“Specialising in a style of atmospheric alt-rock that’s at once melancholy and anthemic, London outfit Dead Slow Hoot draw on a variety of genres to create something unique.” So we wrote when covering single ‘Take It Or Leave It’ last year, and DSH’s forthcoming new full-length Orbits Intervened takes things even further to become perhaps their most ambitious release to date. A collection of sprawling songs large and detailed enough to carry a range of narratives and thematic concerns, touching on everything from personal heartbreak and grief to the cultural trauma of things like the Magdalene laundries scandal. Lead single ‘Sleeping Before The Big Day’ hints at the release’s nuance and depth, a song full of tension despite its patient rhythm, caught between resistance to change and the desire to surrender to its constant flow.

Orbits Intervened will be released on the 5th June.

eggcorn – Hitler Was a Vegetarian

Last month we introduced Observer Effect, the new album from eggcorn coming soon on Spirit House. “Taking its name from the phenomenon where an observed system is disturbed by the very act of being observed,” we wrote, “[the record] sees songwriter Lara Hoffman explore the ways in which reflecting on one’s life and surroundings can shape our experiences.” After the title track used pop-inflected chamber folk to “bare vulnerabilities and reckon with their implications without sacrificing a certain playfulness,” latest single ‘Hitler Was a Vegetarian’ again finds Hoffman examining her own imperfections with unerring candour. As its title suggests, the song explores the ways in which individuals exist as systems of contradictions, with objectively cruel people still capable of tenderness and vice versa. “I am tender but that doesn’t make me nice,” as Hoffman sings at the climax of the song. “And I’m sorry and I’m sorry and it’s not fair to you.”

Ella Hanshaw – One More Hill

Born in 1934, Ella Hanshaw started playing guitar aged twelve, playing and singing for her family on their farm in Procious, West Virginia. From then until her death in 2020, Hanshaw wrote hundreds of songs, first heartsick ballads inspired by her favourite country singers and later Gospel songs she believed to be sent directly from God. Despite her obvious talents and huge repertoire, Hanshaw’s music was never recorded professionally, or released publicly, at least until now. Gathered from both home and church tape recordings by Hanshaw’s granddaughter, and released by the fine folks at SPINSTER, Ella Hanshaw’s Black Book brings together two distinct collections of her work. Side A features the Gospel songs, while Side B the country ones. Lead single ‘One More Hill’, recorded with Hanshaw’s band the Hallelujah Hill Quartet, opens the collection and is a good example of the its prevailing theme, what the label describe as “love and longing for what we cannot quite touch—not yet, anyway.”

Festiva – Ghosts and Lichens

Carver Arena-Bruce has long released music under the moniker Festiva, with albums like Songs I Don’t Sing for Anyone showing off the Portland, Maine singer and guitarist’s bold, cathartic garage rock style (“If there were a Venn diagram with Sonic Youth in one bubble and CCR in the other, Festiva’s [sound] would be in the middle,” as Arena-Bruce puts it). But the project also has a full-band iteration, with Noah Grenier-Farwell (drums) and Simi Kunin (bass) of Amiright? joining to help realise Festiva’s full noisy potential. Out via Repeating Cloud, new full-length Everything In Moderation shows how powerful this can be, with songs like ‘Ghosts and Lichens’ matching Arena-Bruce’s singular vocal style with a sense of heft and volatility.

Florry – First it was a movie, then it was a book

Philadelphia‘s DIY country superstars Florry have a new record on the way via Dear Life Records. It’s their second effort since bandleader Francie Medosch transformed what was once a solo project into a bona fide folk rock band, and early signs suggest it could see Florry hit yet another level. “A portrait of a ripping band cresting towards the height of their powers,” as the label describe it, “uniquely equipped to capture a wildly loving, barn-burning camcorder clip of a turbulent trip with your best friends, without dipping into nostalgia bait.” Released a couple weeks ago, single ‘First it was a movie, then it was a book’ confirms this hype, a freewheeling country-fried rocker that kicks off the album with limitless energy and dedication to the vision of what Florry means both to Medosch and the community that has formed around her.

First it was a movie, then it was a book
They chopped my life up, put it on tv so I had to take a look
Well that Holly Hunter is so relatable, when she screamed I cried
if I wasn’t feeling so empty baby Id give that movie five out of five

Watch the video directed and edited by Jon Cox below:

Sounds Like… is out on the 23rd May via Dear Life Records and you can pre-order it now.

