Later this spring Chicago‘s Babe Report will release their debut full-length album Did You Get Better via Exploding In Sound, the long awaited follow up to their rambunctious 2021 EP The Future of Teeth. But if the band took their time between releases, they waste none within the songs themselves. The ten tracks clock in at less than half an hour in total and all are charged with the same frantic momentum which made aforementioned EP such a fun experience. Or perhaps even more momentum, as opener and lead single ‘Turtle of Reaper’ attests. A searing indictment of clickbait culture which burns white hot, the chorus invokes the hysteria of the Millennium Bug as guitars and drums combine into a frenzy of their own.

Cosmo Sheldrake – More Than A Mountain

London-born, Stroud-based composer and multi-instrumentalist Cosmo Sheldrake always pushes the boundaries of what music can do and be. His previous album Wild Wet World offered undersea soundscapes which incorporated everything from “plaintive whale song to clicking parrotfish and snapping shrimp.” Latest record Eye To The Ear is even more ambitious, a twenty-one song album which combines traditional and electronic instrumentation and also, to quote the album notes, “both human and more-than-human voices” to address both the dire situation faced by the natural world as well as the radical possibilities which might cease or reverse its destruction. Single ‘More Than A Mountain’ is as good a place to dive in as any, offering an understated, brooding tone as it meditates on the scene before us.

Got the beast but left the burden,
It’s the step before the fall,
It’s the pause before the question,
It’s the window or the wall

Little Wings – Ha Ha Blues

Back in February we introduced High On The Glade, the forthcoming album from Little Wings on Perpetual Doom with single ‘Bubbles Go Pop’. A song “every bit as idiosyncratic and inventive as you’d hope,” we wrote, which told “the story of a wild party in a zany vaudevillian procession befitting of a Pynchon novel.” Second single ‘Ha Ha Blues’ might have a more languid rhythm but the writing is no less inventive. Beneath the  rhythm’s apparent warmth stirs a darker, melancholic edge. “Field thinks of this as being his most Irish record, full of heartbreak and violence,” the album notes describe, and ‘Ha Ha Blues’ hints at this side of the record despite its sunny disposition.

Ha ha blues what can I do you for?
What did you choose before a door in your distance
My what news mining persistence
How many wishes once the floor falls through?

Max Blansjaar – Burning In Our Name

After single ‘Anna Madonna’, a song which “acknowledges the hurtful nature of the world and the resulting temptation to react with anger or bitterness” but “becomes the antithesis to such moods,” Max Blansjaar has shared ‘Burning In Our Name’ to further introduce upcoming album False Comforts on Beanie Tapes. It’s another blurring of the line between wry humour and earnest emotion as Blansjaar negotiates the experience of perpetual difficulty that is existing in this world of ours. “Caught up in a maze of hedonists and lies / Putting all our faith in devils in disguise,” as he sings in the chorus. “Just trying to escape when everything’s on fire / And burning in our name.”

nudista – Somebody Else

‘Somebody Else’ is the latest single from London duo nudista (Pilar Matji Cabello and Robbie Carman), ahead of their sophomore EP Nothing Makes Sense Until It Does on Sad Club Records. As with previous singles ‘Different Eyes’ and ‘Waiting Line’, it’s a song full of emotive introspection and a desire to live a truer, better connected life. “’Somebody Else’ is about coming to the realisation of having been living a life not trusting your own voice and path,” Cabello explains. “It explores the idea of not knowing fully who you are, about going on a self-exploration journey to find the voice within you and to tune into your own instinct.” It might unfurl with a gentle grace, all soft acoustic guitar and subtle percussion, but it’s message of self-determination is a powerful one. As Cabello puts it at the end of the chorus: “I guess I’ve just been living for somebody else.”

Nothing Makes Sense Until It Does will be released via Sad Club Records and you can pre-order it now from the nudista Bandcamp page.

Shit Present – Acting Tough

“Start again and you’ll be fine / Aren’t you sick of looking for answers all the time?” So ask Exeter outfit Shit Present on the title track of their forthcoming EP, Acting Tough on the ever-reliable Specialist Subject Records. The song introduces the band’s signature blend of pop punk energy, emo sincerity and raw punk rock attitude, making for a sound at once empathetic and cathartic. A useful blend considering the track’s intentions. An attempt to disarm the defence mechanisms of insecurity, and banish the nagging weight of pessimism through sheer momentum and shout-along release.

