With the release of Transparent Towns now less than a month away, John Calvin Abney has returned with the title track as the latest single. Featuring Lydia Loveless on backing vocals, the song embodies the spirit of an album concerned with memory and its fickle nature, exploring how the past can become inaccessible as the years accumulate and our recollections can be altered or replaced by dreams. “This song was written and re-written probably ten times, as the sentiment formed,” Abney explains. “I was heavily influenced by the book Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, and learned that the stories we tell of people and places influence the way we perceive them in return and departure. Our memories are altered by subsequent tales and encounters. We arrive at a town worn or leave a city with a faint destination in mind, we do the same with life. Mortality isn’t a stranger to any one of us but I started thinking of what it might be like to reunite with the folks who have gone on ahead of us and what a weary catch up would be like after we arrive.”

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It has been going on eleven years since Anglo-Australian indie pop outfit Allo Darlin’ released their previous full-length We Come From The Same Place, but next month will see the wait ended with new album, Bright Nights. A joint release between Fika Recordings (UK) and Slumberland Records (US), the album has roots in the height of the pandemic, when the band members gathered online to reminisce and reflect on the music they made together, and ultimately vow to revive Allo Darlin’ once conditions allowed. The resulting collection is understandably bittersweet, marked by the passing of time and the increasing weight of themes like love, birth and death, yet always newly aware of the blessing it is to make music and share it with an audience. Latest single ‘Cologne’ typifies the tone, a song full of the kind of tender joy earned through a life well-lived.

Bright Nights will be released in July via Fika Recordings (UK) and Slumberland Records (US).

Constellation Myths – Shadows on the Wall

“A series of vignettes and character sketches that examine agency, belief, and the tensions between the natural and the human-built environment.” That’s how Massachusetts trio Constellation Myths describe their forthcoming album The Cost of Living, an album preoccupied with all the injustices, cruelties and resentments which have come to mark our age. Latest track ‘Shadows on the Wall’ is cuttingly relevant in this regard, detailing the corrosive impact of our continued slide into the digital, and the resulting isolated, individualistic existence can dislocate a person from reality itself. Taking over lead vocal duties, Andy Arch communicates such themes with a suitably jaded air, and as the sound rises with something like brightness, the effect is that of a man cut off and drifting, slowly slipping away from the world.

Dead Slow Hoot – Satellite

“Despite the careful intricacy of the track, the emotion at its core is delivered with unguarded sincerity, Hugo Lynch’s vocals confronting love and love with direct candour to paint a picture wistful and romantic and wise.” So we wrote of ‘All My Love Remains‘, a recent single from Dead Slow Hoot‘s new album, Orbits Intervened. Such earnestness marks the record, though, as singles like ‘Take It Or Leave It‘ and ‘Sleeping Before The Big Day‘ show, it is a release sprawling in style and scope. With the album now out, Dead Slow Hoot have shared final single ‘Satellite’ to further highlight this fact. An introspective song which starts out as a pleasantly upbeat slice of folk rock but eventually rises towards a cathartic crescendo, before clearing again as though with the newfound clarity of sudden epiphany.

The Duke of Norfolk – I Have Never Seen Volcanoes

The recording project of Oklahoma-born songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Adam Thomas Howard, The Duke of Norfolk has made a name blurring the divide between reality and mythology, offering a brand of folk capable of both intimate detail and sweeping grandeur. Howard’s latest work sees him join forces with Ben Lanz (The National/Beirut/Sufjan Stevens), and new single ‘I Have Never Seen Volcanoes’ shows the fruits of the collaboration. Drawing on the Emily Dickinson poem of the same name, the track evokes the unfolding climate catastrophe in all of its sublime violence. “I have never seen / fire and dust spit / down the hillside, / smoke and choke the machine— / Ashen faces, ashen cowhide,” as the track opens. “Trace a line in the dirt; / cut it deeper, carve a border. / See the blood of the earth, / pump it then, play the driller.” The rest of the song fires forward as though charged by such imagery, finding a fervid rhythm and revelatory foreboding.

