In February we previewed Shadow Child, the latest album from Abigail Lapell which was recorded while the Canadian songwriter was pregnant and unsurprisingly explores motherhood. “The tracks emerged stripped back and stark,” we wrote, “a stylistic move at least in part dictated by Lapell’s difficult experiences with IVF and miscarriage that comes to paint the journey to parenthood in all of its too-often unspoken truth.” With the release fast approaching, Lapell has shared the title track along with a video to further introduce this style. “I recently found all my old super 8 films, and I thought this odd little black and white claymation might fit well with ‘Shadow Child’, a song about pregnancy and childbirth – creation and transformation,” she explains. “But when I actually tried pairing the two, it was crazy. The unedited ‘backwards’ visuals fit the song exactly perfectly – like down to the second. Complete with the final reveal of the figure’s shadow, and then my own hands in silhouette, returning it to a formless blob. I couldn’t believe it.”

Shadow Child will be released on the 8th May via Outside Music and you can pre-order it now from the Abigail Lapell Bandcamp page.

Air Mail – Won’t You

Following on from singles ‘Wide Awake (a.m.)’ (“uses a melodic and melancholic style to explore the strange sensation of being faced with disaster at a distance”) and ‘Moss Song’ (“its warm tones and languid rhythms allowing in the outside environment, playing like spring blooming in real time”), Niko Francis’s Air Mail has unveiled debut LP a.m. Continental with latest track ‘Won’t You’. Again falling somewhere between Lenderman-esque alt country and the sun-drenched pop of acts likes Cut Worms, the track explores the sensation of a relationship being slowly dismantled by forces beyond anyone’s control. It meditates not only on the pain of a separation but the enduring fondness that survives beyond physical remove. “As long as words are sincere / and what you want is clear,”  Francis sings in the first verse, “as long as you still feel near, even when you’re far from here / won’t you stay and love me?”

Ben Auld – Red Bandana

This May, Norwich-based artist Ben Auld will release Loserdom, a brand new album via Safe Suburban Home and Repeating Cloud which signals something of a sea change. Whereas Auld’s previous work tended towards the twee end of indie folk, the new record draws on influences like Tony Molina and Teenage Fanclub to offer loud, scrappy and spirited style of power pop. Lead single ‘Red Bandana’ heralds this new sound, as well as the mix of unabashed sincerity and tongue-in-cheek charm which marks his writing. “I was trying to write something that captured the explosive pang that can happen when you reflect on places you’ve lived and people you’ve known,” Auld explains of the single. “That sudden reminder of a life you used to have, the impossibility of returning to it, and the pain of living in the past.”

Frog – Je Nes Sais Pas

When cult favourites Frog put out their 1000 Variations of the Same Song album last year, we didn’t think they were actually aiming for the big four figures. But follow-up The Count arrived hot on the heels of its predecessor and now the New York outfit are already gearing up to release the third full-length in the cycle, Frog for Sale. Described as an album “about how money sometimes gets in the way of love,” the record sees the Bateman brothers take inspiration from the likes of Buddy Holly and Paul McCartney, again switching up the Frog sound while maintaining that idiosyncratic charm that’s made them so beloved. Lead single ‘Je Nes Sais Pas’ is available now, a track of bright energy and fading dreams, not to mention a trademark wit and humour. “You’re just no good anymore since you went away and didn’t darken any door,” as Bateman sings in one typical verse. “Now you got your hair like Anna Wintour except poor.”

Jillian Lake – Human

“Attuned to emotional forces and their significant gravitational pull, namely the strange tension of watching a loved one attempt to navigate a difficult period, willing more than anything to save them from the turmoil but conscious of being dragged into the mire yourself.” So we wrote of ‘Cold Where You Are’ by Jillian Lake last month, a single which embodies the balance between compassion and suffering which marks the Vancouver-based songwriter’s work. Now Lake has shared brand new single ‘Human’ and this balance has never been more evident. It’s an intensely personal song which reckons with the self in the most intimate way possible, displaying Lake’s turn towards richer arrangements while still evoking the austere stillness of an empty room. A place where there is nowhere to look but inwards, no matter how uncomfortable. “’Human’ is a song I wrote about the fear that you’re losing pieces of yourself, and starting to not recognize yourself,” Lake explains. “I remember the first time I saw the Eiffel tower I was so amazed and astonished. When I went back to Paris years later I just stared at it and didn’t really feel anything. It scared me that I lost that sense of wonder. I missed the old version of myself.”

