Climbing a rung up the mainstream ladder with every new release, The National’s rise in popularity continues unabated. But regardless of your opinion of the band’s more recent output, Pembrokeshire-born, London-based artist Bryde‘s cover of ‘Brainy’ is a timely reminder of what they were before the lyrics grew increasingly literal and they become the kind of outfit which casually enlists the help of Taylor Swift. A sparse, cryptic track which seethes with an underlying intensity, as though the subtext the moment comes unspooling as the song develops. Bryde pulls this tautness ever tighter, capturing every inch of the crackling energy while making the song her own.

Griffin Moyer – Like No One Else

“If you’re going to say something, you might as well be honest.” That’s the maxim under which Nashville-based songwriter Griffin Moyer works. Having left a career in geological survey to pursue music, Moyer is about to release the LP Liar’s Disguise via Like You Mean It Records, and new single ‘Like No One Else’ invites the listener into the straight-talking emotion of his sound. A track where longing is accompanied by a nostalgic sixties warmth, lifting the ache at its centre into its own kind of romance.

Liar’s Disguise is coming soon via Like You Mean It Records.

Jess Kallen – Ink

LA-based musician Jess Kallen has been a staple of the local scene for a while, touring and recording with numerous bands, including the likes of Rosie Tucker and Alex Lahey. Next month, they will release their debut album Exotherm on New Professor Music and to celebrate they have released a brand new single. Titled ‘Ink’, it combines crunchy guitar and a springy sense of momentum. “Monday, Tuesday, Thursday / the time flies when nothing changes,” Kallen sings in what begins as a frustrated ode to everyday monotony, before the big chorus arrives to shake things up. Which is fitting, as Kallen describes ‘Ink’ as a song “about being stuck in a rut, and escaping by surrendering to an impulse.”

Exotherm will be released on 21st June via New Professor Music. Pre-order it now on Bandcamp.

John Hollywood – Leavings

Houston-born, California-based songwriter John Hollywood might draw his main inspiration from the likes of John Prine, Guy Clark and Bob Dylan, but new album Beauty Sleep shows his focus is very much on the present. Take ‘Leavings’, a song about the ever-deepening climate catastrophe delivered with the stark fervour of an old-time Bible preacher, where a father picks through the ashes a failed society for something which might outlast the oncoming violence. “What can I give to my son to help him? / What can I leave him after I’m gone?” Hollywood asks in the opening lines. “I’d leave him my land but the land is forsaken / I’d leave him my house, but the house has burned down.” The song gathers around itself with tumultuous foreboding, the sound of a society reaching its dead-end with no time to turn around.

Nathan Xander – Drive My Car

“He’s a big man, got no feeling below the knee,” opens ‘Drive My Car’, the latest single from Nathan Xander’s Three Waltzes. “When he goes down, getting back up sure ain’t easy.” The track is indicative of New York songwriter’s ability to paint such vivid portraits with so little, each song an elegant slice of life as lived within an uncertain present, be it Xander’s own quest for sobriety or the mind-bending experience of living with twenty-four hour news. As ‘Drive My Car’ highlights, this is delivered with equal parts sincerity and knowing humour, resulting in a wisdom that might not know how life is going to shake out, but is sure enough along for the ride.

Some folks drink, some folks smoke
Tonight, we’ll do a little of both
And if we die, at heaven’s door,
Please don’t tell them I let you drive my car

Nymphlord – Stinks 4 Lyfe

Raised in the forested foothills of Northern California, singer-songwriter and producer Nymphlord says her music was influenced by everything from “90’s alt rock [and] misty bush-whacked trail walks” to “Britney Spears crop tops, dog bites turned scars, and dust-covered pom poms.” This goes some way to explaining the distinctive Nymphlord style, which combines radio-ready pop hooks with a ferocious feminist punk energy and an ethereal experimentalism that sees acoustic guitar become otherwordly. Written in the aftermath of the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, ‘Stinks 4 Lyfe’ channels every ounce of fury, frustration and vulnerability into three minutes of catharsis.