Till suspension morn
’Till suspension morn
‘Till the angel’s horn

When the break in the churning,
when the sleeping rise up like rosebay,
and the key starts to turn
like the dagger twist’d in the ribcage.

‘I Have Never Seen Volcanoes’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Editrix – The Big E

Not content to rest on their laurels after last year’s superb full-length Viewfinder (an album which made our favourites of 2024) and more recent single ‘I Don’t Miss You‘, Wendy Eisenberg has reunited with Steve Cameron and Josh Daniel and turned their attention back to Editrix. The band’s first new release since 2022, new album The Big E promises to be every bit as ambitious and intense as previous releases, finding the trio further apart geographically, but tight knit in their vision and execution. The title track and lead single gives an idea of what to expect, a song charged with energy yet slightly unnerved in tone, playing like the chaotic, frantic internal landscape of someone gripped by neurotic concerns. “This song is about alien visitors: hoping they’re friendly and curious like the best of us humans,” the band explain. “It’s also about aging, which feels like you’re an alien to certain generations including your younger selves, and the impossibility of being understood.”

Watch the video by Ryan Hover below:

The Big E will be released on the 25th July via Joyful Noise Recordings and you can pre-order it now.

MacGregor Burns – I’m Not Supposed To Be Here Anymore

Through a number of singles in recent months, LA songwriter MacGregor Burns has established a style at once emotionally resonant and idiosyncratic, with songs like ‘Silent Answers‘ and ‘Can’t Go Back‘ reaching between slacker rock and something more folk-adjacent. Latest single ‘I’m Not Supposed To Be Here Anymore’ continues this style, albeit leaning further than ever towards the latter, its stripped back style removing all distractions from Burns’s distinctively nuanced vocals. A voice straining with the accumulated hopes and regrets of a life well lived, relatively plain in its unguarded tone yet stretched by a certain sense of desperation. As though there’s a fire at his back which is creeping closer, or else a train to somewhere better in the distance and just about to leave.

‘I’m Not Supposed To Be Here Anymore’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Ohly – If I Go

Detroit‘s Christian Ohly, recording as straight Ohly, makes what we’ve called “a rich and heartfelt brand of folk rock that manag[es] to pair intimate emotion with cathartic energy,” not to mention a strong narrative throughline to further ground the songs within the nuances of the intricacies of the human condition. Produced by Jr Jr’s Dan Zott, new single ‘If I Go’ is what Ohly describes as his magnum opus. The embodiment of the project, as though everything which has come before has coalesced into a single song. A track full of tiny details and huge themes, zooming into the smallest moments of life in order to evoke the intangible joy of existence.

‘If I Go’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Pickle Darling – Massive Everything

Described by Lukas Mayo as “maybe the first kind of ‘pop’ song I’ve ever made,” ‘Massive Everything’ is not just a new song from Pickle Darling, but an introduction to a new stage in the evolution of the project. Out now via Father/Daughter Records, the single sees the New Zealand-based producer and multi-instrumentalist drop some of the playfulness and poetry of previous releases to instead embrace the exhilaration of being wholly direct. Mayo cites the likes of Robyn, Cher and Ray of Light-era Madonna as inspiration for this style, channelling such pop royalty in how they manage to conjure the entire topography of a person’s emotional landscape within a bold, vivid sound. The result is a love song with all the complications left in. Moreover, one not attenuated by the attached pain and personal baggage but conversely made larger. A picture of a love substantial enough to bear the weight accumulated through living.

Watch the video by Christiane Shortal below:

‘Massive Everything’ is out now via Father/Daughter Records.

Ryan Cassata – a Knack for Overthinking

As a singer-songwriter, actor, performer, writer, activist and motivational speaker, Ryan Cassata is well-versed in sharing his thoughts and ideas with the world, putting himself forward as a proud trans-person in an increasingly hostile world. His debut album with Kill Rock Stars, Greetings from Echo Park,is every bit as open and cathartic as you might expect, Cassata delving into both the wonders and tribulations he has faced, be those stemming from his trans identity, experiences of chronic illness or else the inherently anxious process of growing up. Focus track ‘a Knack for Overthinking’ embodies the spirit of the release. One unapologetic in its unguarded confessionalism. “Queer love songs are protest songs,” as he explains. “Whenever we’re loud about it, it’s a protest to me.”

