Tender, the debut solo album by Colorado’s Allison Lorenzen on Whited Sepulchre Records was marked by “a transience which feels deeply compassionate,” as we described in our review. “Hope manifest as an understanding of the potential for change.” Follow-up single ‘The Fourth Cycle‘ continued this examination of change, detailing the gamut of emotional states involved with any upheaval, and latest track ‘MTO’ feels like the next step along the process. Described as sounding like a “final climax of a Mark Fisher-influenced hauntological prom scene,” the song looks to recognise the repeating patterns of the past so that Lorenzen might heal and move forward.

Bad Tiger – Enough

Last year, we described how Bad Tiger’s 2020 album The Goat and the Bad Tiger was “far from being the full realisation of [Yasi] Lowy’s goals,” but instead “merely opened the doors to new possibilities.” The San Francisco outfit are back with ‘Enough’, a new single which focuses on the precariousness of the present moment. With Lowy’s tender and confessional vocals, the track paints a vulnerable, open-hearted mood which longs for certainty within the painful fervour of love.

City Dress – Empires of Honey

“Music is for everyone who spent their childhoods obsessively reading the lyrics to their favorite songs.” That’s how Brooklyn‘s Christina Skramstad describes her folk pop project City Dress. Together with guitarist Johnny Simon Jr. (Wilsen), she writes lush and literary folk songs, which we last featured back in 2020. Fast forward a few years and City Dress is back with a new single, ‘Empires of Honey’, a rhythmic and resolute exploration of the self-deception involved in ego and boundless ambition. “The song is about standing at a crossroads and making decisions you imagine will bring you joy and contentment,” Skramstad describes, “but realizing that sometimes your wants and needs are misaligned.”

‘Empire of Honey is out now via streaming services.

clay pigeon – Come Down

Having released an EP and album under his own name, Montreal-based songwriter James Clayton has now adopted the moniker clay pigeon for his new material. Clayton recently recorded the project’s debut album at Hotel2Tango with Howard Bilerman and Shae Brossard, and debut single ‘Come Down’ gives a glimpse into what to expect. A simmering blend of shadow and rhythm, where the understated mood grows taut as it progresses, threatening to snap into an all-out crescendo but never quite breaking its controlled progress.

Lael Neale – White T-Shirt

Following the release of her sophomore record Star Eaters Delight back in the spring, LA’s Lael Neale has released standalone single ‘White T-Shirt’, a take on one of her older songs that didn’t quite fit on the album. As producer Guy Blakeslee describes, “White T-Shirt’ dates back a number of years to when I used to follow Lael around LA to all of her barely publicized performances. The song never ceased to silence the chatter in the room…it’s a raw gem that stands alone and cuts through the noise” Blakeslee is not wrong. Clocking in at under two minutes, ‘White T-Shirt’ has an almost uncanny timeless quality, stripped back to guitar and Neale’s distinctive vocals

‘White T-Shirt’ is out now via Sub Pop and available via the Lael Neale Bandcamp page.

Left Tracks – Strawberry Moon

LA‘s Kabir Kumar (AKA Sun Kin) and Oakland‘s Phil Di Leo (DI LEO) first met in 2016, though it is only now they’ve decided to combine their skills. Enter Left Tracks, a brand new project that sees Kumar and Di Leo use all of their skills as composers, vocalists and multi-instrumentalists to imagine a new future in the wake of COVID and the adjacent catastrophes. What emerged was End Times Hauling, an EP which sits on the precipice of disaster but makes a decision to envisage a different world, working on the logic that no significant change can occur without first rekindling a sense of imagination. Opening track and single ‘Strawberry Moon’ introduces the left-field folk-inflected pop sound, as well as the compassion and collaboration which marks the release.

Nina Keith – Blow Up Yr Life (U Need To)

LA-based composer and multi-instrumentalist Nina Keith first caught attention in 2019 with MARANASATI 19111, an LP which decorated piano arrangements with a whole host of flourishes from flute to field recordings to better explore ideas of memory and death. With a tour opening for Youth Lagoon fast approaching, Keith has returned with ‘Blow Up Yr Life’, a single featuring Barrie and Qur’an Shaheed which again combines classical and contemporary styles to urge its audience to break from from their circumstances and live on their own terms. “Lately the more I wear the turmoil of my life on my sleeve the more often I find myself in conversations with strangers and loved ones that reach a similar end,” as Keith explains. “I can never be the one to tell someone to burn it down and start over. They see the ash stains on my shirt and ask to borrow a match so they can play with it, save it for later, but sometimes it’s like ‘girl, the house is already on fire, you can’t stay in there’.” Check out the visualizer by Nik Arthur below:

‘Blow Up Yr Life (U Need To)’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Ratboys – The Window

Later this summer, Chicago indie rockers Ratboys return with The Window, a brand new record via Topshelf Records. Having already released two singles – the epic ‘Black Earth, WI’ and expressive ‘It’s Alive’ – they have now unveiled the title track, an uber-personal song that forms the record’s emotional centre point. “I wrote that song a few days after the death of my grandma” explains lead Julia Steiner. “She didn’t have Covid, but because of the pandemic my grandpa wasn’t able to visit her in person at the nursing home to say goodbye. He ended up standing outside her room and saying goodbye through an open window.” It starts quiet and sober, but this is not your standard sad song. It soon kicks up a gear, becoming a country-tinged rock song that displays the Ratboys knack for combining tenderness with raucous noisy energy. Watch the John TerEick-directed widescreen video below:

The Window will be released on 25th August. Pre-order a copy from the Ratboys Bandcamp page.

