The result is what the band call “a series of vignettes and character sketches that examine agency, belief, and the tensions between the natural and the human-built environment,” all delivered with the trademark nuance of the Constellation Myths sound. A record which began during the depths of the pandemic and only grew more timely in the volatile aftermath. “The songs that make up The Cost of Living are preoccupied with things very much at the heart of our current social and political crisis,” they continue, “class resentments, petty jealousies, false prophets, vigilante justice, the warping of our shared sense of reality by a toxic online culture.”

Lead single and opening track ‘Spare Room’ provides a glimpse into the album. A slow-burning, downbeat meditation on separation and aging which nevertheless carries a certain warmth, tapping into a long lineage on down-your-their-luck country singers to locate a certain wistful charm within the loneliness. The song builds as it progresses, leaning into the small comforts of such a feeling, culminating in an affirming, harmony-laden finale as though to remind itself life continues in even the wake of great change.

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Latest single ‘Possessed’ gives a glimpse as to what to expect. “A coming-of-age bop for the elder millennial crowd,” as Clement explains. “A 90s inspired reflection on growing older and growing out of the things you once loved and the often unbreakable connections we have to habits we try to shake.” As you might expect from such a description, the result is one of contradictions. A bittersweet track where the only conviction is that of uncertainty’s continued grip. But for all of the doubt and wistfulness, there’s an undeniable sense of fun running through the track too. As though perhaps the only solution left is to surf atop the accumulated worries and hang-ups and lean into the forward motion.

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Oh we had time, well you know, at times
Time was all we had
Our distances fell flat to parallel horizons
Not quite happy, not quite sad

‘Garbage’ possesses the lonely intimacy of an empty room, nothing but plucked guitar and vocals for the opening half before layers of samples build like memories flashing past. ‘November’ is also full of sober feeling. As we wrote in a preview, the track takes “the melancholy of the titular month and infus[es] it with a marching rhythm to evoke the precious fragility of love.” A similar momentum drives ‘Fascinated’, the first full song on the record which immediately pitches the audience into the cathartic spirit of the Cloudbelly sound. It’s an anthemic introduction, compete with pounded percussion and singalong chorus of the tears-in-your eyes, empowering variety, but its again shaded with a sense of tender intimacy, a refusal to gloss over life’s anxieties and complications.

What results is a sense of hard won conviction. Lessons learnt not via bright epiphany but the slow grind of living through difficult circumstances. Understanding how to not only roll with the punches but rise from knockout blows. “So it’s been strange sailing these days,” as Laitman sings on ‘Bloom’, “The nights turn my empty pockets out / And fill them with moon, and the wind / And the wild, blooming bruise / Of beginning again.” With resilience comes the hope of something better and kinder. Days in which they might step out of their body, or finally burst into bloom.

i know i know i know is out now via Strange Library Records and available from the Cloudbelly Bandcamp page.

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Following last year’s ‘November’, which we said “[took the] melancholy of the titular month and infus[ed] it with a marching rhythm to evoke the precious fragility of love,” Cloudbelly have now released another single from the record. ‘If You Want’ was actually the first track they completed for the album and proves the perfect introduction for new listeners. What the label describe as “an impassioned conversation between two voices residing in the same body, reckoning with a tendency to run from the things you want the most,” the song starts slow and syrupy, warm and nostalgic but tempered with a sharp edge of loss and regret and conflicted emotion.

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The song was the perfect introduction to an EP which looks to escape the systems and people which make life difficult via cathartic expressions of vulnerability. Each song on the release approaches a breaking point of some kind, where frustrations, fears and anger reach a critical mass and precipitate. The screaming crescendo of ‘Red Line’ captured this eruption most directly, and though the title track might not be quite as explosive, there’s still a gathering energy which builds beats its fists on the glass walls of its cage. ‘to take your hand’ follows a similar pattern, the hushed tone coalescing into something heavy as the vocals circle like thoughts at the dead of night.

Again offering an intimate acoustic opening, ‘Garlic Song’ offers a quiet, personal vibe, though one loaded with the attached baggage of violence and control. The weight of an empty room, or perhaps the internal pressures which never quite equalise no matter how sedate the present moment might seem. “Garlic on my kitchen shelf / They’ve all begun to sprout,” as C.J. Red Mouth sings, “peel the sheaths right off their backs / Crush the growing buds out.” But within the action lies an implicit fury, and a reminder of past cruelty held inside like a scar. “And it strikes me, the brutality / In my fingers all along,” as the lines continue. “And I wonder at the violence / That my body’s holding onto.”

Greenhouse is out now and available from the C.J. Red Mouth Bandcamp page.