I’m looking, at bare skin
In the smell of cigarettes
We hard kiss, my head spins
I want your confidence

I’ve got a knack for overthinking
And saying too much
I’ve got a knack for overthinking

Watch the video directed by Alla Arutcheva below:

Greetings from Echo Park is out now via Kill Rock Stars and you can get it from Bandcamp.

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Being Dead is a project built on friendship and trust. A space for Texas-based multi-instrumentalists Falcon Bitch and Gumball to be themselves, however that might manifest in any given moment. New album When Horses Would Run, coming this summer via Bayonet Records, shows how varied and fruitful such a set-up can be, the sound ranging from lo-fi pop and country-inflected rock to something closer to experimental or jazz. Lead single ‘Muriel’s Big Day Off’ captures the duo’s effervescent energy, not to mention the off-the-wall spirit which is always playful but never insincere.

When Horses Would Run is out on the 14th July via Bayonet Records and you can pre-order it now.

Brittain Ashford – Hold On Tight

Trotter, the forthcoming album by Brittain Ashford on Misra Records, is a record about “finality and making regrettable decisions.” A collection of songs crafted in the aftermath of a grief so profound it seemed to seep into anything and everything which comes in close proximity. After the passing of her father, whose surname forms the title of the record, Ashford stayed on a contracted tour, only to run into the full weight of the loss months down the line, a chaotic period which resulted in a cancelled engagement among other things. Single ‘Hold On Tight’ kicks through the ashes with a tangible regret, delivered from the perspective of a newfound distance, allowing a more reflective processing on a fundamentally personal experience.

Hold on tight
I know loving me wasn’t always easy
My entire life, tried to do it right
But I fucked it up completely

Chat Pile – King

After the dazzling, doom-laden intensity of 2022 full-length God’s Country, Oklahoma‘s Chat Pile have returned with Brother’s In Christ, a split with Kansas outfit Nerver on Reptilian Records and The Ghost Is Clear Records. If the previous album railed against capitalism’s pitiless desecration of earth, then the new EP confronts the razed landscape with a kind of fatalistic knowing and utter incomprehension. Because if you pay attention to this world, the misery might not be surprising, but expecting something rarely lessens the impact once it truly arrives. “It’s probably what you’re thinking honestly,” sings leads Raygun Busch. “But I’ve never been to / A place like this / Not even in my dreams.”

Crooks & Nannies – 3AM

“A song which gives in to the rollercoaster ride of intense emotion, no matter how high the peaks or deep the troughs.” That’s how we described ‘Sorry‘, the previous single from Crooks & Nannies‘ LP No Fun, out now via Grand Jury Music. The track was preceded on the release by ‘3AM’, something of a sister song which dials into the same whirlwind of feelings, with everything from volatile sax and “Final Fantasy synths” capturing that disoriented struggle to ground oneself in a world of such hostility. But bursting through this tumult is a big disco beat that closes things out, lending a sense of momentum that might not exactly be triumphant, but it’s momentum all the same.

No Fun is out now via Grand Jury Music and you can get it from Bandcamp.

Laura Wolf – Paper and Plastic

“If reality and fiction are braided into history, then Laura Wolf wants to unpick the threads.” That’s how we concluded our preview of Shelf Life, Wolf’s upcoming album on Whatever’s Clever. Lead single ‘Calligraphy and Calculations’ represented “a sonic of equivalent of family history, where original truths are cherished and embellished into folklore, and stories take on as much importance as the fact of any event.” Latest single ‘Paper and Plastic’ again explores the line between memories and myths, inviting the listener into an ethereal, orchestral soundscape which evokes the foggy allure of retrospection. Watch the video from Dan Criblez below:

Shelf Life is out on the 2nd June via Whatever’s Clever and you can pre-order it now.