It’s such a shame to have to see you acting tough
Did somebody make you feel like you aren’t good enough

Tara Jane O’Neil – Glass Island

Written during what she calls “the skirmishes and shuffle of the seven years since her self-titled album,” The Cool Cloud of Okayness is the forthcoming new album from California multi-instrumentalist and visual artist Tara Jane O’Neil. Fittingly for a record preoccupied with life’s changeable nature, it was recorded at O’Neil’s home studio, which is built on the ashes of her previous home destroyed by the Thomas wildfire that devastated southern California in 2017. These themes of destruction and new growth, life’s cyclical rhythms and cruel repetitions snake throughout the record, nurturing green shoots of hope in the charred earth of loss and grief. Latest single ‘Glass Island’ explores these patterns with all the delicate beauty the title suggests. “Another day,” O’Neil sings, “ring around the moon and back again,
dig in again.”

The song comes complete with a video by Harry Dodge:

The Cool Cloud of Okayness is out on the 26th April via Orindal Records and you can pre-order it now.

tilt – all and nothing

tilt is the project of Brooklyn-based trio Isabel Crespo Pardo (vocals), Kalia Vandever (trombone, vocals) and Carmen Quill (acoustic bass, vocals), who draw on their considerable solo credentials to make formally inventive, jazz-inflected art pop. Next month, tilt will release their debut album something we once knew on Dear Life Records, a record which takes us by the hand and leads us into a world of improvisation and idiosyncratic style. Lead single ‘all and nothing’ feels like a doorway into this landscape, a calm song that breathes in an organic rhythm behind its careful composition. A delicate but confident vocal duet rises and falls on the mournful draught of Vandever’s trombone, tracing elegant and unexpected patterns on the backdrop of negative space. The result is both bright and somehow pensive, like the shapes thrown by golden afternoon sunlight as it slants through a window.

Work Wife – Control

“A warm and introspective song of trying to find yourself in the vast bustle of the city amidst its noise and countless strangers […] ending in a thumping singalong finale.” That’s how we described ‘Strangers’, the first single from Work Wife‘s EP Waste Management. With the EP now out via Born Losers Records, latest single ‘Control’ highlights a different side to the release, swapping out the intimate clarity of the opener in favour of something dreamy and enveloping. Despite clocking in at barely two minutes, the track possesses a real sense of scale, washing over the listener with layered richness. When Meredith Lampe’s vocals eventually emerge, it feels as though you have passed into the centre of something to find the intimate truth within.

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Latest single ‘Waiting Line’ builds upon this spirit, ramping up the rhythm and packing all the heart we’ve come to expect to build something as cathartic as it is compassionate. “‘Waiting Line’ is about being frustrated with someone who is constantly trying to escape reality and scared to face life, constantly running away from it,” Pilar Matji Cabello explains, but instead of allowing the frustration to harden into anger, nudista take the opposite approach. “I just wanted to write a fun song that gets people shaken up a bit so you can dance off all your frustrations away.”

Nothing Makes Sense Until It Does will be released by Sad Club Records on 16th May. Order it now from the nudista Bandcamp page.

Photo by Nat Faulkner

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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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To celebrate the arrival of their brand new record, Embody, Hamilton’s Basement Revolver have unveiled the final single, ‘Dissolve’. We previously described how the album displays a “willingness to confront the intricacies of modern life with a newfound steel and depth,” and the new single is full of the compassion and solidarity which makes this possible. An ode to figuring things out together.

Carli & The Dark – Voicemail

Carli & The Dark is the folk rock project of Phoenix-born, Brooklyn-based songwriter Carli Naff. Latest single ‘Voicemail’ concerns losing a parent, specifically that strange half second when the urge to contact them arises out of well-worn habit, a wish to share a simple moment of a day. The song emerges from this brief period where they are still alive, still waiting, and follows it through the renewed sense of loss before culminating in a compassionate group refrain which features Naff’s mother and siblings among other loved ones. “All my peeps who grieved together,” as she puts it. “It’s a little detail that really brings me a sense of safety at the end, of being held.”

Saying my nickname in a voicemail from your car
You were there, there you are
And though you are not around,
You would love this song I found

Cinder Well x Jim Ghedi – I Am a Youth That’s Inclined to Ramble

Cinder Well and Jim Ghedi have teamed up for a new two-song single, reinterpreting traditional folk ballads. ‘I Am a Youth That’s Inclined to Rambled’ highlights how the pair accentuate the stark loneliness of the material with sparse arrangements haunted by foreboding drone. A song of vast distances and separation, sung into a soundscape as empty and inscrutable as the ocean itself.

