Decribed as “an anthology-like collection” which displays wide-ranging influences including everything from jangle pop and art rock to tin pan alley, americana and progressive folk, Deep Country is the forthcoming album from Albany outfit Bruiser and Bicycle, to be released this autumn. Lead single ‘Waterfight’ shows how this myriad of inspiration registers within songs as well as between them, pairing retro folk with ample melodies and art pop sensibilities to create something inventive and dynamic. But don’t mistake variation for overabundance, because for all the innovation, the track sees Bruiser and Bicycle dial back the maximalist approach that marked their previous record Holy Red Wagon. The result is rich, endlessly surprising and grounded within the natural experimentation inherent to any collaborative act.

Watch the video filmed and edited by Derick Noetzel and directed by Keegan Graziane below:

Deep Country is out on the 8th October and available to pre-order now.

Eric Angelo Bessel – Scavengers

“Plays with our understandings of reality, presenting a version of physical existence which bends toward the esoteric.” That’s how we described the work of American-German visual artist and musician Eric Angelo Bessel back in 2023. Album Visitation offered what we called “spacious soundscape[s] loaded with the weight of reflection yet simmering with a certain foreboding too, the past and future weighing on the present as shadows, echoes emerging from within a granular fog.” This autumn will see Bessel return with Mirror at Night, a brand new album on Lore City Records which again collapses the distinction between the past and the future into something flat and beguiling. Listen to the nocturnal, ambiguous lead single ‘Scavengers’ below:

FONTINE – Home Right Here

Back in July we previewed Good Buddy, the new album from Winnipeg-based songwriter FONTINE forthcoming via Birthday Cake Records, with the lead single and title track. A song which sat “at the intersection of big rig bravado and unashamed sentimentality,” as we put it, “using a blend of good time rock and bedroom pop sensibilities to explore ideas of love, friendship and self-actualisation.” With the record’s release edging closer, FONTINE is back with new single, ‘Home Right Here’, and the song is no less emotive in style. As the title suggests, the track is a meditation on home in all of its dimensions, be it specific locations, special people or even particular times of life. “Running down to the well, through the forests and the fields, with my cousins at my heels,” as the first verse opens. “In the garden with my mom, pulling weeds all day long, picking sweetgrass from the lawn.”

Heaven For Real – Hold Me Back

Hailing from Halifax, Nova Scotia and now based in Toronto, Heaven For Real is the brainchild of twins Mark and J. Scott Grundy, offering a genre-bending style of music that draws on everything from post-punk and art rock to psych, ambient, electronic and jazz. The project’s most collaborative release to date, new album Who Died & Made You The Dream pushes this swirl of influences further than ever before, stylistically mirroring the dream logic of its themes to moves between genres with fluidity and subconscious intention. Ahead of release this November via Mint Records, Heaven For Real have unveiled single ‘Hold Me Back’ by way of introduction. A song decidedly dreamlike in style, both in terms of its slightly off-kilter haze and the coiled cryptic meaning which seems to edge closer with every repeated listen.

on relinquishment, I remember the cycle
pinwheel of interest
gone with the wind my genoa sail
on relinquishment;
I surrender to the cycle
fixed on the distance
cured through imagination
on relinquishment;
I remember the cycle

Watch the video by Jordan Minkoff below, though those with a sensitive disposition be warned, it features haunted hair:

Who Died & Made You The Dream? will be released on the 7th November via Mint Records and you can pre-order it now.

Jackie West – Offer

“Content to understand change as a kind of potential, and occupy the present in all of its fluctuating strangeness.” That’s how we described Jackie West‘s Close To The Mystery last year, a full-length which followed its lead character “through a city in the aftermath of a relationship,” as we continued, “the various rented rooms in which they find themselves representative of those liminal days between what was and what will be.” Now the NYC/Hudson-based artist is back with ‘Offer’, a brand new single on Ruination Record Co. which is perhaps simultaneously the most ambitious and laid-back song West has written to date. An almost ten-minute epic that pairs conversational spoken word vocals with a warm and catchy melody, unfolding like an internal monologue as it moves between casual observations, quantum theory, Socrates and a hundred other subjects. “‘Offer’ is about many things,” as West explains:

It’s about propaganda—how it’s difficult to trace a message back to its source; how there’s never been much room to ask why and what do you mean by that? We tend to take things at face value and then wonder why all we see is a mask. Offer is about learning to accept your blindspots and realizing we all have them/ how we see someone is generally how we see ourselves, so we must have compassion for ourselves first—real forgiveness and letting go—to see another clearly. Offer is about being attached to the story, generational trauma, seeing it and loving it enough to say, “you’ve been with me, my mother, grandmother and great grandmother for so long,” now you can go back to them—”I don’t need to live according to your script anymore.