Melanie MacLaren – Tourist

Writing of the music of Nashville-based songwriter Melanie MacLaren in the past, we described it as, “indebted to the past and the present without being beholden to either, managing to possess the timeless country spirit without sacrificing any sense of immediacy.” New EP Tourist continues this style, taking well-worn themes of family and loss and addressing them with a tangible immediacy. The title track captures this in all of its poignance, moving through the lows of grief without losing sight of hope. “I wrote ‘Tourist’ for my nieces and nephews during a time when we were all grieving an unimaginable loss in our family,” MacLaren told The Bluegrass Situation. “Overall the song is here to say that most everything is temporary, but that there are some things out there that we don’t understand that are true and eternal.”

Quinn Devlin – Lillian

Pennsylvania-born multi-instrumentalist Quinn Devlin has played with a whole range of acts both on stage and in recording, with Aisha Badru, Alex Lleo, JW Francis and vern matz just a few of the talents he has helped support. Devlin’s new single ‘Lillian’ sees this relationship inverted, with a series of collaborators turning out to bring his own earnest folk style to life. From co-producer Sahil Ansari to contributions from James Woodall (pedal steel and lap steel), Jack Broza (electric guitar), Jordan Wolff (drums), Andy Shimm and Dylan DeFeo (both piano), the range of guests take a laid back indie folk number and lift it into something larger. The result is solo intimacy blown up into something communal, the sound’s careful richness developing into an affirming final chorus.

Quinn Tsan – Roses

The work of Chicago-based songwriter Quinn Tsan has often combined heartfelt emotion with something bolder. Releases like 2014’s Good Winter and more recent single ‘She’s No Better’ blurred the line between folk and rock to conjure a smoking, swaggering barroom sound. New single ‘Roses’ swaps the bravado for something altogether more tender, the stripped back style and pensive croon sounding more like a dispatch from a lamp-lit bedroom at the dead of one bad night too many. But within what appears to be a state of vulnerability, Tsan’s words suggest a sense of agency fully intact, taking control of the situation, no matter of painful it might be.

Don’t buy me roses
Take your clothes from the floor
Leave your silence
Nancy, we don’t belong

Xena Glas – Let Go

Last year, Texas-born, Brooklyn-based visual artist, poet and musician Xena Glas released Movements, an EP which blended classical, ambient, folk and electronic styles to explore their move from southern suburbs to an urban space. A kind of psychogeography of a new environment, as well as a survey of the internal changes that accompany such a culture shock. Latest single ‘Let Go’ is no less inventive or striking, a song built around Glas’s vocals which shimmers with what could be tranquil calm or some slow-gathering energy, ebbing and flowing with a tidal rhythm as intricate details gather and dissipate with a natural ease.

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Though most recent record, 2017’s Sitting with Sounds and Listening for Ghosts, stepped back from some of the more experimental aspects of its predecessors, this interrogation of womanhood continued in its lyrics. Songs spare and vulnerable yet shot through with a certain steeliness. A sense of perseverance in the face of tension and loss that might not be love as we are usually shown it, but is love all the same.

This month sees Moriah Bailey return with a brand new single, ‘So You Say…’. Released on Keeled Scales, the track again utilises the harp to explore the strange relationship between lightness and weight, though also represents Bailey’s fullest arrangements to date. Sarah Reid (violin), Ryan Robinson (percussion) and Ricky Tutaan (guitar) all join to lend their talents, elevating the sound beyond the harp and vocals, and thus expanding the world of Bailey’s music.

But at its heart lies the same willingness to probe below the surface, to view the difficult truth of things. “‘So You Say’ emerged from a place of speaking and not being heard but also deeply struggling with mental health,” Bailey explains. “The song sounds bright in ways but holds a heaviness. It sits with the weight of being diminished, struggling to find a way out of a particular mindset, and losing a sense of self in someone else’s perceptions, wants and ideas.”

‘So You Say…’ is out now via Keeled Scales and is available from the Moriah Bailey Bandcamp page.

