“Has it been a year or two? Will it be cotton or leather?” asks Abigail Lapell in new single ‘Anniversary Song’. “Mercury and iron, carbon, silver / bind us together.” Taken from the Toronto singer-songwriter’s forthcoming album Anniversary on Outside Music, the song encapsulates the marriage of symbolism and tangibility used across the record. Romantic chemistry as both otherworldly magic and physical reaction. Not that the love on the album is merely of the romantic sort, with a series of personal milestones prompting Lapell to contemplate the phenomenon in all its guises, offering a picture of relationships and commitment with all the complexities left intact.

Agent blå – Rain To You

Last month we wrote about ‘Discount’, the lead single from the upcoming album Stab! by Gothenburg‘s Agent blå on VÅRØ Records (Sweden) and Kanine Records (US). What we described as a song “simmering with eerie menace and charged with forward motion, splitting the difference between familiarity and strangeness.” With the album coming later this spring, Agent blå have returned with second single ‘Rain To You’ to build upon these beginnings. Squally and loaded with momentum, it looks to small details as sources of comfort within an otherwise overwhelming world, and submits itself fully to forces large and mysterious.

Never spoke it with a sober mouth
I’m drawn to the chaos, my sanity grown shy
Keep clinging to no time
You’re the moon to me
I was rain to you

Al Harper – Plaster of Paris

Later this month, San Francisco-based songwriter Al Harper will release album The Analemma Observation League via Take a Turn Records. An album which draws upon the solar phenomenon of its title to explore themes of change and growth. Analemma refers to the figure of eight plot made if one was to chart the sun’s position in the sky from the same position at the same time of day across an entire year, rendering what might otherwise seem a linear process into an infinite loop. Working in such a spirit, Al Harper draws on a variety of memories and experiences to offer the past not as some line trailing ever further into the distance, but rather something forever orbiting around us. Lessons to learn from, patterns to take comfort in. The suitably sunny sound of latest single ‘Plaster of Paris’ is the perfect introduction, and comes complete with a video shot by Harper and Craig Barclift and edited by Simon Linsteadt:

The Analemma Observation League is out on the 23rd February via Take A Turn Records and you can pre-order it now.

bedbug – postcard

We’ve long followed the work of bedbug, charting how Dylan Gamez Citron has taken the project through a trilogy of acclaimed bedroom pop albums before metamorphosing into a full band for a self-titled EP in 2022. This year sees bedbug return with pack your bags the sun is growing, a full-length album which builds more fully upon this change of direction to push the project closer to Cap’n Jazz than the hushed aesthetic from which they originated. A style which only furthers Citron’s ability to weave the personal and the political into a seamless whole. Vitally none of the heart or intimacy is lost in this transformation, as single ‘postcard’ attests, and while any project inevitably passes through various life stages as time goes on, you get the sense Citron and co. are rising towards their fullest potential. The first bedbug to ever sprout wings.

Dead Slow Hoot – Take It Or Leave It

Specialising in a style of atmospheric alt-rock that’s at once melancholy and anthemic, Sheffield/London outfit Dead Slow Hoot draw on a variety of genres to create something unique. Previous releases have drawn on poetic folk, shadowy post-punk and epic post-rock, sometimes within the same song, and new single ‘Take It Or Leave It’ is no different. Opening with just pared-back guitar and banjo, it eventually builds to a dramatic crescendo of wailing guitar and crashing percussion, straddling the line between an intimate acoustic ballad and a monumental rock song. The song is about “making necessary compromises for the good of your partner and growing together through that,” the band explain, “[and also] a more general realism, accepting the ‘competing intentions’ that you might have with another person… and actively engaging with them to make something better.”

‘Take It Or Leave It’ is out now via streaming services.

Emma Geiger – Reverse Bloom

We’ve featured Durham, North Carolina-based songwriter Emma Geiger several times over the last year or so. First with 2022 EP Haven, and then with several stellar singles. Excitingly, Geiger is now putting the finishing touches to her debut full-length, Reverse Bloom, which features those singles alongside four brand new tracks. To further whet anticipation, she has released the title track, a song which moves its focus away from romantic relationships towards the difficult loss of a friendship. Someone Geiger was formerly close to wrote a song detailing the dissolution of their friendship, and this is an exploration of the following emotions. “When I first heard it, I felt her anger, frustration and bitterness,” she describes. “That friendship meant a lot to me, and losing it really shook me. It brought up a lot of questions about who I am, and who I was in that relationship.” Watch the video filmed by Archer Boyette and directed by Boyette and Geiger herself below:

Reverse Bloom is out on 26th April. ‘Reverse Bloom’ the single is available now via the Emma Geiger Bandcamp page.