‘Human’ is out now via streaming services.

Matthew Squires & Sunk Coast – Wing Song

We’ve followed the idiosyncratic, ever-inventive songwriting of Matthew Squires for a number of years now, from his ‘Ballad of Norm MacDonald‘ and quasi-cover ‘Poor Men Southeast of Portland‘ to ‘Song of a Cactus‘ in 2024. Now, having moved to Ithaca, New York, Squires has teamed up with Zach Totta of Sunk Coast for a new track, and the result is no less distinctive. With vocals that rival Daniel Johnston in their ability to echo Kermit the Frog, the song is classic Matthew Squires, proving that genuinely compassionate music need not leave playfulness or strangeness at the door. “In the face of the absurd, it’s there I’ll find my answer,” he sings in one fitting verse, “I’ll decode the hidden words inside the movements of a dancer: / It’s the story of a king who forgot if he has merit / He sprouts himself some wings and then he sings ‘til all can hear it.”

Old Amica – Bländverk

“A record which explores time with Old Amica’s signature care and patience […] suspended in a negative space seemingly disconnected from anything tangible, memories floating by in abstract grace.” That’s how we described the Swedish duo’s album För alltid back in 2024, again noting how their blend of organic and digital sensibilities manages to evoke memory in all of its emotional depth. With a new full-length set for release next month via Whitelabrecs, Old Amica are now back with ‘Bländverk’, a spare piano-based track that again explores the poignant, often ethereal world of recollection. Stretched across ten minutes, the song mimics the gauzy filter memory can bring, where the reality of a moment is softened, a monument worn smooth by the passing of time.

Sulka – All Bets Off

This summer Glasgow-based songwriter Lukas Clasen, AKA Sulka, will release new full-length Bute on Lost Map and No Soap Records. Following last year’s single ‘Halloween’, that as we said previously combined “subdued vocals with an eerie backdrop of distorted guitars and synths,” he has now released a second track from the album to further whet appetites. Titled ‘All Bets Off’, it’s an ostensibly charming indie pop song that nevertheless delves into a toxic relationship. And not your average one either. Written from an equine perspective, it explores the exploitation at the heart of horse racing. “The song was partly inspired by a storyline in the TV show The Sopranos, where Tony buys a race horse and develops a genuine love for it,” Clasen explains. “I thought writing a song from the horse’s perspective would make an interesting device for exploring the ups and downs of a volatile relationship”

Tory Silver – Microwave

Pittsburgh-based Tory Silver makes a brand of indie rock that she says “[channels] the small joys and inevitable uncertainties of residing in a body.” She has a new record, In Through the Front with Lasers, coming at the end of May via Michi Tapes and has unveiled new single ‘Microwave’ in anticipation. The song is set in the cold chill of dawn, our narrator sat bleary-eyed in their kitchen, enjoying the quiet ahead of a day of selling their body for what Silver describes in an Instagram post as a “silly grocery job under crapitalism.” There’s a healthy does of existential dread sure, but there’s also enough garage rock crunch for it to feel rousing too. An anthem for the masses forced to drag themselves out of bed every morning to keep on keeping on.

Scrambled eggs
On my plate
Getting cold
Microwave

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The single offered the first taste of new full-length album För alltid, a record which explores time with Old Amica’s signature care and patience. The songs follow ‘Tiden Far’ in their elusiveness, suspended in a negative space seemingly disconnected from anything tangible, memories floating by in abstract grace. Opener ‘Vågorna på Arcus’ sets the tone, an ambient track with a sense of distance, not to mention a balance between intimacy and heft. Another juxtaposition informs ‘Klorofyll’, its layers of field recordings seeing birdsong and something altogether more electronic meet within a wistful soundscape. Another dispatch from the past where memories of the organic peek through a digital medium.

Described by the artist as a “homage to an old friend slowly floating away from us, on a wooden raft under the starlit sky,” ‘Mot natten’ sees Old Amica maintain the ambient style while leaning someway back towards the folk end of the spectrum. A song almost Sigur Rós-esque in its gathering tones and landing somewhere adjacent to Radical Face with the fondness of the hummed vocals. The result possesses an almost ritualistic tone, a kind of funeral procession for the cherished individual to shepherd them towards whatever waits on the other side.