Lefty Parker – Illusions

Taking inspiration from titans like Townes Van Zandt, New York-based troubadour Lefty Parker has released a number of records over recent years, establishing a hushed and heartfelt style tuned to the key of classic folk. Often beset by the weight of loss and longing, yet never quite ready to surrender its romantic hope. Next month sees the release of Ark, Parker’s brand new full-length album produced by Buck Meek and put out by Airloom, and single ‘Illusions’ gives an indication of what to expect. With Meek joining too, the song is restrained yet all the more striking for it, delivered from a state of chronic uncertainty familiar to those down on their luck, though shot through too with a kind of heartbroken fondness for life, no matter how cruel or uncaring it might sometimes be.

Ark will be released on the 21st October via Airloom.

Neti-Neti – Grace In Rot

The self-described “lo-fi ritual project” of vocalist Amirtha Kidambi (Elder Ones, Mary Halvorson) and percussionist Matt Evans (OHYUNG, Ben Seretan), experimental duo Neti-Neti aims to collapse the distinction between the personal and the political via improvision and collaboration. Forthcoming release Echo of Being / Grace in Rot was recorded over a single day, Kidambi and Evans tapping into both individual grief, collective trauma and well-worn traditions to charge the process with a sense of momentum and fluency. Single ‘Grace in Rot’ highlights the palpable energy of the sound and the emotional urgency which follows. “‘Grace in Rot’ heaved its way out of us during the last take of the session,” the pair explain, “an unexpected flame of physicality that came after a long day and a deep discussion about the evil and cruelty we witness daily in the world.” The result is visceral, cathartic and transportive, threatening to unravel under its own chaotic impetus while always reaching towards transcendence.

vireo – catching minnows

Following on from single ‘Cloudgazers’ released back in 2024, a single we described as “a soft and gauzy song that evokes the act of the title with warm textures, gentle electronics and little squiggly guitar lines,” Pittsburgh-based indie pop outfit vireo are gearing up to release a brand new full-length later this year. For now, single ‘catching minnows’ serves as a curtain raiser to the release. Turning to the natural world in the face of personal challenges, the track could be said to embody the vireo project as a whole. One attuned to the curative power of the environment and the small beauties therein, packed full of brightness and wonder as though written in honour of the joy of being alive.

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This is no doubt helped by the fact the song’s subject is taken right out of Steele’s own life. “Between 2010 and 2014, I worked as a sound technician, pushing faders for legends and locals alike,” he explains. The job included weekly punk and metal shows on Sunday nights, and by that stage things had a tendency to catch up with him. “After a week of working a day job, gigging, and doing sound on other nights, not even the loudest, most energetic punk show could stop me from nodding off at times.”

‘Falling Asleep at the Metal Show’ is therefore both an apology to a specific metal band and a celebration of a wider scene, and indeed the entire concept of a ‘scene’ and their ability to forge a sense of community.  But also a country song in a more general sense. Picking up the pieces after hard work and dreams collide, and realising upon sifting through the rubble that there is only ever one winner in such a smash.

Well the stacks are pushing air
The head banging boys are swinging their hair
I’m still in my seat
The bands’ on fire but I just wanna leave
Going through the motions
When you can’t tap into the flow
Here I am
Falling asleep at the metal show

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Which is an idiosyncratic way of introducing the latest album from Halifax, Nova Scotia band Nap Eyes. Though idiosyncratic seems apt, as they are something of a unique entity. Indeed, it’s difficult to envisage any other act coming up with their brand of hyper-literate laid-back pop, sunny swaying melodies as vessels for intricate postmodern postulations on life, self and the universe. Their previous two albums, Whine of the Mystic and Thought Rock Fish Scale, achieved an admirable blend of catchy low-key infectiousness and deceptive thematic depth, lyrics tumbling forth like messages from the universe in a zoned-our meditative state. Their latest effort, I’m Bad Now is no different, if anything a little more catchy and direct. Leave it to Nap Eyes to write a Pynchonian folk pop album about the multiverse, jam-packed with philosophical musings and wriggling earworms.

At the centre of this is lead Nigel Chapman, whose lyrics and Lou Reed-esque delivery form the spine of every track. The album’s blurb goes a step further, casting him as something of an epistemological explorer, or, in their words, “an existential detective who interrogates social, psychological, and spiritual milieus for clues about the elusive nature of knowledge.” What exactly does this mean, you might ask? Well, the bio expands helpfully: “In this role, the song-persona, if not the songwriter, resembles a monkish, beatifically stoned Columbo, vigilantly squinty-eyed in his metaphysical quest for self-understanding, despite ostensible bumbling on the physical plane.” Something of a real-life Slothrop, where the conspiracy is life itself.