Laila Smith – Diorama

Something Dreadful’s Going To Happen, the upcoming release from musician and artist Laila Smith, is more than your average EP. Not only are the songs themselves experimental in their own right, adding avant garde noise sensibilities to what are ostensibly folk arrangements, they are also accompanied by an immersive video game available on Smith’s website. Lead single ‘Diorama’ introduces the project, matching an interactive experience to the song to further its explorations of trauma and the power dynamics which shape us on both personal and societal levels. “I’ve created a digital twin of the physical diorama featured in my album art,” Smith explains, “an explorable environment where fans manipulate a miniature version of me through rooms filled with objects from my personal history.” Taking inspiration from the art style of 90s era internet, the work takes on a strangely retrofuturist vibe, harkening back to a time where the online space felt like fertile ground for a better, more creative future. As Smith puts it: “it’s an attempt to reclaim digital space as somewhere strange and sacred rather than optimized and consumable.”

‘Diorama’ is out now via streaming services.

Rival Consoles – Known Shape

“Might be the project’s most impressive [record] to date, focusing in on small details while retaining the grand sweeps of melancholy and euphoria too.” So we wrote of Landscape from Memory, the upcoming from Rival Consoles on Erased Tapes. The release sees Ryan Lee West delve into what he calls “a scrapbook of discarded audio snippets,” building from the flashes of memory and inspiration found within. Embodying the spirit of the release, latest single ‘Known Shape’ shows how Rival Consoles retains a sense of humanity within its digital sound. “I’ve always been obsessed by controls on machines because they produce beautiful sounds and they have their own rhythms,” West explains. “The drums are made from rotating switches and the synths are set in motion by invisible mechanical rhythms. Machines have a special connection to the human spirit, which is both good and bad but above all restless. There is a constant searching in ‘Known Shape’ for some kind of answer or emotion.”

Sally Anne Morgan – I Saw a Heron

The music of North Carolina artist and naturalist Sally Anne Morgan is inextricable from the landscape in which she creates it. Her blend of traditional instrumentation and more modern composition is an exploration of the people, places and nature that surround her home at the edge of North Carolina’s Pisgah National Forest. Morgan’s forthcoming record, Second Circle The Horizon, is a direct example, an attempt to translate both the rhythm and randomness of the natural world into a language more musical. “I wanted to capture the feeling of walking outside and encountering organic nature sounds,” she describes, “some with patterns, some with a randomness that also verges on its own kind of pattern.” Our first taste is ‘I Saw a Heron’, a piece built of fiddle, violin and piano that feels as fresh and lush as a spring morning walk through a sunlit valley.

Slow Mass – Freeze Frame

Next month sees the release of Low On Foot, the new album from Slow Mass on Landland Corportage. Their first since 2018, the record finds the Chicago outfit bigger and bolder than ever, their line-up increasing to six members (and subsequently seven after recording) and their sound pushing in all directions. Single ‘Freeze Frame’ bears the fruits of this evolution, a sound at once weightier than anything they released previously yet also more tender and heartfelt. Because Slow Mass haven’t merely taken their work down one specific road but added depth to everything, meaning their current iteration can be heavier and more delicate all at once. The juxtaposition is fitting for ‘Freeze Frame’, a song all about the tension between who you are and who you might have been, holding space for those desires to change as a person while learning to embrace one’s own identity.

Watch

Low On Foot is out on the 16th May via Landland Colportage and you can pre-order it now.

Symbol Soup – Miniatures

Back in 2023 Symbol Soup released full-length Slow Puncture via Sad Club Records, an album “brought to life with a decidedly American aesthetic, following a lineage rising in the 90s from songwriters like Mark Linkous and persisting through a myriad of contemporaries,” as we described in our review, “but one which draws parallels between the US and Rea’s hometown of Milton Keynes. A city with a short history inside a country with a long one, designed purely for modern living and possessing the strange balance between potential and hollowness of any ahistorical space.” New single ‘Miniatures’ is again concerned with place and a person’s identity within it, specifically how overly familiar surroundings can come to make a life seem rote and insignificant. But with Symbol Soup’s signature blend of melancholy and warmth, the song manages to reposition such feelings into something like relief. Perhaps being small isn’t the worst thing in the world?

Watch the video by Hello Mary below:

‘Miniatures’ is out now via Sad Club Records and available from Bandcamp.

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