This same blend of melancholy and wonder runs through the length of För alltid. Be it the shining ‘Gammalt ljus’ or shadowed ‘Neckar’, the plaintive simmer of ‘Till dig’. A distinctly human sound rising through accumulated time and distorted static, something represented almost literally in ‘Sommaren 96’. It’s a song which energes through snowy fuzz without quite conquering it, ever-haunted by snatches of analogue transmissions whose meaning has long since disintegrated. But emerge the song does, a fact which seems intrinsic to the album as a whole. The universe is a lonely place, and time only makes the chasm deeper. Yet somehow we endeavour to reach across the void, even if it is only in small gestures of sound.

För alltid is out now and available from the Old Amica Bandcamp page.

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Back in May we wrote about Turn Around For Me / See You Soon, the new double single from Glasgow‘s Constant Follower ahead of their anticipated second album The Smile You Send Out Returns To You, coming early next year via Last Night From Glasgow. “[Stephen] McAll and co. breathe extra life into the arrangement,” we wrote of ‘Turn Around For Me’, “and the song swells with an affirming rhythm which tips it towards indie rock territory.” The follow-up ‘See You Soon’ is no different. A continuation of the band’s exploration of memory which draws on the concept of saudade—the nostalgic longing for some absent person or thing—the song captures a picture of everyday life as haunted by a missing piece. Something which can never be resolved, a wound which will go on hurting.

Jordan Whitlock, Memory Spells – Heaven and Here

Back in February, we wrote about the collaboration between songwriter/producer Jordan Whitlock and Matt Bauer‘s Memory Spells, describing single ‘Take My Hand’ as “Suffused with the lush, shadowy grandeur of Lynch at his most romantic.” Now the duo have returned with a brand new single ‘ Heaven and Here’, another impressively atmospheric piece of cinematic pop music. Combining ambient and classical elements with Whitlock’s piercingly poignant vocals, it has all the drama and aching emotion of a tragedy. Sombre strings ache and sway over glitchy atmospherics and the muted thump of percussion as Whitlock delivers lyrics that possess a spare and opaque poetry.

Wildflowers bloom
Bend toward the sun
I follow you out through the waves
Nothing between
Heaven and here
Only the words I couldn’t say

‘Heaven and Here’ is out now via streaming services.

Lutalo – Ocean Swallows Him Whole

Following on from 2023’s AGAIN, a record which explored the various forms of oppression woven through our societies, Lutalo is returning this September with debut full-length The Academy on Winspear. Described as a time capsule of lessons learnt in their first chapter of life, the album sees the Vermont-based singer-songwriter delve into their past and invite the audience along for the ride. Single ‘Ocean Swallows Him Whole’ uses the doomed figure of Icarus to capture the peaks and troughs of this journey, drawing an energizing momentum from adrenaline rush, even if it comes from a fall.

Watch the video by director, cinematographer and editor Rich Smith below:

The Academy is out on the 20th September via Winspear and you can pre-order it now.

 Melanie MacLaren – Heaven Is

A song she says is “about a lot of the myths and imagery we’re fed about the afterlife,” ‘Heaven Is’ is the latest single from Nashville singer songwriter Melanie MacLaren. Delivered in an easy country-pop style and with equal helpings of bittersweet feeling and wry humour, it combines existential musings with observations altogether more terrestrial. So heaven becomes both “a place up in the air” filled with lost loved ones and something in the here and now, like “sipping beer in folding chairs,” or “eating fruit straight off the vine.” “[‘Heaven Is’] is about the experience of how deconstructing those myths leads to reality check that we really have no idea what happens,” MacLaren describes, “besides that we leave, and everyone else does too.”

Heaven is the place where the dead girls go
Heaven is the place up in the air
Heaven is a place i don’t think about much
But I’ll have to one day I’m aware

‘Heaven Is’ is out now via streaming services.

Miserable chillers – Great American Turn Off

Miserable chillers has made a name with an idiosyncratic, constantly inventive sound, following a myriad of creative directions from Kate Bush-esque art pop to SNES soundtracks and field recordings. A mixtape featuring recordings made between 2018 and 2024, Great American Turn Off not only personifies the spirit of Miguel Gallego’s work, but serves as the ideal introduction for those looking to dive in for the first time. The release functions best as a full entity, rewarding those who take forty minutes to lose themselves in its easy rhythms, but we recommended single ‘The Shaft’ for anyone who needs a quicker dose.

Great American Turn Off is out now and available to hear in full here.

