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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First single ‘Together For the Kids’ introduced the record’s “uncompromising exploration of these behaviours and herald[ed] the more rock-oriented style Graham has embraced to capture the experience in all of its chaos,” as we wrote in a preview. “Starting tense and bitterly wistful before blooming into a gloriously noisy catharsis.”

Now Malachi Graham has returned with ‘Wonderful Life’, a song which takes the record’s themes and situates them in the pressure cooker of the festive period. Addressed to her mother, the song ruminates on a time of organised fun and false cheer, not to mention the associated baggage of all those Christmases past. “There’s enough of me to go around, until there’s not,” she sings, but though the song originates as little more than soft vocals and sparse drum machine, something in the confession triggers a sort of blooming. As though in acknowledging real pain and suffering, Graham cuts through the false reassurance of the holiday period to instead work towards a real gesture of love.

Caretaker is out on the 19th January and you can pre-order it now.

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Back in 2022 we featured ‘Metamorphosis’, a single from Chicago-based outfit Daarling which we described as “a simmering, brooding number which dwells on the inevitability of change and the friction which results.” This month saw the release of Daarling’s debut album The Deep Within, which develops the style seen on ‘Metamorphosis’ further to occupy a space between dream pop and post-punk. Take the way recent single ‘Cherish//Flourish’, which again builds from modest beginnings into something both spacious, detailed and prone to sharp rises in intensity, Erin Lyle’s vocals more than a match for the dramatic soundscape which results.

The Duke of Norfolk & This Is A Kit – The Yeast in the Sugar

“An ode to an uncertain relationship, finding beauty and joy in the present despite the lurking doubt, attempting to be grateful no matter how fragile or transient the tie.” That’s how we described The Duke of Norfolk‘s ‘As The Heralds Revere You‘ back in 2019. The track was typical of peripatetic folk musician and multi-instrumentalist Adam Howard’s project, exploring the porous border between reality and myth with a careful, compassionate tone. New song ‘The Yeast in the Sugar’ is a collaboration with This Is the Kit, and continues this style with a decidedly patient quality. A meditation on what it means to wait, to develop slowly in a world which demands immediate gratification.

James Jonathan Clancy – Had It All

Perhaps best known as lead of art punk ensemble His Clancyness (plus noise group Brutal Birthday), it has been seven years since James Jonathan Clancy released a record. In the interim he founded the record label Maple Death Records, and slowly but surely worked to refine his own creative work. The result of that period of focus and innovation is Sprecato, a record Clancy will release on his label early next year, the first under his birth name. Written and recorded between London and Bologna and featuring a transnational ensemble of collaborators, the album takes inspiration from the ‘apocalyptic pastoralism’ of Michelangelo Setola’s Gli Sprecati, though ends up pushing into a territory all of its own. Single ‘Had It All’ is a good place to jump in, taking equal parts cosmic folk and spacious ambient styles and applying them to a more traditional singer-songwriter sound.

Joseph Shabason – Welcome To Hell

“Soundscapes full of detail, movement and laidback swagger, which get at something almost intangible, the spirit of the era.” So we described Joseph Shabason’s Welcome to Hell, an album on Western Vinyl and Telephone Explosion Records which uses the eponymous Toy Machine video as a jumping off point to paint a sonic picture of the nineties skate scene. With the record now available, the final single and title track is a fitting point of entry, taking the most rewound part of the tape—the bail segment—and reimagining the soundtrack as an out-of-body ambient chill. The resulting video presents a strange mix of ballet and body horror which Shabason’s soft vocals instil with all the longing and glory of the best memorial.

Welcome To Hell is out now via Western Vinyl and Telephone Explosion Records.