Eyesore & The Jinx – Float Like a Jellyfish (Sting Like a Subtweet)

“[A song which presents] the gym as the encapsulation of the country,” we wrote of Eyesore & The Jinx‘s ‘Nocturnal Athletes (Ode To Bruno)’ by back in September when previewing their debut album, Jitterbug, “where an assortment of lonely and overworked people run without going anywhere, lift with no purpose beyond some abstract penance, and stare at screens playing Top 40 videos on a loop.” With the record’s release fast approaching, the Liverpool-based outfit have shared final single ‘Float Like a Jellyfish (Sting Like a Subtweet)’, and fans will be reassured to learn it is every bit as twitchy and cutting as we’ve come to expect. Light-hearted, mischievous and a little hyperactive, winding taut with anxious energy to evoke a decidedly contemporary unease.

Jordan Whitlock & Memory Spells – Take My Hand

Memory Spells is the new project of songwriter Matt Bauer which takes the orchestral indie folk he puts out under his own name further towards “his love of contemporary TV, film and video game scores, cinematic post rock, early post punk, and 80s film music.” His latest collaboration is with San Diego songwriter and producer Jordan Whitlock, whose intimate writing and impressive soulful vocals have been wining fans all over. Suffused with the lush, shadowy grandeur of Lynch at his most romantic, latest single ‘Take My Hand’ is what the duo describe as “Emmylou Harris meets Cigarettes after Sex,” not only offering a new dimension to Bauer’s work but opening up a whole world of its own.

You can find out more on the Memory Spells website.

The Lostines – Full Moon Night

The recording project of New Orleans-based songwriters Casey Jane Reece-Kaigler and Camille Wind Weatherford, The Lostines are preparing to release their debut full-length Meet The Lostines this spring on Gar Hole Records. The album draws plenty from the Louisiana landscape, but ultimately conjures a world of its own. One in which time and space has gone a little strange, and a whole host of periods and places layer atop of one another to form something larger than the sum of its parts. Lead single ‘Full Moon Night’ typifies the result, where retro folk harmonies and spectral synths bring to life a languid longing for a love now past.

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Coming this spring on VÅRØ Records (Sweden) and Kanine Records (US), Stab! sees Agent blå expand their reach to include elements of psychedelic and krautrock styles. The result is both their most ambitious album to date and something of a call back to their earliest songs. Single ‘Discount’ introduces the style, simmering with eerie menace and charged with forward motion, splitting the difference between familiarity and strangeness. “I see your outlines in the walls / I see your outlines clearer in the dark,” Alatalo sings, “She’s here / She’s here.” But for all the words’ haunting unease, there’s a cathartic edge to the song too. Finding some kind of comfort or power in delving into the dark.

Pick my brains
Like there’s substance left
Not across
Is my brain across your walls?

She’s here
She’s here

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More than capturing this mood, the repeated refrain which closes ‘Blame’ acts as a kind of pledge for the rest of the record. “Stick around, find out.” A lure, a promise. Because Possessions is not some nostalgic pastiche or cheap copy. It is a continuation of a conversation which started over thirty years ago. A clear message that the styles and sounds established then are not only persevering but capable of innovation. Shoegaze is alive and kicking. Blushing are here to prove it.

We took the opportunity to ask Blushing a few questions, so read on below to find out more about their love of nineties shoegaze and the honour of working with your heroes.

How does it feel to have a new record out in the world?

Amazing. We have to keep reminding ourselves that for everyone else this is the first time they are hearing these songs. We’ve had them in our lives for over two years and so for them to finally be out in the world feels like such a huge accomplishment. It’s a milestone we’ve been looking forward to for a very long time so we are thrilled the time has come.

I’m interested in the balance between lightness and weight on the record. There seems a coexistence between the soaring dreaminess and heavy textures of the songs, as though neither could exist without the other. Could you talk a little about this sound, and how it relates to the themes of the album?

