim’s need for order in the face of chaos, the desire for purpose or meaning in “an age when everything else seemed to be spinning deeper and deeper into despair,” anything which enables them to form a narrative of the world in a way they would like it to exist.

“It was crazy, he admitted, but it kept him going and like all good delusions it was fuelled by genuine hope and dedication to the truth”

And that’s what sets apart David Means’ Vietnam from that of the postmodern cannon. Yes, it is full of claims and counter-claims and impenetrable paranoia, but rather than using these to trace a descent into bewilderment, Hystopia utilises them to chart a way out. In a world where confusion and conflict constitute the resting face of the planet, maybe disinformation is needed not to obscure the truth but rather create it?

Here’s a playlist of songs that are suitable or relevant in one way or another, or maybe just capture the mood of certain characters and scenes.

Tracklisting:

1) Search and Destroy – The Stooges
2) IN EVIL HOUR – Battle Ave.
3) High & Wild – Angel Olsen
4) My War – Black Flag
5) Everything Falls Apart – Hüsker Dü
6) Saigon Shrunken Panorama – The Mountain Goats
7) Rugged Country – Japanese Breakfast
8) Meg – Hovvdy
9) Love, Come Save Me – Right Away, Great Captain!
10) I Need You To Tell Me Who I Am – John Moreland
11) Drugs To Make You Sober – Jeremiah Nelson
12) Are We Failing? – Hallelujah The Hills
13) Flaming Home – Mount Eerie with Julie Doiron and Frederick Squire
14) Lovers as Mirrors – Paper Bee
15) Forgetting is Believing – Nathaniel Rateliff
16) Redemption:1 (An Army Man And His Self-Discovery) – Justin Vernon

Hystopia is out now via Faber & Faber (UK) and Farrar, Straus and Giroux (US) and you can get it from most good bookshops. Check out the other works by David Means on his Goodreads page.

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