Don’t tell me you want it
Don’t tell me you need it
Do you think it’s worth it
Do you think I’m worth shit, hey

‘Stinks 4 Lyfe’ is out now via Lauren Records and available from the Nymphlord Bandcamp page.

Rain Gregorio – Myrtle on Holiday

Having previously recorded under the moniker Mount Rainier, LA’s Rain Gregorio decided to revert to his own name for new EP, Myrtle on Holiday, coming soon via Anxiety Blanket Records, and the switch sees the sound push into newly personal territory too. “It gave me the confidence to excavate part of myself using the observational side of songwriting,” as Gregorio explains. “This is the first time I’ve made something that is true to myself as a songwriter.” The title track is the perfect introduction, its lush yet controlled beat ebbing and flowing as Lexi Vega (Mini Trees) lends backing vocals, all resulting in a sense of closeness which only amplifies the overall emotional resonance.

Sweetbreads – Chaos Is

Led by Brooklyn singer-songwriter Melody Stolpp, Sweetbreads make country-inflected indie pop that they say “will bend your ear, twist your pretty little heart, and get your hips swaying.” Following last year’s EP Out Of Range, Stolpp has again worked with long-time collaborator Nick Watt to write a new song, ‘Chaos Is’. “[It’s] a song about teenage life in the suburbs,” Stolpp describes, “with all the boredom, recklessness, and soul searching that come with it.” The track’s slow build captures the direction of such days, building from seemingly mundane beginnings into something with real emotional charge, and in doing so manages to recreate some of the heightened magic of those formative years.

The Tines – Collarbone

Formed in 2019 from members of acts such as Ports of Spain, Laundry Day, Quiet Giant and Ryxno, The Tines is an indie rock outfit based in New Haven, Connecticut. Back in 2022 they released their self-titled album on Funnybone Records, and latest single ‘Collarbone’ is the ideal entry point for those who let the initial release slip past their radar. A track which combines shimmering dream pop with a more pressing indie rock rhythm, the reverbed vocals drifting above it all to give the whole thing a sunny if enigmatic vibe, drawing the listener into its psych-inflected world.

The Tines is out now via Funnybone Records and is available from Bandcamp.

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Joined by Matt Schlatter (bass, lead guitar, synth), Andrew Tivon Orenstein (drums) and Jon-Delia Freeman (violin), Skedgell brings this mood to life with the eye of a storyteller and a traditional folk style. Music as folk horror or fairytale, albeit grounded in a human experience. Each track a glimpse into the esoteric space between myth and reality, where auguries line up to signal our coming fates, and strange images resonate with deeper truths.

Opener ‘Carolina’ is a track we’ve described previously as “loaded with oneiric strangeness, the sense of uncanny discovery particular to dreams.” Here sleep comes as a blank slate, a space beyond the binding categories of reality where new stories can be crafted, both histories and futures escaped. “I often lost my name in my sleep,” Skedgell sings, and later ‘name’ is switched out to ‘needs’, the sound somewhere between ominous and alluring, as though to commit to such a habit carries both promise and unease. For the rest of the track speaks of lost loved ones, of a world on fire, an empire half-mad with its own desires. Where else might relief be found but sleep?

But the foreboding is counterbalanced by a tenderness too. Take tracks like ‘The Sculptor’ or ‘The Amphitheatre’, which possess real warmth, even while haunted by the dead. ‘Black Locust’ is similarly fond in its tone, a love letter to a garden tree “at once cryptic and intuitive,” as we wrote in a previous review. “A contemplation of the value and beauty of what we cannot know.” As we noted then, the song serves a stellar example of the manner in which Mother Juniper broaches mystery with such a curious and instinctive eye. “If there are things beyond our understanding,” we continued, “deeper than our surface experience of the world, then Skedgell brings them into relief, skirting around their edges so that something of their shape might become apparent.”