I Am a Youth That’s Inclined to Ramble is out now via Free Dirt Records and is available from the Cinder Well Bandcamp page.

hemlock – to carry (feat. Laith)

Described as an “interstate phone-fi bedroom folk saga of sorts,” talk soon is the full-band Chicago-based project hemlock. Latest single invites long-time friend and collaborator Laith Scherer and explores the nuances of a relationship as it changes over time and distance. A song of hushed yet heartfelt vignettes which rises toward an impassioned finale, providing snapshots of love in its various guises.

it’s okay
we carry our pain
in separate ways
on different days
but I’ll be there for you

Jeremy Squires – Drift

We’ve written about North Carolina native Jeremy Squires numerous times, an artist working in the American songwriting tradition of sharing heart and soul with generous helpings of grit and honesty. Ahead of a new album, slated for release later this year on Blackbird Record Label, Squires has unveiled a new single, ‘Drift’. It’s a song that finds him at his devastating best, built on just acoustic guitar, harmonica and vocals that quaver with both exhausted despondency and a steely inner strength. “I was sad,” he sings, “Now I’m lost / I forgot where I belong.”

Knuckle Pups – Soft Attraction

Ahead of their upcoming album, TV Ready, Denver “soda punk” outfit Knuckle Pups have unveiled single ‘Soft Attraction’. The track is an encapsulation of what such a genre entails, taking the fizzy energy of indie and adding an anarchic punk edge, though the songs are far from one-dimensional sugar rushes. Principle songwriter Oliver Holloway writes songs spread across the gamut of moods and tones, making room for earnest emotion and ironic playfulness within the same track, and as the new single shows, this often builds into triumphantly cathartic crescendos.

TV Ready is set for release sometime later this year.

Mouse – Pinned To An Avalanche

Based between Sunshine Coast and Brisbane, Mouse formed over a mutual appreciation of noisy DIY music, and thus set about making it themselves. The first single from forthcoming debut Here Was Then on Kitty Records, ‘Pinned to an Avalanche’ is all about escaping worry and doubt through some larger, consuming present, and Mouse oblige by recreating the descending wall of snow with their dense and hefty sound. Check out the video directed by the band and shot by Harley Jones:

Here Was Then will be released by Kitty Records later this year.

nudista – inasmuch

Next month sees the release of nudista’s Halfway Here EP on Sad Club Records, but in the meantime they have unveiled a new standalone single, ‘inasmuch’. The song is a great introduction to Pilar Matji Cabello and Robbie Carman’s work, a clarified dream pop which seeks to communicate directly and honestly. “It is a message to say that we are capable of evolving and moving forward even when it is scary,” as Cabello puts it, the gentle rhythmic pull drawing the listener close and compelling them onward.

Oceanator – Bad Brain Daze

April sees the return of Oceanator with Nothing’s Ever Fine, a brand new album on Polyvinyl Records and Big Scary Monsters which looks to build upon the apocalyptic themes of 2020’s Things I Never Said. Lead single ‘Bad Brain Daze’ typifies the duality of tenuous optimism and crushing pessimism which marks the record. The sound of existing within an unfolding disaster where the conclusion is still unclear, and nevertheless delivered with Elise Okusami’s characteristically triumphant energy. Check out the video directed by Chris Farren below:

Nothing’s Ever Fine is out on the 8th April via Polyvinyl Records and Big Scary Monsters and you can pre-order it now from the Oceanator Bandcamp page.

Sonic Løland – Up to You

Norwegian musician Anders Løland spent much of 2020 experimenting with styles and sounds, building up a library of ideas and demos which would form the basis of And Then The Sun Came Up, the debut album of his Sonic Løland project. Due for release this autumn via Koke Plate, the album shows off the full spectrum of Løland’s inspiration, creating a new brand of indie folk with ambient styles, electronic drums and rich 60s sensibilities, as shown by lead single, ‘Up to You’.

And Then The Sun Came Up will be released by Koke Plate this coming autumn.

Stephen Durkan – Prayer

Combining spoken word with electronic and ambient styles, Glasgow’s Stephen Durkan seems the latest in a long line of cynical Scottish preachers, bitter and sardonic yet bursting with a verbal energy. Written in collaboration with multi-instrumentalist/producer Niko O’Brien and released via Upcycled Sounds Records, his debut EP The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Ourselves both confirms and subverts this label. The anger and frustration are palpable, but beneath this lies something else. A flimsy belief in the continued value of critiquing the society in which we find ourselves, in imagining something new. Check out the first single ‘Prayer’ below:

Teen Idle – Burning

The music of Teen Idle might be an almost entirely solo endeavour recorded in a New Jersey basement, but you’d never guess it from the sound. For Sara Abdelbarry rejects the lo-fi aesthetics of many garage and bedroom acts for something more full-bodied. Take latest single, ‘Burning’, its rich sound featuring electric guitar, bass guitar, keys, synth, shaker, maracas, claps, lighter and sound effects all played by Abdelbarry, with only the drums delegated to Danny Murray. What emerges is an examination of unrequited love in all of its vivid detail, hope, bitterness and unabashed emotion rising into a huge climax.

I climbed up to the top alone
And watch the city burn below
If you won’t help me put her to rest
I’ll dig the hole by myself

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