Upper Narrows – Tinker’s Darn

Based in Portland, Maine, Upper Narrows is the recording project of songwriter and producer Tyler Jackson. Jackson’s process is an unusual one, swapping out drums and guitars for programmed beats and an array of synths. In October he will release While We’re Warm, the debut Upper Narrows full-length via Repeating Cloud, and debut single ‘Tinker’s Darn’ is our first taste of what to expect. A deep and spacey sound that balances its digital soundscape with a very human emotion, resulting in something as immersive as it is affirming, even if the lyrics hold a more conflicted view.

hungover when I cry
my bucket of bolts on fire
preach forgiveness around the clock
pretend I’m not a liar

fathoms of forgiveness
from the magazine to the gun
the apples inside her are turning to cider
the terror of not having fun

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Bad Flamingo – Fire

“Give a man a mask,” said Oscar Wilde, “and he will tell you the truth.” The mysterious band Bad Flamingo have taken the idea to heart, favouring a cryptic anonymity that goes right through to actual masks. Without biographical details clouding the mix, we’re left to focus on the music, with new single ‘Fire’ showing off an ethereal Western atmosphere that creeps and crawls into a sparse yet infectious rhythm. The result is something pitched halfway between cowboy swagger and soulful pop, sounding inviting yet also dangerous too, as though a sharp edge lurks beneath the croon.

The track comes complete with a suitably atmospheric Super 8 video, so be sure to check it out below:

You can find more on Bad Flamingo via their website, and follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

Garden Centre – Wide Sea

In preparation for the release of their third album, A Moon for Digging, on Specialist Subject Records and Kanine Records, Brighton’s Garden Centre has unveiled a brand new single. ‘Wide Sea’ shows off a new full-band Garden Centre line-up, with principle songwriter Max Levy joined by members of Porridge Radio for a newly collaborative sound. Not that Levy’s distinctive style is in any way ironed out, the track full of the strange curiosity and energy that has long represented the Garden Centre sound.

“‘Wide Sea’ is a song about being incredibly worried about somebody, and to devoting yourself to worry,” the band explain, though insist the track is actually positive. “Coming through a period of constant fear for a person you love can peel the glue from your eyes. The horizon can overwhelm you with an accepting vastness, and you can find a little bit of comfort again in being unable to know or control the world around you.”

A Moon For Digging is out on the 1st November via Specialist Subject Records (UK)/Kanine Records (US).

Nina Keith – In The Woods We Both Saw It, Weren’t Dreaming

Nina Keith is a Philadelphia-based composer, who is about to release her debut full-length  MARANASATI 19111. Built from “textured piano arrangements laced with vocals, flute, electronics and found sounds,” the album builds on foundations of contemporary classical music to create something something uniquely haunted and human. For a record that promises to delve into a “personal history marked by community tragedy and paranormal incidents,” lead single ‘ In The Woods We Both Saw It, Weren’t Dreaming’ is the perfect introduction, if just for that title alone. The piano-led track is quietly moving and oddly reassuring, a lament and a balm rolled into one. It’s a confident and distinctive taste of an album that could be very special indeed.

Antonioni – Stutter-Step

Returning with a new EP, The Odds Were All Beating Me, Seattle’s Antonioni have evolved from the languorous jangle rock of previous release Lullablaze into something altogether heavier and darker. While their past music flirted with grunge, the new is a full-bodied embrace, the powerful vocals of Sarah Pasillas driving a newfound energy and emotional immediacy.

Single ‘Stutter-Step’ is the perfect example, weaving lines of insistent energy into a hefty whole, meaning that the sound has both an urgency and a deeper, slow-burning dimension too. The track comes complete with a video by artist  Kyle Todaro, with the improv choreography of Matte Demon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzjbyahC2G4

The Odds Were All Beating Me is out now via Den Tapes and you can grab it from the Antonioni Bandcamp page.

Side Saddle – Ink & Dirty Strings

The recording project of New York’s Ian McGuinness, Side Saddle make a reflective brand of power pop that balances joy and angst to the perfect degree. Ahead of the forthcoming EP, Waltermelon, the band have unveiled lead single ‘Ink & Dirty Strings’, a track that shows off Side Saddle’s ability to combine moods to craft their own style. Charting the choppy waters of a long distance relationship, the track is at once melancholic and energetic, as though only through missing someone can you truly appreciate what they mean to you.