Which may or may not make things any clearer. Luckily, opener ‘Every Time the Feeling’ throws us straight into the mixer with an an ode to doubt and existential woe. Here, a nagging feeling is ever-present, what Pynchon defined as anti-paranoia, “where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long.” But, despite it’s lofty themes, it functions equally well as a rather more grounded pop song, and ultimately the ending could be seen as optimistic, depending on each listener’s own interpretation. As Chapman sings:

“Oh I can’t tell what’s worse:
The meaninglessness or the negative meaning
But I figured out a way
To get on with my life and to keep on dreaming”

Using our universal imposter syndrome as a jumping off point, ‘I’m Bad’ follows fundamental doubt to its paradoxical conclusion. Because too much doubt can becomes an end in itself, the non-answer as an answer, relativism as its own absolute conclusion. The kicker, of course, is that this risks double the pain—nothing substantial in terms of existential nourishment, yet no room for forward progress or hope for anything more meaningful. Which draws us back to the opening track: what’s worse, an endless quest for truth, albeit one where the hope of an answer remains? Or the truth found, but revealed as something empty and unsatisfying? An insatiable hope, or jaded flatness?

‘Judgement’ follows with what plays like a sonic spiral, repetitive and swinging ever downwards with increasing velocity, the guitar squalling like a swarm of insects as Chapman investigates memory both philosophically and biologically. “Think of every single moment in time that would’ve faded from your mind,” he sings, “if not for the rewiring process, the synaptic protein fold caress.” ‘Roses’ is another standout, a rattling rocker compared to the usual sedate Nap Eyes pace. It begins as a song about an unwanted bouquet, but the pseudo-chorus and rousing outro see it become something more, a comment on our very human quest to find connection.

“People look for their reflections
everywhere in everyone
some like a soft glow
some a little sharper depiction”

There’s a country vibe on ‘Dull Me Line’, another song that hits the sweet spot between the immediacy of indie rock and Chapman’s careful lyricism. It’s ostensibly a song about self-doubt, infused with an uneasy sense of directionlessness that, as with Slothrop, begins to edge toward a different take on answering the questions. “Dull me heart” Chapman sings, “Heavy with bored and lazy disappointment art,” and a little later, “Dull me soul / Wandering restlessly without a goal.” Maybe the way to arrive at meaning is to stop running toward it?

As if prompted by these sentiments, things begin to decelerate, tracks like the meandering ‘Sage’, which twirls into the air like the perfumed smoke of a fire tended by the titular medicine man, and ‘White Disciple’ which unfurls slowly from shuffling drums and lazy bass. Closer ‘Boats Appear’ takes this to its conclusion, a track so laid-back it feels downright dreamy, painting the image of boats passing on the horizon as the narrator reflects on existence. Any hint of anxiety or ennui from previous tracks is replaced by patient acceptance, that kind of flooding contentment that comes with a vacation’s late evening, where time seems to stretch like taffy and the mortal tick slows to a comforting rhythm. If the quest for answers is endless, or the answers are unsatisfying, this track seems to say, then why not stop asking?

“It takes time to understand things
And even then, man, things go so slow”

The ultimate triumph of I’m Bad Now is the way it works on several different layers. It’s great without context or lyrical interrogation but, in true postmodern form, closer inspection reveals a fractal-like complexity. Behind the heavy-lidded blasé exterior lies a rich and tangled inner life, an invitation to fall into the folds of Chapman’s brain and watch his thoughts pass by. As such, it’s kind of up to you which version of Slothrop you would prefer to be. Those with enough curiosity or desire can try to arrange the Nap Eyes lines into a magical formation, wrestling with the existential questions in the hope that they will be the first to figure it all out. The rest can take a back seat and let the Big Stuff drift around them, finding comfort in the fact that there are things bigger than us, and beauty in the understanding that they are beyond our grasp.

I’m Bad Now is out via Paradise of Bachelors and you can get it from the Nap Eyes Bandcamp page.

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Alexander is back with Harland, a new eight-track album to be released this week on Sports Day Records. The record, at least partly inspired by trans-Canadian travels which included stops at an isolated Quebecois cabin and tree planting near Vancouver, is a mellow, earthy brand of pop music which expands upon his first release. Packing together the excitement and anxiety and loneliness of new beginnings, he manages to create smooth music without compromising on depth, the sharp edges removed but not forgotten. Serving as a great introduction to the album, single ‘Staring at Photographs’ is a track that’s “both weary of and attracted to nostalgia”, balancing the comfortable respite memories can bring but all the while aware that time is linear and we’ve got to keep on moving forwards. While this may suggest an anxious itch, the song is in fact a laid-back jam. Rather than hanging around to become troublesome, you get the sense that the emotions here are flowing evenly and constantly away from their source, a gentle eddy that might never stop but looks serene and pretty under the right light.