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As his moniker suggests, Cox uses his songwriting to explore the black experience, with a special focus on the rural south where he grew up. As such, Magic Boy fuses the intensely personal with the societal and historical, creating a record that manages to be both intimate and sweeping in its commentary, and it’s a testament to the Bartees sound that such a balance is so well achieved. The main emotion of this style is a deformed nostalgia, a kind of wistful sense of heartbreak that shifts momentarily into anger or despair without warning. As on the troubled love song opener ‘You’re Here’, where a failing relationship is viewed not just with the usual melancholy but flashes of violence too. ‘Going Going’ takes this a step further, crafted out of the unforgiving culture and Christianity of the south, the racist soul of a town lingering well past the Civil Rights Act. Worse, the the narrator finds they cannot escape this spirit, even when fleeing.

“Black folks who dance when we’re glad on the tight rope
The women that loved me whipped me with switches
Back in them ditches, dodging tornados, hoping the calvary come
Come on down and get me, Come on down and get me

Now ya gone, (how you left for the coast by yourself)
Now ya gone (when you screamed you don’t need no one else)
How’d you know that I always won
Now I’m gone”

‘Count it Back’ is a soulful folk song that would be at home on any mainstream radio station, the anger and fear that the track communicates is all the more pressing for it. Here, Cox cleverly plays the white expectation against itself, co-opting the gentle pop-folk style that is so often used to tell banal stories of love and loss. The racial violence then comes as a shock to those of us outside of its daily impact, and jarring too, as though such topics should only be told in furious anger or sombre retrospect, or else packaged with a neat redemption or concluding freedom. This stylistic choice, and refusal to play into the set narratives whites deem suitable for such stories, ends up saying so much more than any single lyric ever could.

“They burning crosses from west Texas to Memphis
I seen em burning out there by the lake
No one gives a fuck when they up there burning.
They hit you later like hey blood you OK?
I call my mother every morning for power
And if I didn’t I’d have died or wrecked
I count it back so I can stay with my people
Count it back so I can be there for Mijo”

Featuring the aforementioned Lizzie No, ‘Get Over It’ is a love duet concerning the ability (or lack thereof) to move on from a situation, when “Patience and virtue go off to the wind like embers” and the burden of it all gets too much to bear. ‘Best of You’ is similarly exhausted and beaten, before the dark nostalgia returns in ‘Little Brother’, where the past haunts the present once more, though the bond between brothers shines through despite the failure in communication. The is followed by ‘Eat Your Heart Out’, a track which pushes right into folk-punk territory, Cox’s frantic refrain the opposite of a solution or salvation, rather just the catharsis of airing his frustration and committing it to tape. This is followed by an outro from jazz singer Donna Mitchell-Cox, Bartees’s mother, her gentle croon sounding over slightly off-kilter instrumentation, again evoking the souring of the past, where fond memories are distorted by outside forces.

Magic Boy serves as a lesson, making the point that racial trauma permeates every aspect of the black experience, so that even tender songs about family and friends and lovers are haunted by the chronic spectre, and a constant sense of exhaustion lingers. I think, as a white audience, we’re predisposed to expect protests about racism to end with some final victory. We like the fury and trauma to be backed up with perfect examples of the unbreakable black spirit, as though there might be some value or romance within suffering. In portraying something closer to reality, Bartees & the Strange Fruit refuses us this—with the hope more focused on survival than triumph, and prone to serious lapses—and instead gives a snapshot of the genuine black experience.

Magic Boy is out now via Pineapple Record Co., and you can get it now from Bandcamp.

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“A kind of communal voice for the people of native cultures being ignored into oblivion by those with influence in modern America… [a celebration of] the people who are under-represented in US entertainment”

We are saving our review for nearer to the July release date but in the mean time we were lucky enough to get a chance to speak with Crain and delve into her writing process and influences.

Jon: I was writing about an album called Grow/Decompose by Young Jesus which seemed to be somewhere between the traditional album and narrative-driven concept album, and it struck me that this seems not only clever and enjoyable but also a very modern way of writing. That is, fragmented and but cohesive on a wider scale. Under Branch & Thorn & Tree (not to mention your previous albums) strikes me as much the same, a collection of songs that are loosely related but without a single clear narrative. Do you feel the same way? Is each song a separate story, so to speak?