The lightness and weight of the album seems to be directly connected to our experience when we were creating and recording it. It was (and still is) heavy times. There was an overall sense of chaos and despair in the world which can certainly be felt in the album but we also didn’t want to lean into that theme too much, instead choosing to go to the opposite direction with a few sparkling, shimmering, pop choruses. I think we are happiest with our sound when it’s able to exist in both of these spaces.

Collaboration seems an important part of Possessions, from Miki Berenyi’s appearance on ‘Blame’ to Ride’s Mark Gardener mixing and mastering the songs. Why did you look beyond the band this time around and how do you think these outside influences shaped the album?

Who wouldn’t want to collaborate with their idols! Our partnership with Miki really came about unexpectedly, we had no preconceived notion that she would have any interest in collaboration but to our surprise she was on board and enthusiastic to join in. Once we started working with her on ‘Blame’ it gave the band a renewed sense of energy and drive during the rest of the lengthy recording process. To get her approval and have such a respected artist tell us how much she liked the song and then return a stellar contribution gave us the confidence we needed to push ourselves even further for the rest of the recording process.

We had known about Mark’s OX4 Sound studio for a while and of course are huge fans of Ride, so we decided to reach out and see if he would be interested in mastering the album. We felt confident he would understand the overall sound we were wanting to achieve. He was excited to come on board and was really easy to work with. When we were recording ‘The Fires’ we just felt the song had a different vibe and there was something about it that Mark could bring out in the mix. So we asked if he would like to do the mixing work on ‘The Fires’ and he was happy to oblige. Sure enough both the mixing of that song and the overall mastering came out incredible.

We are really pleased with the entire album as a whole and another huge factor for that is teaming up again with Elliott Frazier, who also engineered and produced our last album. He understands the sound we want so well and knows exactly what to do to achieve that sound. He also just has great ideas. Some seem really wacky at first and then once executed end up becoming our favorite part of the song.

Even beyond Berenyi’s influence, there’s a palpable nineties feel to the songs, one which feels very much part of a wider turn back toward that decade. What is it about that period of shoegaze and dream pop that is so appealing? And, more generally, what exactly do the nineties represent for you?

I think music in the nineties but more specifically shoegaze and dreampop at that time represented a lighter, less serious, uncomplicated place to just get lost in. There was some heavy stuff going on at the time just like now and some music is made to address those things and some music is made to escape them. Both are extremely valuable. I think people turn to music as a way to comfort or distract and what better way to do that than with a warm fuzzy blanket of sonic texture or the soaring romantic voice of Harriet Wheeler. The nineties represent optimism and playfulness.

Finally, if a tweet inspired the collaboration for this album, let’s try and repeat the positive manifestation. Who’s next on your bucket list?

Haha, lets go ahead and manifest a future tour with The Smashing Pumpkins.

Possessions is out now via Kanine Record and you can get it from the Blushing Bandcamp page.

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Blushing have now signed to Kanine Records and announced a new album, Possessions, which is due out early next year. In production since the release of the last record in 2019, the album is the product of an eventful gestation period, slowly growing in fits and starts, interrupted periodically by new births, freak winter blackouts and, of course, the global pandemic. What emerged was something that still sounds characteristically Blushing, but also different in many small aspects. A record the press release describes as “heavier in some ways and lighter in others […] embracing the spectrum of life and relationships while understanding the need for escape, whimsy and that dirty word, pop.”

In anticipation, the band have unveiled the lead single, ‘Blame’. The song features a very special guest in Miki Berenyi of UK shoegaze legends Lush, who was alerted to Blushing after they covered ‘Out of Control’. Berenyi’s influence, along with that of Mark Gardener (Ride) and Elliot Frazier (Ringo Deathstarr) who mastered and produced the album respectively, roots the single firmly in the hazy shimmer of the early nineties. A lush and immersive soundscape which invites the listener to submit to its ambiguous charms. As the repeated refrain at the end of the song suggests, “stick around, find out.”

The song comes complete with a surreal video that proves the perfect accompaniment, so check it out below:

Possessions will be released on 18th February via Kanine Records and you can pre-order it now from the Blushing Bandcamp page.