Album art by Jesso Wang

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Described as a song “about having the capacity to love different people (friends, partners, etc) in different ways, using a lot of silly car and public transit metaphors along the way,” ‘Something Like a Honda Odyssey’ is the latest single from Cambridge, Massachusetts artist Banti Gheneti, AKA Banti Buli. The track emerges with all the heart and playfulness this description suggests, with a languid rhythm ticking over below Gheneti’s verbose vocal style, refusing to commit fully to irony or sincerity, instead hovering in the ambiguous middle ground. As though a song about relationships couldn’t really function without equal doses of heartfelt emotion and tongue-in-cheek humour.

My love is no tesla model e
It’s something like a honda odyssey
Don’t worry though, it’ll play nice with a model e
If that’s how you want things to be
So let me know what you think
Any takers out there?

Gorgeous – Raindrop

Gorgeous are a “frenetic yet friendly” noise pop duo from New York, comprising of Dana Lipperman (guitar and vocals) and Judd Anderman (drums). Next month they will release their sophomore album, Sapsucker, via Sad Cactus Records, which promises to develop the band’s dynamic signature blend of fractured rhythms, cynical lyricism and sweet and sour melodies. The record features songs about everything from “technological dread,” to “literal and figurative monsters, liars, dreamers, and true believers,” and lead single ‘Raindrop’ drops us in the deep end. “Our bones are made of cosmic dust,” Lipperman sings over jerky clockwork percussion before the track slams into life, “exploded stars, we’ve come apart.” Strange, unpredictable and gloriously noisy. What’s not to love?

Graves – Little Dumb Dogs

California-based Greg Olin has been releasing music under the Graves alias for almost two decades. On his next release, Gary Owens: I Have Some Thoughts, which comes out late June via Perpetual Doom and Curly Cassettes, he adopts a new name as a kind of Country music alter-ego. The album’s sixteen songs are a throwback to Nashville’s golden age, loaded with a sense of bittersweet nostalgia and a wry humour that brings new vigour to a timeless style. As Perpetual Doom put it, “[they] sway with the moonstruck sweetness of classic country, blending the sounds of golden age AM radio with a laidback West Count vibe.” Lead single ‘Little Dumb Dogs’ is a good introduction, its laidback atmosphere and gently cutting lyrics (“If little dumb dogs and the finest of drugs don’t kill you / and a smile from a child and walking down the aisle don’t thrill you”) capturing the album’s essence in less than two minutes.

Gary Owens: I Have Some Thoughts will be released on 30th June. Pre-order it rom the Perpetual Doom Bandcamp page.

The High Water Marks – American Candy

Led by Hilarie Sidney, founding member of the revered Elephant Six Recording Company and flagship band The Apples In Stereo, The High Water Marks are making their third ‘comeback’ this summer, with album Your Next Wolf coming very Minty Fresh. Based between Lexington, Kentucky and Grøa, Norway, the outfit had never played in the same room before opening for Pavement in Oslo is 2022, and the new record is their first recorded together and in-person. If latest single ‘American Candy’ is anything to go by, the set-up was conducive to the band’s creative energies, kicking along with an infectious momentum, capturing all the addictive sweet and sour overtones of its namesake and drenched in fuzz for good measure.

Lauren O’Connell – Joangeline

‘Joangeline’, the latest single from LA-based multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Lauren O’Connell, is a song of strength and vulnerability. “I saw me there in the half light / As shapeless there as the dawn,” they sing near the beginning of, a tenderness juxtaposed by tangible weight of the the drums. “And every promise it brings / Dying to feel even half right.” What quickly becomes apparent is that the source of the fragility is not any sense of uncertainty or hesitation, rather the inherent sensitivity of exposing core truths. Shedding outer armour as an act of defiance, deciding to be open no matter how much pain this might invite.

And all I wanted to know
All I wanted to know
Who would want me
The way I want you

Drag me out, baby
Drag me out, baby I’m in it now

Leeann Skoda – Little Star

With EP Living Room Sessions out later this month, Leeann Skoda has unveiled the slow-burning ‘Little Star’ by way of introduction. Emerging from the “familial Americana scene” of LA’s The Grand Ole Echo, and recorded with on one afternoon in the living room of Malachi DeLorenzo (Langhorne Slim, Izaak Opatz), the release is one built around an authentic folk spirit, and the single embraces the style with its lush, intimate warmth. A track stripped of all excesses, standing instead on its own simplicity, like some lullaby which has been crafted through years of repetition into a perfect state of function.

Living Room Sessions will be released on 26th May and is available via the Leeann Skoda Bandcamp page.

Paper Lady – Starcross

Back in January we introduced Paper Lady, an “immortal crone” brought to life by Allston’s Alli Raina and company in a kind of musical ritual. Previous single ‘Five of Swords‘ saw the project push their spiritualism out into noisier, shoegaze territory, and new single ‘Starcross’ continues the path with gauzy textures and a pummelling momentum. Described as “a scathing account of an almost-romance with a farmer gone awry,” the song burns with what could be spurned fury or frustrated embarrassment, building nonetheless into with unerring intensity of an ancient curse.