Samantha: Each step of the process involved in making an album is very focused for me, in that, it happens in bursts. I usually write most of the songs in a concentrated amount of time, then completely fixate on the arrangements of those songs for a time, then move to recording and production ideas, and then on to the packaging and art and media surrounding the album. So yes, it makes sense that most of my albums including this one have a theme running throughout them because of the manner in which I work on them. I remain largely the same person throughout the process of the album because it moves very quickly. My creativity comes in bursts, as I said. In the case of this one, Under Branch & Thorn & Tree, I was focused on the importance of painting women as multi-dimensional people in a working class, blue collar world. It moves outside of that small focused area at times to include underdogs of all types, any set of marginalized people. After writing “Kid Face”, my last album, I felt I had really dried up my well of personal experiences because that album was so autobiographical. So I needed to look around me for inspiration. But, back to the songs relating to each other, yes, they all do relate to each other because I wrote them with a target in mind. Each song is its own instance though and exists encompassing the bulls-eye.

You told Stereogum that you “don’t write protest songs in the traditional sense, but I’m always listening to the voices of people around me.” I recently read an article by Alynda Segarra (of Hurray For The Riff Raff) where she calls on folk musicians to ‘fall in love with justice’. Do you feel that folk still has the influence and reach to have a positive impact on societal matters?

I definitely think music still has the power to influence politically and socially, it is just a matter of bringing it back into the popular mainstream. I would love to see a time when art does not just imitate life, but art creates the kind of life it imagines. I think this has manifested before in the 60s folk scene, punk in the 70s, a lot of Mento and Reggae, I could go on…. Music has the power to change minds and to nudge humanity down a different path but for the most part I feel like most music just wants to follow the mass around asking what they like and what they want from them. There are bigger things going on, music and art needs to direct attention towards those injustices. Its a good challenge too, to try to do that in a creative way, not just a blatant, literal way.

To return to that Stereogum piece, you said that the songs are written from the perspective of the underdog, “the 99% of us that are working people.” Do you feel that folk (or at least the semi-mainstream line) has been somewhat taken from the working class? Would you lay the blame with the deluge of super-popular middle-class banjo strummers that have flooded the airwaves over the past few years? Or do you think true folk continues independent of popular trends?

The music of the people will exist regardless of what is going is on in the mainstream, there has always been an underground and there will continue to be because zeal and passion will always remain. However, I do think that the music successfully reaching our ears is based on the interests and experiences of a Lilliputian and privileged party. As controversial as the idea may be, coarseness and affliction have been the backdrops for the most moving art, and, yes, the fading recognition of a passionate 99% in favor of a white and heterosexual deep pocket has made music and art quite insipid.

On the note of folk being taken away from the people, the Segarra piece I mentioned earlier focusses on how folk music is has become something made by and for white heterosexual men, something which I think could be applied to art (or rather: Art, the important capitalised sort) in general. I’ve read a few similar pieces recently: Mitski said she feels she has to be “150 percent and better than everybody in the room to be considered competent,” author Claire Vaye Watkins recently had an epiphany via Twitter where she realised she had been writing to impress white males, and Anwen Crawford wrote about how female music critics aren’t taken seriously. Do you agree that the whole idea of approval/praise in Art is geared towards what men want to consume? Do you feel you have ever put out something which went against your artistic instincts in order to gain patriarchal approval/validation? What needs to change to ensure people have creative freedom in the future?

I do know this is something that happens, artists, especially female artists, feeling they must pander to men in order to be successful, but I’m much too obstinate to let anyone have much influence over what I put out into the world. Not everyone has the same disposition though so the main thing here that we need to work towards imparting is gender and race equality, I’m not talking about legally (although that is a huge first step), I mean really injecting those principles into the framework of society. The more widespread and standard those principles become, the closer we get to a place where artists create freely, and, even more importantly, where people live freely.
I read that you once studied Creative Writing to some extent in college? Do songs blossom from your story writing, or vice versa? Or are they separate endeavours without much crossover?