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Bad Flamingo – Fire

“Give a man a mask,” said Oscar Wilde, “and he will tell you the truth.” The mysterious band Bad Flamingo have taken the idea to heart, favouring a cryptic anonymity that goes right through to actual masks. Without biographical details clouding the mix, we’re left to focus on the music, with new single ‘Fire’ showing off an ethereal Western atmosphere that creeps and crawls into a sparse yet infectious rhythm. The result is something pitched halfway between cowboy swagger and soulful pop, sounding inviting yet also dangerous too, as though a sharp edge lurks beneath the croon.

The track comes complete with a suitably atmospheric Super 8 video, so be sure to check it out below:

You can find more on Bad Flamingo via their website, and follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

Garden Centre – Wide Sea

In preparation for the release of their third album, A Moon for Digging, on Specialist Subject Records and Kanine Records, Brighton’s Garden Centre has unveiled a brand new single. ‘Wide Sea’ shows off a new full-band Garden Centre line-up, with principle songwriter Max Levy joined by members of Porridge Radio for a newly collaborative sound. Not that Levy’s distinctive style is in any way ironed out, the track full of the strange curiosity and energy that has long represented the Garden Centre sound.

“‘Wide Sea’ is a song about being incredibly worried about somebody, and to devoting yourself to worry,” the band explain, though insist the track is actually positive. “Coming through a period of constant fear for a person you love can peel the glue from your eyes. The horizon can overwhelm you with an accepting vastness, and you can find a little bit of comfort again in being unable to know or control the world around you.”

A Moon For Digging is out on the 1st November via Specialist Subject Records (UK)/Kanine Records (US).

Nina Keith – In The Woods We Both Saw It, Weren’t Dreaming

Nina Keith is a Philadelphia-based composer, who is about to release her debut full-length  MARANASATI 19111. Built from “textured piano arrangements laced with vocals, flute, electronics and found sounds,” the album builds on foundations of contemporary classical music to create something something uniquely haunted and human. For a record that promises to delve into a “personal history marked by community tragedy and paranormal incidents,” lead single ‘ In The Woods We Both Saw It, Weren’t Dreaming’ is the perfect introduction, if just for that title alone. The piano-led track is quietly moving and oddly reassuring, a lament and a balm rolled into one. It’s a confident and distinctive taste of an album that could be very special indeed.

Antonioni – Stutter-Step

Returning with a new EP, The Odds Were All Beating Me, Seattle’s Antonioni have evolved from the languorous jangle rock of previous release Lullablaze into something altogether heavier and darker. While their past music flirted with grunge, the new is a full-bodied embrace, the powerful vocals of Sarah Pasillas driving a newfound energy and emotional immediacy.

Single ‘Stutter-Step’ is the perfect example, weaving lines of insistent energy into a hefty whole, meaning that the sound has both an urgency and a deeper, slow-burning dimension too. The track comes complete with a video by artist  Kyle Todaro, with the improv choreography of Matte Demon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzjbyahC2G4

The Odds Were All Beating Me is out now via Den Tapes and you can grab it from the Antonioni Bandcamp page.

Side Saddle – Ink & Dirty Strings

The recording project of New York’s Ian McGuinness, Side Saddle make a reflective brand of power pop that balances joy and angst to the perfect degree. Ahead of the forthcoming EP, Waltermelon, the band have unveiled lead single ‘Ink & Dirty Strings’, a track that shows off Side Saddle’s ability to combine moods to craft their own style. Charting the choppy waters of a long distance relationship, the track is at once melancholic and energetic, as though only through missing someone can you truly appreciate what they mean to you.

Special Friend – Before

Special Friend is a Paris-based duo raised from a cocktail of 90s genres, drawing on grunge, shoegaze and pop to create something lusciously textured and hazy, Erica (drums) and Guillaume (guitar) sharing the vocals. The press release describes a “naive, honest and spontaneous DIY nature” that saw the band play their first show after four months and record an EP a year later, and something of this attitude shapes the sound of debut single ‘Before’, providing a sense of wonder that permeates the track.

Filmed by Marion Sautron and edited by Erica, the single’s video is “an existential crisis on a background of light, even joyful music,” taking inspiration from David Hockney’s pink clouds.  Check it out below:

‘Before’ is out via Howlin Banana Records.