Harland is set for release on the 22nd of July via the good folks at Sports Day Records. You can pre-order via the Harley Alexander Bandcamp page. Harley Alexander is heading out on his first US dates this summer too, so have a gander below to see if he’s stopping near you:

Art by Selina Latour

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The Wall Street Journal premièred the lead single, ‘Amerika’, last week, a track which frontman Paul Murphy says was inspired by Walt Whitman. His poem ‘America’ is a hopeful 1888 view of the nation (“Centre of equal daughters, equal sons / All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old”), something Murphy tries to channel in the lyrics, although the Amerika-with-a-K spelling also brings to mind Kafka and his abstruse, crushing systems. The result is something decidedly of the now, a track about being an individual in the arrangement, torn between romanticism and cynicism, hope and dread. About finding shelter and not giving in. Check it out below:

The Great Detachment will be released on the 4th of March. You can pre-order it now via Dine Alone Records.

Photo by Norman Wong

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‘Reeling’ kicks things off with its laid back and oddball pop, complete with a clattering barrage of percussion in the finale, while ‘manitoba’ accelerates into being, giving you the woozy-gap-in-your-insides feel of a fast car or accelerating aeroplane, before degenerating into weird distorted drums which clear the air and allow things to get a little more poppy on ‘nothing’, a strange blend of manic and dreamy, messy and catchy.

‘Burn this’ is fronted by Eliza Niemi and has noir-ish, slinky vibes, like an easygoing, guitar-based dream pop version of Sylvan Esso. ‘again’ is all sharp little jabbing guitars and occasional swooshing crashes of percussion, as well as a frenzied build at the halfway point (and again at the end) which falls away even quicker than it arrived, while ‘champs’ begins with gentle acoustics and sounds kind of like Andrew Bird fronting The Dirty Projectors. A good indicator of the album as a whole, ‘benny’ is part dreamy soar, part chopped up pop song, before ‘pulses’ ties things up neatly, the title a fine description of the beautiful and almost neoclassical finale, built on a steady and rhythmic cadence, which to me brought to mind the skewed ambient aesthetic of Lejsovka & Freund.

You can but Rough Master now on cassette tape, CD, or as a pay-what-you-can download via the Mauno bandcamp page.

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“You started skipping in a running race,
5m from the finish line you fell from grace.
Do you need to go and walk it off?
Have a sit down, maybe stretch it out.
It’ll heal itself if you give it some time.
Take a deep breath, let it unwind.

Now you’re swimming, the best exercise for pain,
out past those shark nets, you heard your name called again.
He was inviting you in with his grin,
He’s a real fast mover so swim swim swim.

Living will be released on Star House Collective on the 21st August, and the band have announced they are recording their debut full length this summer. In the mean time, you should check out their previous releases on Bandcamp.

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Opener ‘Lookin for Love is a good introduction to the record, with it’s easygoing  charm and grateful lyrics backed by radiant instrumentation and peppered with psychedelic oohs and aahs reminiscent of Evangelicals. ‘Running Thangz’ is more cosmopolitan, the soundtrack to the coolest 80s crime show never written in which both the good and bad guys wear shades and leave one too many buttons undone on their shirts.

“No, I own this floor – this dance floor is my home
Paint your world the colour that’s gonna make you twirl

OoOoOoOohhh we in the same zone
trust your body leave your mind peacefully at home”

‘Baby Blue’ sounds like the more recent Damien Jurado releases, while ‘Trust’ ramps up the tropical ambience and ‘Beautiful Brian’ takes us even further afield to a cosmic paradise, opening with a sound-clip declaring “the only thing I believe up there is the UFOs.” ‘The Finest Scent’ follows the planetary theme with spacey drone before evolving into a joyful pop song that could grace any commercial radio station.

Harley Alexander makes bright music with the sharp edges removed, doped, loose-limbed pop songs, dreamy from a lack of responsibility and washed out from too much sunlight and salt water. This is the sort of music you want to listen to during those small, glorious moments when Real Life backs off to allow an elated contentedness to settle, where the smallest things give you a sense of wonder and joy.

You can buy the album now from Harley Alexander’s Bandcamp page.

P.S. the artwork is by Sophie Wonfor.

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