Molly Murphy – Seabird

Specializing in what she calls “lo-fi folk tunes summoned from the Blue Ridge and set loose in New York City,” Molly Murphy makes bright and emotionally resonant folk music. Her latest single is a cover of  The Alessi Brothers 1976 song ‘Seabird’. Complete with vocal harmonies, subtle mandolin and slide guitar, it’s a lush and laidback take on the original. Murphy’s vocals take centre stage, confidently but vulnerably delivering lyrics that use the imagery of the titular bird covering vast distances of remote ocean as a metaphor for distances altogether more human. “Like a lonely seabird,” Murphy sings, “you’ve been away from land too long / Oh, too long.”

Old Amica – Tiden far

Described as a release about time, Old Amica‘s ‘Tiden far’ sees the Swedish project turn their attention memory, looking to invoke how we experience the past, where the amorphous drift comes to form strange patterns and meanings. As such, the single is suitably hazy and slow-moving, its drama arising from a concealed hand as though always masked by something. Familiar sights and sensations as experienced through a gauze curtain. Old voices coming through a crackling radio, messages moving through the accumulated years with something to offer us yet.

Shady Baby – Feel It

Following a couple of singles in 2023, Brighton garage rockers Shady Baby are back with a brand new single, ‘Feel It’. Comprising of Sam Leaver (vocals, guitar), Nick Varnava (bass) and Tom Jackson (drums), Shady Baby draw on late 90s and early 00s alternative rock, and ‘Feel It’ is no different. A rich,  enveloping wall of sound is punctured by energizing electric guitar and crisp percussion, with enough hooks to appeal to the radio and festival circuit and enough grunge to bring in the rock-heads. All this raw energy is used to explore feelings of agitation and doubt. “‘Feel It’ started off as a song about grappling with impatience,” says Leaver, “but along the way it evolved into exploring the uncertainties of new relationships.”

‘Feel It’ is out now on streaming services.

Special World – Cloak in the Attic

This month saw Special World, that’s the solo recording project of Philly‘s Andy Molholt (who you might know from Speedy Ortiz), released their debut physical release with a self-titled collection. Described as ‘early’ songs, the cassette provides a peek into the inventive and often idiosyncratic style of the Special World sound, something demonstrated by the single and opener ‘Cloak in the Attic’. Starting with a glass smash but progressing with a lethargic rhythm, the song slowly crawls over the listener and absorbs them into its peculiar world. A place often strange and always colourful, where the light bends in odd shapes and everything takes on the loaded, abstract logic of dreams.

the cloak in the attic is hidden
obscured by a flowering gem
where is the proof?
no fumes left to reduce
cannot refuse a bargain which i cannot lose

night after night we misconstrue

Stelth Ulvang and the Tigernips – Dissolve

Described as “a visceral journey through the late-night mental crumblings of summer, capturing the essence of spontaneity and sincerity,” ‘Dissolve’ is the first single from Stelth Ulvang’s upcoming self-titled album, Stelth Ulvang and the Tigernips. Ulvang might be best known as the pianist for folk sensation The Lumineers, but has long pursued a variety of creative outlets, and the new album is something of an antidote to radio-friendly anthemic polish which has come to mark The Lumineers sound. ‘Dissolve’ is our first glimpse of a collection of songs which instead leans into the vulnerable and raw side of things, allowing Ulvang to show a slightly stranger but altogether more authentic side to his work.

YULLOLA – Silk Nightdress

At the end of last month, Maine songwriter and producer YULLOLA released Zen Maiden, a brand new record that exists in an unreal world of its own. Direct, pop-inflected indie rock songs sit next to cinematic spiritual jazz segues and dreamy spoken word sections. All of which makes sense when you understand where the album came from. “This year I truly was considering becoming a nun whilst getting obsessed with vocal inflections of kulning and female Bulgarian choirs,” YULLOLA describes, “spending hours in the forests of Maine just making sounds.” Opener ‘Silk Nightdress’ is the perfect introduction, a spoken word track with all the shimmering unreality and dark cinematic romance of Twin Peaks at its most melodramatic.

Zen Maiden is out now and available via the YULLOLA Bandcamp page.

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The new solo project of Isabelle Banos, who you might know as the synth-bassist of Caveboy, Ballsy looks to the nineties for its amped up emotions—from grunge to the golden age of pop punk. As new single ‘Joe Millionaire’ highlights, such intensity and energy is central to the venture. A song about the climate emergency which typifies the way Banos uses songs to take on the biggest problems of our time with youthful defiance and optimism. “There are really positive and motivating things happening behind the scenes that the news won’t cover because it isn’t click bait,” they explain, “but we CAN save our planet if we keep fighting.”