My “extent” of college lasted just under 2 semesters, so like 8 months. I hated college and I got out of there as soon as I saw another option. Anything I learned about writing, I learned from just reading a lot. I used to write short stories as a kid and into my teenage years but the minute I started writing songs, that all went out the window, I had found the most fitting form of writing for myself. So songwriting is all there is now. I’ve dabbled with the idea of play writing and maybe getting back into short story writing but I’d need to really switch gears to fully focus on and learn that discipline.

Does literature have a big influence on your music? [if so] Who would you say are the writers who have had the biggest impact on your work?

Yes, most of the words that inspire me most weren’t set to music. D.H. Lawrence, Breece D’J Pancake, Dylan Thomas, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Louise Bogan, Flannery O’Connor.I know it’s kind of par for the course of a musician but is it ever a struggle releasing new music? I’ve always wondered how artists feel when complete strangers at their shows know all the words and cherish the songs as something personal to them. Is it difficult to hand over the songs to the listeners after expending so much energy and emotion?

I don’t find it difficult. For me, by the time the album is coming out, by the time the songs are reaching a public, my energy has already cleared the intensity of the connection with the songs. I can still speak about them and sing them with fervor and dedication because they are mine, but the hypersensitivity has mellowed, a bit like “I can see clearly now the rain is gone”.

Finally, could you share four or five of the acts you are listening to at the moment. They can new or old, popular or obscure, whatever you find yourself returning to.

Favorite music right now: Frazey Ford, Chad VanGaalen, Eef Barzelay, Chopin Nocturnes, and Sibylle Baier.

Samantha Crain’s new album, Under Branch & Thorn & Tree, is out on the 17th July. You can pre-order it now from her official website or Full Time Hobby, and if you sign-up to the mailing list then you can get ‘Outside The Pale’ as a free download right now. The impatient among you should head over to the store and delve into her back-catalogue. Crain is also touring extensively this summer, including some UK dates (see below). A full list can be found here.

31^st July : Perth – Southern Fried Roots Festival

1^st Aug: Perth – Southern Fried Roots Festival

2^nd Aug: Glasgow – Broadcast

3^rd Aug: Leeds – Brudenell Social Club

4^th Aug: Manchester – Gullivers

5^th Aug: Bristol – The Louisiana

6^th Aug: London – Sebright Arms

7^th Aug: Brighton – Hope and Ruin

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“I don’t write protest songs in the traditional sense, but I’m always listening to the voices of people around me. These stories are told from the perspective of the underdog, the 99% of us that are working people. They might not be literal protest songs, but the lives of the people within these songs speak at the same volume if you listen.”

Check out the track in the player below:

The album, Under Branch & Thorn & Tree, will be released on the 17th July and you can pre-order it now from Full Time Hobby.

The post Samantha Crain – Outside the Pale appeared first on Various Small Flames.

I am paraphrasing here but the sentences above capture exactly what makes the record so great. In The Throes is a collection of songs that play like perfect short stories, writing that has been mercilessly editted and revised so that each and every word has been forced to justify its existence. Each song feels distilled, reduced to its purest and most brilliant form.

The real masterstroke is putting together all of these killer lines and making them fit together into something that sounds like a stream of conciousness, as if they are the words of a man spilling his inner self for the first and only time. The songs are simultaneously highly polished and roughed up, carefully crafted and organic.

As for comparisons, I guess you can take your pick from your favourite songwriters. The slower finger picked songs such as ‘3:59AM’ bring to mind Joe Pug, and Nine Bullets suggested Townes Van Zandt (with which I concur), but there are plenty of others you could name too. Nebraska-era Springsteen, Jason Isbell, Steve Earle, Tom Petty…  Moreland is in no way out of place among any of the gravely poets that make up the big names of songwriting.

The whole gamut of emotions are covered on In The Throes, from sadness and desperation (I swore the days were over, courting empty dreams / I worshiped at the altar of losing everything) to earnest joy (I got the guiltiest conscience / Listening for a savior on a Saturday night / I got my ear to the ground / You got Easter Sunday in your eyes) and even humour (I guess by now, I’m supposed to be a man // But my grandmother still gives me ten bucks on my birthday). Some artists make songs that are made memorable by just one masterful line, John Moreland produces songs with masterful lines as his only ingredient.

You can buy the album from Last Chance Records.

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