You feel it
Logic overrun
Conceal it
What else is there to be done

‘Starcross’ is out now and available via streaming services.

Ruth Radelet – Leaving the Table

Though best known as the front of synth pop stars Chromatics, Ruth Radelet has recently turned toward solo music as a means of exploring dimensions perhaps neglected in her work thus far. The Other Side EP confronted classic themes of love, loss and renewal after a traumatic period, with songs like ‘Crimes’ retaining the vivid Chromatics sound while those such as ‘Strangers’ allowed Radelet to break new ground with its almost orchestral pop tones. Ruth Radelet’s latest single, a take on Leonard Cohen’s ‘Leaving the Table’, straddles the fence between pop and folk, with the timeless vocals and echoing melancholy adding a dash of Julee Cruise to Cohen’s classic.

‘Leaving the Table’ is out now and available from the Ruth Radelet Bandcamp page.

Symbol Soup – Airglow

Writing of previous single ‘Overdressed‘, we described Symbol Soup (AKA London‘s Michael Rea) as a combination of “classic British folk charm with something rather more American, including faint notes of country and a couple of spoonfuls of Alex G-style lo-fi indie rock.” Latest track ‘Airglow’, again on Sad Club Records, continues the arrangement, the intimate sensibilities of bedroom pop polished with a golden psych-folk sheen, resulting in a sound able to evoke the slow hours of a summer afternoon without sanding down the snags and edges beneath the surface. The sound plays into the themes too, with Rea offering a take on the information overload of the internet age, though subverting its usual framing to instead present it on more grounded terms. So there’s no dystopian chill here, just a willingness to float above the sea of data and embrace peaceful ignorance instead.

‘Airglow’ is out now via Sad Club Records and available via the Symbol Soup Bandcamp.

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After meeting at Berklee College of Music, the five quickly became friends and have become a fixture of the DIY scene in Allston and the surrounding Boston area. Following a couple of singles last year, including the beguilingly dreamy ‘EVE’, Paper Lady are preparing to release a new EP in 2023 and have kicked off the year with a brand new single to whet appetites. Titled ‘Five of Swords’, the song heralds something of a stylistic shift for the band, moving into noisier, shoegaze-shaded territory while maintaining the other-worldly spiritualism of their previous work. As the title suggests, it is inspired by a card from the tarot deck. “Five of Swords represents a battle well fought,” the band explain, “where no one truly came out victorious.”

how can you stand so tall
when I’ve fallen and it was your call

Check out the video shot, directed, and edited by Indie DiMartino below:

‘Five of Swords’ is out now via streaming services. Also be sure to stay tuned to the Paper Lady Bandcamp page for info on the EP, and to listen to previous releases.

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Lead single ‘I Needed You’ started life as “a sad little break-up waltz” as Edens puts it, but input from collaborators Pat Keen, Shane Leonard and Dex Wolfe lifted the track into something richer and more nuanced. A meditation on the strangeness of an aftermath, when nothing is as it used to feel and anger and longing are impossible split. “It’s about trying to discover and center your own needs when sometimes it’s easier to lie to yourself and ignore them,” Edens explains. “It’s about perhaps not even knowing what you need and being okay with that.” The result is an ambiguous space between the past and the future. A place where nothing is solid, and is therefore both terrifying and thrilling all at once.

Wasn’t kind of you, wasn’t always true when
I needed you
How cruel to be, this kind of free when
I needed you

Photo by Elizabeth Ibarra

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Latest single ‘Leavened’ follows on from this. A track built on a bed of gentle, dreamy synths, over which Laitman’s vocals are left to drift. But as the song progresses this backdrop gradually swells with rich ambient tones and vocal harmonies, a steady increase which never quite reaches any cathartic crescendo yet nevertheless realises a certain power. This is turn lifts Laitman’s delivery into its own confident space, the lyrics finding assurance in their contemplation of identity and relationships.

and sometimes I’m a cowboy
and sometimes, I’m a girl
but mostly I’m a pale blue thief
whose water drank the world

‘Leavened’ is out now and available from the Cloudbelly Bandcamp page. thou / them will be released later this year on Signature Sounds.

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A few weeks ago we wrote about Stolen Time, the upcoming album by Abigail Lapell on Outside Music, an album “built on solid 70s folk rock foundations while retaining the freedom to get experimental and expansive.” Ahead of its release, Lapell has unveiled new single ‘Land of Plenty’, a track that explores themes of escape and refuge to evoke both history and the contemporary moment. Lapell’s own family fled the Holocaust to North America, and the song’s mournful clarity plays like a hymn offered to those seeking their own safety and place to belong. Check out the video by Sam Tudor below:

Stolen Time is out via Outside Music on the 22nd April and you can pre-order it now.