Bnny – Good Stuff

Back in 2022 we wrote about Bnny, the recording project of Chicago-based artist Jessica Viscius. The single ‘I’m Just Fine‘ showed “what appears to be a mundane encounter is transformed into something else.” Namely, a study of heartbreak and denial presented with the most minimal of details. The title of new album, One Million Love Songs, coming this April on Fire Talk, suggests something brighter this time around and single ‘Good Stuff’ appears to deliver with one of Bnny’s most upbeat songs to date. Though beneath the surface lingers the spectre of something darker. “It’s a breakup song,” as Viscius explains, “but it’s hopeful, optimistic even. Or perhaps it’s just the denial, hoping things will be different next time, hoping that love can save you.”

One Million Love Songs will be released via Fire Talk on 5th April. Pre-order from the Bnny Bandcamp page.

 Empty Heaven – End Times!

Laughing, the forthcoming album from San Antonio‘s Empty Heaven, sees something of a change for the band. They describe their previous record Getting the Blues as like trying “to squeeze blood from a turnip,” with a nightmarish labyrinthine narrative brought to life in painstaking detail, with the band having to fight for every second set down. By comparison, Laughing stemmed from a period in which it felt there were too many ideas in the world, leaving Empty Heaven to mine as much of this rich seam as possible. With its frenzied narrator, lead single ‘End Times!’ very much feels like a product of such process. A manic vision of the encroaching apocalypse delivered with a zeal which leaves you wondering if you are listening to a prophet or paranoid crank.

 Lola Wild – Get Up

With debut EP coming soon via Tip Top Recordings, Lola Wild has released single ‘Get Up’, a single which shows an artist who owes as much to classics like Roy Orbison as contemporaries Sharon Van Etten and The Beths. “This track is an ode to my little youth,” Wild explains. “Like most young people, you do and say what you thought at the time was necessary to block out certain aspects of life, I guess. Eventually it just got to the point where I needed to get up, move on and sort my stuff out.” But more than a broad brushstroke picture of a past time, the song delves deeper to reveal the patchwork of concerns and anxieties which so often make up young life. A style “influenced by my obsession with the sad clown paradox,” as Wild continues, “the contradiction between outward appearance and internal emotions, hiding true feelings behind a facade of happiness.”

‘Get up’ is out now via Tip Top Records.

Malice K – Radio

Having recently signed with Jagjaguwar, Olympia-born, Brooklyn based artist Malice K has shared single ‘Radio’ as a preview of what’s coming next. Co-produced by Strange Ranger‘s Issac Eiger, the song offers a picture of a singular artist pushing themselves to a new level. Where searching emotion and detached cool co-exist without any sense of contradiction, and the strange line between agency and fate keep the narrator uncertain of how exactly to view their own sorry state. Watch the video directed by Johann Rashid below:

‘Radio’ is out now via streaming services.

Old Amica – Everyone We Know

Comprising of five songs originally written and recorded twelve years ago for their debut Debris, it’s not quite correct to refer to the forthcoming EP by Swedish duo Old Amica “new.” Titled Debris Sides, the EP takes songs the band say were “hiding on slowly disintegrating hard drives until now,” and finally unveils them to the world, resulting in a slightly uncanny blend of old and new. Built almost entirely from a melange of recorded and sampled voices, lead single ‘Everyone We Know’ is suitably strange. Old Amica describe it as “a song about being followed and the intensifying paranoia,” and the song invites the listener into this headspace as the enveloping sound builds.

Debris Sides is due for release on 16th February.

Olin Janusz – The Throat

Dark and elegant and brooding, ‘The Throat’ is the lead single from Please Leave Quietly, the debut album from London-born, Boston-based songwriter Olin Janusz. The record, a joint release from Stellar Frequencies, Araki Records and Candlepin Records, sits at an intense and individual intersection of chamber folk and slowcore. Janusz’s work often presents with a weary melancholy, something derived from both “the primordial struggle of working class upbringing and his own poor decisions,” and ‘The Throat’ disperses this emotion into its various component parts—tenderness, fatalism and patient attention. Watch Joan Sabatier’s Bergman-esque video below:

Please Leave Quietly will be released on 5th April via Stellar Frequencies, Araki Records and Candlepin Records. In the meantime you can get ‘The Throat’ as a digital single from the Stellar Frequencies Bandcamp page.