Special Friend – Before

Special Friend is a Paris-based duo raised from a cocktail of 90s genres, drawing on grunge, shoegaze and pop to create something lusciously textured and hazy, Erica (drums) and Guillaume (guitar) sharing the vocals. The press release describes a “naive, honest and spontaneous DIY nature” that saw the band play their first show after four months and record an EP a year later, and something of this attitude shapes the sound of debut single ‘Before’, providing a sense of wonder that permeates the track.

Filmed by Marion Sautron and edited by Erica, the single’s video is “an existential crisis on a background of light, even joyful music,” taking inspiration from David Hockney’s pink clouds.  Check it out below:

‘Before’ is out via Howlin Banana Records.

Cartalk – Noonday Devil

Cartalk is the solo project of LA-based songwriter Chuck Moore who took the moniker from a text to a dear friend—”Love our car talks.” If such conversations are intimate and thematically fluid then Cartalk is determined to create a similar feel in the music, blending grunge and Americana into something heartfelt and full of momentum.

New single ‘Noonday Devil’ is a case in point, the guitars swelling and drums galloping as Moore rides the crest. Lyrically, the song is reflective but self-consciously so, recognising how patterns and conventions can shape the passage of time. Cartalk is here to dismantle such order, freeing one to live in the way that best suits them.

It’s a sentence break
Comma between patterns
Oh the love you gave
I’ve got a noonday devil

Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster – Educated Guesses

You probably know Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster’s voice if not his name. As the lead of Water Liars he proved himself a master of walking the line between folk and indie rock, combining great writing, expressive delivery and powerful instrumentation. The Arkansasan now has a burgeoning solo career, and is set to release his sophomore record Take Heart, Take Care later this month of Big Legal Mess Records.

Cut from “humid Southern nights and kudzu-encased vistas,” the album shows all of Kinkel-Schuster’s songwriting talents, representing American vignettes that are both detailed character studies and something much wider, serving as glimpses into the universal processes of hurting and healing. Single ‘Educated Guesses’ teases a newfound glimmer to Kinkel-Schuster’s tone too, the overwhelming dark of Water Liars not lost but somehow lifted, if not quite in the rear-view then at least not nailed over one’s eyes. Check out the video by Kyle Taubken below:

Take Heart, Take Care will be released on 30th August on Big Legal Mess Records.

Mount Sharp – Apostate

Formed somewhere between a Brooklyn rooftop and a boat in Maine, Mount Sharp combines the poetic songwriting of Swood (Sarah Wood) with Bryan Bruchman’s frenetically noisy sensibilities. With Ryan Zumsen and Maia Macdonald adding a rhythm section, 2014’s WEIRD FEARS EP was a lesson in uninhibited energy—be that born of excitement or anxiety.

Back with their first new music since that release, Mount Sharp have added Sal Garro and Jonathan Pilkington Kahnt on drums and bass and developed their sound into something more contemplative without loosing any of the spirit that marked them previously. Therefore, ‘Apopstate’ is an evolution, indebted to the past but shaped by present conditions, concerned with the personal and the political when exploring what it means to be pushed away from someone or something.

Surely I’m not made of bone and blood
Surely I’m something that’s never or always been
Am I still earning your love?
Do I remind you of someone you could dream of?

Pearla – Daydream

Pearla is the moniker of Brooklyn’s Nicole Rodriguez, a songwriter who knits threads of folk, pop and psychedelica into an evocative, mystical whole. New single ‘Daydream’ finds the sound perfected, the delicate minimalism belying the intricacy at work behind the vocals. “This song is about clinging onto a memory until it becomes distorted in your mind,” Rodriguez explains, “and turns into an almost absurd attempt to escape the present.”

Written after time spent rehabilitating primates in South Africa, and during an obsessive period reading Brontë novels, ‘Daydream’ offers memory and fiction as two forms of fantasy into which we can escape, spaces outside of the harsh realities of life that should be protected and celebrated.

Cataldo – Ding Dong Scrambled Eggs

“Anybody who has survived his childhood,” Flannery O’Connor once wrote, “has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.” Literally Main Street, the forthcoming record from Eric Anderson’s Cataldo, is crafted from a similar sentiment. Utilizing his trademark knack for writing songs that manage to be at once playful and emotional, the album sees Anderson take stock of life from the hinterland of middle age, an eye of a storm where longing for the future and nostalgia for the past cancel one another out.

“I tried to write songs about what it was really like growing up in a weird small town,” Andersen explains, “not a tarted up banjo-and-suspenders version of what people imagine it might be like,” and such a philosophy is clear on single ‘Ding Dong Scrambled Eggs’. This is hindsight without rose-tinted spectacles, memories shaken from the sepia-toned warmth and resurrected in all of their awkward, nervous energy. Check out the video by Dan Fromhart below:

Literally Main Street is out on the 27th September

That’s all for Vol. 27 folks. If you liked what you found, be sure to check the tag for previous editions of Bright Sparks.

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