Constellation Myths – Young Lions (Constantines Cover)

Massachusetts trio Constellation Myths are hard at work on a follow-up to last year’s debut Everything and Time, but found a moment to record a take on the Constantines classic, ‘Young Lions’. The Constellation Myths version strips the taut menace from the original in favour of a half-paced country tone. What was gruff fervour is recast as wistful reflection, though the track is no less emotive as a consequence. Listen to the cover below:

Drench Fries – Out My Window

The recording project of Seattle-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Levi Nattrass, Drench Fries made a splash back in 2019 with EP Ballad Salad, a record which combined retro pop polish with a folk rock twang. Ahead of follow-up Being Silver which arrives later this month, Nattras has unveiled the single ‘Out My Window’, a track which builds upon the previous release to realise its fond examination of friendship and love. Think classic country regret made hazy by the sea mist of the West Coast, with dollops of indie rock fuzz and playful pop synths adding an idiosyncratic charm.

If I need you would you come through, if I called would you pick up?
When the going gets a-rough I’m tired of trying my luck
Six white horses on the hillside, seven ravens in the sky
coming towards me as I turn away and try to insist
on leaving tonight

Emma Geiger – Flock

Ahead of a new EP Haven on Ghost Mountain Records this spring, Durham, North Carolina-based songwriter Emma Geiger has unveiled her latest single, ‘Flock’. Written at dawn amid the aftermath of a relationship and cross country move, the song’s gentle rhythm embraces the strange halfway quality of crepuscular light. The fleeting moment between night and day that carries its own inherent stillness. Geiger’s vocals emerge within this space neither soft or stark, their tone caught somewhere between hesitant and assured in their reflective mood, though always swelling with the promise of change.

Haven is out via Ghost Mountain Records on the 1st April and you can pre-order it from the Emma Geiger Bandcamp page.

Jess Williamson – Texas Blue

Now based in LA, but a Texas native, Jess Williamson‘s latest release is an ode to her home state. A two song cover EP, Texas Blue features a take on Townes van Zandt’s ‘Loretta’ and the ‘Texas River Song’, a traditional song of unknown origin which Townes also made his own. Williamson is joined by Ben Schwab (guitar, bass and organ) and Noah Jeffries (mandolin and fiddle) to flesh out both tracks into timeless folk songs, and in doing so, as the press release puts it “reckons with a state, and state of mind, that feels so close but so far away, and breaks a spell that these songs, and Texas’s big, starry skies, have held over her for so long.”

Mousey – Pudding and Pie

Based in Christchurch, Mousey is the recording project of Sarena Close. Described as “the cold, damaged heart” at the centre of the record, ‘Pudding and Pie’ closes the book on a toxic friendship with all the ups and downs such a process entails. Over six minutes the track shifts from quiet fury to racing energy and back again, the elastic rhythm relaxing outward before snapping to taut attention and eventually rising into a big spacey crescendo. “I think this song is the longest because the torture this person put me through meant there was so much emotional fuel to burn and so much to say,” Close explains. Little could survive such a burning, a wound cauterised in the heat and light.

I won’t be your patsy schmuck
I won’t be your spitting cup
I won’t be your dumping truck
Flags up, don’t push me no more
I’m tired, I’m tired

Steven Lambke – Every Lover Knows

Speaking of Constantines, their very own Steven Lambke has a a brand new solo record Volcano, Volcano coming later this spring on You’ve Changed Records. Described by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson as “an invitation, an exploration of potential, an opportunity for listening and thinking and relating that holds space for otherwise thinking and shared meaning-making,” the album feels like the essence of Lambke’s career distilled into a collection of songs. A record built on trust, community and experimentation, fuelled by those small, fleeting moments of joy amid an otherwise difficult world. Lead single ‘Every Lover Knows’ introduces the style, acknowledging ever-present hardships but bursting with life.

The truth is
every truth is tested
by the world
until it’s busted, twisted, or frayed,
as every lover knows

Young Prisms – Outside Air

Later this month, San Francisco‘s shoegaze outfit Young Prisms return with Drifter, their first record in a decade on Fire Talk Records. Latest single ‘Outside Air’ shows a band transcending the throwback pastiche of the genre and realising a sound fully their own. Described as a song about “about the struggles and difficulties in modern marriage, monogamy, and parenting at a young age,” the track draws on the Californian wildfires that blazed during recording to evoke the suffocating damage resentment can wreak within a relationship. But in reflecting on these truths, the oppressive forces are challenged by a commitment to perseverance and quiet improvement. Check out the video directed by Gio Betteo below:

Drifter is out on the 25th March via Fire Talk Records and you can pre-order it now from the Young Prisms Bandcamp page.

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