Now Laura Zarougian has returned with two singles, ‘New Used Car’ and ‘Double-Sided’. Grounded more in the present, the songs are perhaps more immediate in focus but no less personal for it, with Zarougian probing at ideas of heritage and identity from a different angle. “Although the themes in this release are more rooted in the American landscape than the Armenian immigrant stories of my first album, Nayri,” she explains, “I feel like this song faces my conflicting identities. There is the sidewalk cowgirl of Brooklyn, and then there is the daughter of Armenian immigrants and refugees—both sides looking for belonging.” This search might be eternal, but in tapping into the classic country spirit, the new songs show traces of belonging can be found in many places, particularly those where cultures intersect and human experience is revealed as something universal. As Zarougian concludes:

Armenian folk songs, much like the American folk tradition, are strongly linked to the land—the mountains, trees and birds. These are places that we can’t return to, except through the memories within the music. Songs preserve a place—a moment or a feeling. Whether I am writing about the streets of Brooklyn or the plains of Anatolia, I feel the same thread; connecting the songs to place, time, and longing.

‘New Used Car’ and ‘Double-Sided’ are out now and available from the Laura Zarougian Bandcamp page.

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With debut album Nayri set for release later this year, Laura Zarougian has unveiled brand new single, ‘Back To Me’. Another song which lives up to Zarougian’s own label of “one part Armenian cowgirl and one part indie rock,” this time swapping some of the stark drama for a more upbeat country rhythm. However, with this new momentum comes a strong dose of wistfulness too, as though the forward motion isn’t a carefree canter towards the future but an attempt to outpace the ever-present past. “People come back into our lives unexpectedly,” Zarougian told Americana UK, “we can look to the past, try to piece it together—but like many things, sense can’t always be made of paper puzzles.”

Nayri will be released on the 15th September.

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We first wrote about Nashville duo Angel Saint Queen back last summer, describing single ‘Diable Lake’ as “a track which highlights the duo’s bittersweet tone, capturing a sadness for leaving and excitement for what comes next.” Latest single ‘You Were There’ is no less conflicted in its tone, evoking the strange blend of sadness and relief left in the wake of a break-up. Though sound’s raw energy embraces the emotion wholeheartedly, building from restrained beginnings into a blaze of feeling. One last conflagration at the end of a fiery relationship before the new dawn arrives.

‘You Were There’ is out now and available from the usual places.

bugcatcher – Desert

The recording project of Rochester‘s Jake Denning and a variety of friends, Bugcatcher operates within the slacker end of the alt-country spectrum, though crafts its DIY aesthetic with a precise hand. With an album coming soon, the outfit have released new single ‘Desert’, a song which both serves as an ode to the titular landscape and a search for meaning within an otherwise barren milieu. “I’m going across the desert / I’ll find the holy land myself,” Denning sings, buoyed by the understated rhythm of the sound. “I’m going across the desert / Got my soul for all my wealth.”

Running across the desert
The walls of Jordan are calling me
Going across the desert
Where dinosaur bones are buried in sleep

C.J. Red Mouth – Red Line

With EP Greenhouse on the horizon, C.J. Red Mouth (AKA Durham, North Carolina songwriter C.J. Yang) has unveiled brand new single, ‘Red Line’. The EP centres on the search from freedom within restrictive systems and relationships, and the single typifies the building catharsis which results. A reflection on an old commute, the slow creeping sound evokes the grimy dark of the Boston subway with guitar from June Isenhart (Miss Bones). The track gathers momentum as though quite literally barrelling toward the light at the end of the tunnel, culminating in an ecstatic finale complete with primal screaming.

Scream over the roaring dark
Scream until I hear myself

Daneshevskaya – Somewhere in the Middle

When Anna Daneshevskaya Beckerman took her Russian-Jewish middle name as the moniker for her songwriting project, she did so with significant intention. Daneshevskaya is also the surname of her grandmother, a poet who helped to cultivate her granddaughter’s creative sensibilities, and ultimately served as great inspiration for Beckerman’s own voice. In this way, Daneshevskaya represents a continuation of her grandmother’s vocation, though one processed through Beckerman’s own distinctive eye for detail, spinning off from poetry into vivid indie rock. Released to celebrate signing with Winspear and an imminent tour supporting Black Country, New Road, new single ‘Somewhere in the Middle’ is the ideal introduction for the uninitiated. A curious, searching song which broaches the subject of identity from an unguarded, almost child-like perspective. “My grandma had two sisters and her parents would say ‘Anita has the looks, Miriam has the books, and Gloria has the charm’,” Beckerman explains. “I used to think about which one I would want to be. I never questioned having to choose.” Watch the video by Mia Duncan below:

‘Somewhere in the Middle’ is out now via Winspear and available from Bandcamp.