The idea comes back to the image of small animals and the ominous sky, something Mother Juniper return to with ‘I Dreamt of a Snake’. “In this dream I was the snake / Said can you help me out?” Skedgell says, voice hushed and spoken. “All secret creatures are in danger / Of being found out.” The fear in ‘These Little Animals’ was leavened by the sublime potential of the ominous sky, as though fear of a certain size becomes its own transcendence. But here the tone is altogether more modest. Vulnerability as it is lived. And what results is the very thing which elevates Mother Juniper above much of the esoteric folk canon. For just as Skedgell is willing to walk out into the mystical, it is never done without human grounding. As highlighted by closer ‘Apology of Hades’, where even the god of the dead himself is wracked by remorse and regret.

Winter comes too early
Too early for me
I should’ve let you go
Not taken you from sleep

Write The Soil Lighter is out now via Spirit House Records and available from the Mother Juniper Bandcamp page.

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If there are things beyond our understanding, deeper than our surface experience of the world, then Skedgell brings them into relief, skirting around their edges so that something of their shape might become apparent.

Following on from Parlor Songs, a joint release with Doctor Delia, Mother Juniper is back with a brand new EP, Someone out of Sorts Follows the Web. Serving as something of a prelude to a forthcoming debut full-length set for release via Spirit House Records next year, the album was recorded on a 4-track in the woods, a process which further centres the intimate and organic nature of the Mother Juniper style. Something apparent from opener ‘Destroyer’, a track full of small textures and tactile moods which sits within a lineage of such lo-fi recordings, from Connie Converse to Michael Hurley and beyond.

‘The Bug Song’ continues along this track, spinning out a web of images and vignettes in a manner worthy of its namesakes, a simple process used to weave such intricate patterns. The result is a thread dreamlike in its logic, the listener taken from scene to scene with no cuts or interruptions, reinforcing Mother Juniper’s habit of aligning natural and dreamlike states.

Closer ‘What Would It Be Like’ is no less striking, a patient, understated croon with a toe-tapping rhythm just below the surface, though one which is morphed by idiosyncratic rises and falls, Skedgell posing questions with both pressing immediacy and rhetorical drift. The pattern captures Someone out of Sorts Follows the Web in a wider sense One guided by forces perhaps not immediately apparent, be they subtle weather conditions, extrasensory phenomena, strange eddies in mood and thought. Forces which might not seem willing or able to govern our movements, yet do so nonetheless.

Someone out of Sorts Follows the Web is out now and available from the Mother Juniper Bandcamp page.

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Ahead of the release of a brand new EP, Tennessee Mud, Spencer Thomas Smith has unveiled a pair of new singles. With its slow pace and palpable ache, ‘Blue Like Sky’ is a weary ballad for those seeking refuge in love. A late and lazy dancehall number for those exhausted by the complications of life, the heads of the couples long having fallen onto opposing shoulders, pairs holding one another up.

Latest track ‘Wilder’ situates itself further towards country, its nostalgic strum and twang evoking long shadows and dusty roads. Smith’s vocals have a humble tone, crooned gently as though almost to himself, a daydream spoken aloud in a quiet room. The lyrics are suitably centred in such hopes and wishes. Pining for a sense of movement and adventure, as well as the comfort of the past.

I hear the calling of the Western sky
waving me forward to make her mine
stand and compete with the sun outside
see who can shine longer—him or I

Be sure to follow Spencer Thomas Smith on Instagram and Spotify for more on Tennessee Mud.

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For their latest release, Parlor Songs, Mother Juniper teamed up with Doctor Delia, an artist based in Portland, Oregon who describes themselves as “an entity specializing in tinctures, alchemical transubstantiation, and old-time new-time music.” From that description alone it is plain to see Mother Juniper and Doctor Delia make the perfect creative partners. Together they crafted something subtly beautiful, a collection of lovingly home-recorded and truly collaborative songs which feel not quite of our time.