The Juniper Berries – Role Model

Fronted by Josh Stirm, The Juniper Berries are an Austin-based outfit preparing to release their album Death and Taxes next spring on Earth Libraries. Lead single ‘Role Model’ introduces what to expect from the album, with the upbeat country rock style mapping the complicated edges of grief and attempting to use loss as an impetus to keep on living. Storytelling is a big part of the record, with fictional narratives employed as a kind of distancing force, but the single holds up intensely personal circumstances to ground the themes of the record. The experience of going through the process of mourning as it is made all the more difficult by the knotty relationship shared in life.

I got a little bit closer to the edge last night than I had planned
you were running through my mind,
you’re up there all the time
but now I’ll never, ever, see you again

Looms – Hologram

The Dogs of Doubt, the latest EP from Brooklyn‘s Looms, is the kind of release which most fully rewards the patient and curious. For while the tracks are immediately impressive in their careful craft and emotional resonance, those willing to return to them will witness Sharif Mekawy’s songs unfurl with graceful depth. Take the understated build of single ‘Hologram’, which presents itself as a tender folk song, though is complicated by its subtle layers. The track’s true nature seems to be revealed by its outro, like a book which only makes perfect sense on reading the final chapters. The wise listener will return to the beginning to repeat the process, thereby lowering themselves more fully into the beguiling world of Looms.

Malachi Graham – Together for the Kids

What she calls “a hymn for the exhausted,” Caretaker is the forthcoming new album from Portland singer-songwriter Malachi Graham. The record was inspired by a bad breakup and its aftermath, in which the scales fell from Graham’s eyes and she began to see pathological behaviour everywhere—be that in others and herself. Single ‘Together For the Kids’ introduces the record’s uncompromising exploration of these behaviours and heralds the more rock-oriented style Graham has embraced to capture the experience in all of its chaos, starting tense and bitterly wistful before blooming into a gloriously noisy catharsis.

Caretaker is out on the 15th January and you can pre-order it now.

nudista – Different Eyes

We last wrote about London band nudista early last year, calling single ‘inasmuch’ (from debut EP Halfway Here) “a clarified dream pop which seeks to communicate directly and honestly.” Now the duo, Pilar Matji Cabello and Robbie Carman, are back with a new single ‘Different Eyes’, released by the ever-reliable Sad Club Records. The song explores what Carman calls “a distrust of my own narrative […] a gradual realisation that I have outgrown some previously held opinions,” and again focuses on communicating as directly and plainly as possible. This is delivered with a little more verve and rough edges, adding a country-gaze rock swagger to their careful emotion. Oh, and the chorus is a killer.

You never want to be here
You’re always somewhere else
You’re always chasing something
Trying to be someone else

‘Different Eyes’ is out now via Sad Club Records and available from the nudista Bandcamp page.

Sierra Ferrell – Fox Hunt

“Well, take the path down to the river, it is hunting time / Clothe the kids and feed the children, oh, the meat is fine.” So opens ‘Fox Hunt’, the new single from country artist Sierra Ferrell, a track which harks back to bygone days to capture the thrill of the hunt. But this is no sleepy, sepia-toned pastoral scene, its racing strings and stomping percussion capturing the breathless rush through a forest in all of its boisterous, full-blooded glory. “The lyrics may be straight old time,” Ferrell says of the track in a piece for Rolling Stone, “but the music is pure adrenaline… and maybe that’s what I’m here for.”

Watch the animated video (hand drawn by Rob Fidel) below:

‘Fox Hunt’ is out now and available via streaming services.

Teenage Halloween – Melodrama

“Burning through the bullshit to occupy your space in the world.” That’s how we described Teenage Halloween’s new LP, Till You Return, in a preview of single ‘Armageddon Now‘. With the album now out via Don Giovanni, the New Jersey outfit have unveiled latest single, ‘Melodrama’. A sub-two-minute ripper which lives up the same spirit, refusing the slide towards pessimism and nihilistic tendencies with a bracing sense of momentum. Life is hard and things are often beyond our control, but with enough propulsive force we might fight to keep our heads above water yet.

Watch the video by Alex Cihanowic below:

Till You Return is out on the 20th October via Don Giovanni Records and you can pre-order it now.

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