Dustin Mayle – Saturn’s Last Ring

Ohio songwriter Dustin Mayle recently released latest album Dear Loretta, a collection of songs which fall into the DIY folk tradition but nevertheless achieve a tangible richness despite their lo-fi leanings. Take single ‘Saturn’s Last Ring’, its intimate acoustic style periodically coalescing into something bigger and bolder before unwinding to its former state just as quickly. Mayle’s vocals add an opaque lyricism, nodding towards the mythic undertones of Jason Molina or Adrienne Lenker, catching onto a repeated refrain as the instrumentation swells, as though having tapped into some kind of incantation.

Hannah Cameron – Smells Like Leaving

Later this year, Naarm / Melbourne singer-songwriter Hannah Cameron will release Holding Pattern, her third studio album. Recorded with producer Matt Redlich in his studio alongside longtime collaborators Luke Hodgson (bass) and Leigh Fisher (drums), the album was written largely on baritone guitar. This is immediately apparent on latest single ‘Smells Like Leaving’, a sombre slow burner that details a post-breakup road trip with wistful pedal steel and evocative lyrics that read like staccato poetry. Watch the very apt video, shot by Cameron herself, below:

The blink and dash
The petty cash
The cigarette that’s burned to ash
Smells like leaving

Holding Pattern releases on 22nd September. Pre-order a copy from the Hannah Cameron Bandcamp page.

Laura Zarougian – Cairo

Self-described as “one part Armenian cowgirl and one part indie rock,” the music of Laura Zarougian draws on everything from mystical desert rock to the wistful classics of Emmylou Harris and Neil Young in order to tell the story of her forebears. New single ‘Cairo’ applies this to the city of its title, casting Egypt as a distant, almost mythical place, one constructed from old tales and holding secrets too. “My father was born and raised in Cairo, Egypt,” Zarougian explains. “What I know of Cairo is from the stories—the ones my father told me, and the ones that were withheld.”

We don’t have the money to bring his body up the Nile
you will marry an older man, remember to smile
Cairo, you’re a gilded frame,
yeah you’ve got the man beguiled
we’re headed on an aeroplane
we won’t see you for a while

I can tell you’re hiding something,
look at you I know you’re bluffing

Nymphlord – Bougainvillea

A combination of “radio-ready pop hooks” and “a ferocious feminist punk energy,” that’s how we described the music of Nymphlord back in May, along with “an ethereal experimentalism that sees acoustic guitar become otherworldly.” With the release of EP Mothers Cry And Then We Die. fast approaching, the LA-based artist has unveiled a brand new single, ‘Bougainvillea’. A song which blurs hectic energy with a downbeat emotional state to paint a subversive picture of California, drawing equally from retro surf rock and contemporary pop to undermine the sunny stereotypes. A landscape where even the prettiest things have teeth.

Hot day
Muggy day
Same thing
Always
I still feel so cold in LA

Mothers Cry And Then We Die. is out on the 25th August and you can pre-order it now.

Wandering Summer – Show Me The Way

Wandering Summer, the new project of Geddy Laurance (Boyracer, City Yelps, Wonderswan), might be rooted in its Leeds home, but it certainly reaches far and wide to bring the sound to life. An amalgamation of bouncy energy and nostalgic fuzz which owes more to New York noise bands or Californian and Glaswegian pop than anything coming out of Yorkshire. Though as their self-titled EP shows, there’s something particular to the sound that marks its place in the world. An ability to evoke both rolling fields and endless terraced housing, simultaneously embracing its surroundings and dreaming of escape. Single ‘Show Me The Way’ sits at the popppiest end of the Wander Summer style, where wistful fondness is only matched by the sense of eager forward motion.

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