Indeed, as the title suggests, Parlor Songs is a throwback to another era, one before the wide availability of recorded music, where people had to sing and play to entertain each other. Recorded in a single day in “an old room with a red piano […] with one microphone in a boot, and one bottle,” the album possesses an intangible sense of homespun communal spirit. Its songs build from uncertain intros, often accentuated with whispered questions or comments between artists, into rhythms and flows which feel like something passing through the room.

Clocking in at just over 90 seconds, opener ‘Orange Tree’ is a wonderfully simple and sincere folk song. “Down by the orange tree” it begins “where the juice drips drips drips drips / I found a swarm of bees.” But it also displays the record’s stranger side too, a surreal sleep logic that melds reality and fantasy, imagined scenes becoming indistinguishable from the physical. The bees go on to live in the narrator’s head, take a trip to the south without ever stepping from beneath the orange tree.

Left town on a Saturday
drove down to New Orleans
and it seems we’ve been inside a dream
where the scenes skip skip skip skip skip

The rest of the album continues along a similar path, bringing together songs pre-written and songs made up on the day, simply crafted but enveloped in a veil of mystery. Some tracks, like ‘Bathtub Song’ are wordless and feel improvised, plucked from the ether in that quiet room, while others contain more distinctive storytelling. “There are things you’ll never know” goes ‘Steam Risin’ as it shuffles and shambles in tuneful disorder, feeling like something of a mission statement for the project, while ‘Old Morass’ slows things down with ponderous and poignant piano.

Ultimately, Parlor Songs is an aural document of one place on one afternoon, a moment suspended in time forever. It captures the sound of the rain, of people beyond the old wooden windows, and the small magic conjured by Mother Juniper and Doctor Delia within. As the album’s blurb puts it:

Neither of them knows what will happen, but they begin on one Spring afternoon…It was a day on the precipice of the plague’s pause, which made the radio earthquake and the city swell. Right in that great edge of possibility we sometimes refer to as the unknown, they started singing.

Parlor Songs is out now and available from the Mother Juniper Bandcamp page.

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Released in 2018, the collection introduced the Sargasso sound and hinted at its elastic potential, from garage rock crunch to cool Latin pop tones with lyrics in both English and Portuguese. This was developed further with a self-titled EP the following year, where electronic flourishes grew increasingly prominent and again the members shared vocals, and various singles which have since cemented the style. Be it the lush haze of Valentine’s Day release ‘Secret Compartment’, or the the breezy summer rhythms of June’s ‘Baianas’.

Today sees the release of a brand new Sargasso single, ‘Sacred Plums’, a track that again turns over new ground for the band. Taking inspiration from Slowdive’s textured shoegaze and adding some indie rock heft, Sargasso weave a sense of immediacy despite the gauzy atmosphere. Be it in the tip-toed quiet of the track’s small lulls or the cathartic blow-out of the closing minutes, there’s a disarming clarity—one heartbroken and tender and fierce.

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The lyrics, while often poignant and even upsetting, are carefully crafted. For example, on the cryptically named ‘Down at the Duckpond’ they read:

“Down at the duckpond
I spend my nights
I feed the animals
and bet on the fights
Down at the duckpond
Living for free
Down at the duckpond
Please leave me be.”

And later:

“Down at the duckpond
Theyre all my pets
I do all my yelling
I make my threats
Down at the duckpond
I get my thrills
I have no debts
But man I got bills.”

Before the goosebump-inducing, cathartic refrain:

“Down at the duckpond
Down at the duckpond.”

Our previous chat with band member Joe Rumrill highlighted 2 Ton Bug’s desire for fame and fortune and, endorsed by him, him, her and these, It’s A Wonderful Life sees them take another step up the wobbly ladder of comercial superstardom. The album is also special in that it contains absolutely no irony.

You can get the album here on a pay-what-you-can-basis. I’m sure the band would appreciate any renumeration you can afford, especially after forking out on both Frog AND Toad as cover stars.

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