Cartalk – Noonday Devil

Cartalk is the solo project of LA-based songwriter Chuck Moore who took the moniker from a text to a dear friend—”Love our car talks.” If such conversations are intimate and thematically fluid then Cartalk is determined to create a similar feel in the music, blending grunge and Americana into something heartfelt and full of momentum.

New single ‘Noonday Devil’ is a case in point, the guitars swelling and drums galloping as Moore rides the crest. Lyrically, the song is reflective but self-consciously so, recognising how patterns and conventions can shape the passage of time. Cartalk is here to dismantle such order, freeing one to live in the way that best suits them.

It’s a sentence break
Comma between patterns
Oh the love you gave
I’ve got a noonday devil

Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster – Educated Guesses

You probably know Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster’s voice if not his name. As the lead of Water Liars he proved himself a master of walking the line between folk and indie rock, combining great writing, expressive delivery and powerful instrumentation. The Arkansasan now has a burgeoning solo career, and is set to release his sophomore record Take Heart, Take Care later this month of Big Legal Mess Records.

Cut from “humid Southern nights and kudzu-encased vistas,” the album shows all of Kinkel-Schuster’s songwriting talents, representing American vignettes that are both detailed character studies and something much wider, serving as glimpses into the universal processes of hurting and healing. Single ‘Educated Guesses’ teases a newfound glimmer to Kinkel-Schuster’s tone too, the overwhelming dark of Water Liars not lost but somehow lifted, if not quite in the rear-view then at least not nailed over one’s eyes. Check out the video by Kyle Taubken below:

Take Heart, Take Care will be released on 30th August on Big Legal Mess Records.

Mount Sharp – Apostate

Formed somewhere between a Brooklyn rooftop and a boat in Maine, Mount Sharp combines the poetic songwriting of Swood (Sarah Wood) with Bryan Bruchman’s frenetically noisy sensibilities. With Ryan Zumsen and Maia Macdonald adding a rhythm section, 2014’s WEIRD FEARS EP was a lesson in uninhibited energy—be that born of excitement or anxiety.

Back with their first new music since that release, Mount Sharp have added Sal Garro and Jonathan Pilkington Kahnt on drums and bass and developed their sound into something more contemplative without loosing any of the spirit that marked them previously. Therefore, ‘Apopstate’ is an evolution, indebted to the past but shaped by present conditions, concerned with the personal and the political when exploring what it means to be pushed away from someone or something.

Surely I’m not made of bone and blood
Surely I’m something that’s never or always been
Am I still earning your love?
Do I remind you of someone you could dream of?

Pearla – Daydream

Pearla is the moniker of Brooklyn’s Nicole Rodriguez, a songwriter who knits threads of folk, pop and psychedelica into an evocative, mystical whole. New single ‘Daydream’ finds the sound perfected, the delicate minimalism belying the intricacy at work behind the vocals. “This song is about clinging onto a memory until it becomes distorted in your mind,” Rodriguez explains, “and turns into an almost absurd attempt to escape the present.”

Written after time spent rehabilitating primates in South Africa, and during an obsessive period reading Brontë novels, ‘Daydream’ offers memory and fiction as two forms of fantasy into which we can escape, spaces outside of the harsh realities of life that should be protected and celebrated.

Cataldo – Ding Dong Scrambled Eggs

“Anybody who has survived his childhood,” Flannery O’Connor once wrote, “has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.” Literally Main Street, the forthcoming record from Eric Anderson’s Cataldo, is crafted from a similar sentiment. Utilizing his trademark knack for writing songs that manage to be at once playful and emotional, the album sees Anderson take stock of life from the hinterland of middle age, an eye of a storm where longing for the future and nostalgia for the past cancel one another out.

“I tried to write songs about what it was really like growing up in a weird small town,” Andersen explains, “not a tarted up banjo-and-suspenders version of what people imagine it might be like,” and such a philosophy is clear on single ‘Ding Dong Scrambled Eggs’. This is hindsight without rose-tinted spectacles, memories shaken from the sepia-toned warmth and resurrected in all of their awkward, nervous energy. Check out the video by Dan Fromhart below:

Literally Main Street is out on the 27th September

That’s all for Vol. 27 folks. If you liked what you found, be sure to check the tag for previous editions of Bright Sparks.

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