Still Corners – The Dream

The title of Dream Talk, the forthcoming album from Still Corners, speaks not only to the sound of the record but the creative process which brought it into being. “I had tapped into something new,” Tessa Murray explains of writing/recording the songs, “and the way it came out was quite hypnotic, like a transitional state between wakefulness and sleep.” Latest single ‘The Dream’ pushes into the oneiric depths of this style, taking inspiration from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream to weave something rooted in narrative yet unrooted in waking reality. What the band describe as an investigation of “the Mystery of the Repeating Dream.” The song comes complete with a video filmed by Darcie Thompson and directed by Murray and Hughes themselves which sees the duo weave a whole cozy crime-style narrative around this mystery.

Dream Talk is out on the 5th April via Wrecking Light Records and you can pre-order it now.

 Surf Party, USA – Barrel

With a new self-titled album pencilled for release this spring, Surf Party, USA have shared the appropriately titled ‘Barrel’ to whet the appetite as to the approaching waves. The project sees Ben Weinman (Bones Forever, Boys Go To Jupiter) and Nate Hollander (Boots Deatherage, One Hour Photo) draw on their childhoods in California to create a sun-baked, salt-encrusted sound. One which allows them to, in their own words, “write humorously and to touch on themes they likely wouldn’t in their more “serious” endeavors—joy, friendship, peace, drinking beer, and, of course, surfing.” But don’t underestimate the scope of forthcoming record, a concept album looking to do more with the genre than anyone might expect. The epic ‘Barrel’ is convincing proof Surf Party, USA are going to ride this promise all the way to the shore.

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Blood Warrior – Wooden Shade
Rosie Tucker – How Sad, How Lovely (Connie Converse cover)
Fran – Company
JAYA – Learn To Swim
Taylor Hamilton – What Is Real?
Carver Baronda – If Nothing Else Comes Along
Rose Dorn – Deathwish
Milly – Crazy Horse
Guidon Bear – Washing Machine
Joey Nebulous – Pride Month
Dorio – Shortcuts
Special Friend – Before
Sarah Pagé – Lithium Taper
Old Amica – Condensation
Blushing – Dream Merchants
Patient Hands – Stasis
Bryce Kepner – Chances
Jake Bellissimo – why fit? (Jordaan Mason cover)

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Released with our friends at Fox Food Records, Constellation is a brand new full-length album from Old Amica, and one which builds upon the foundations of previous releases to “try to discern hope in the vulgar present.” The songs first started taking shape in the early months of 2016, though the record was only half finished when life intervened. “Sounds became muffled,” they describe. “The music suddenly stopped and the timbre died.”

For a whole year Old Amica produced nothing, but a commission to score a short film helped shake off the paralysis. With the soundtrack complete (an album in its own right, Taiga, out now via Whitelabrecs), they turned to Constellation once more. The inspiration and motivation had returned, and they finally finished what they had started.

Today we have the honour of sharing three singles in preparation for the release, tracks that show the emotional intensity of an album dedicated to a diversity of sounds. With a post-rock sense of drama and modulated vocals, ‘Julia, Umeå’ leans as far into the electronic genre as we’ve seen from the band, a dance beat emerging through ghostly harmonies and swirling instrumentation. There’s a haunted sense to the song, ghosts metaphysical or digital or both, though the melancholy fires a cathartic sense of motion and purpose that leads to an affirming conclusion—living up to the hopeful mission statement that inspired the record at its inception.

However, the band themselves admit that finding hope in the vulgar present is difficult, and sometimes the intention fails. Fittingly then, even the most hopeful songs are balanced with a sadness or reflection, Old Amica unwilling or unable to let go of darkness completely. As we described in a preview when the track was released as a single back in 2017, ‘Condensation’ is “a great example of what Old Amica do best, lush layered electronics gild gentle vocals and a steady pulsing drum beat.” The tone is undeniably pensive, “but isn’t necessarily a totally sad song, a point highlighted by its warm, fuzzy undertones.”

Because the hope in the music of Old Amica is hard-won, worked for, the delicate, transient result of engaging with the world without cynicism. Based around an stripped back guitar line and situated much more closely to the folk pole of the spectrum, ‘Juli, Göteborg’ is another case in point. Looking for hope does not mean that we will find it, and finding it does not mean we will hold onto it, but there is something in the act of looking that lifts a weight all the same.

Artwork by Björn Kleinhenz

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We were therefore very pleased to hear that the duo, based between Umeå and Stockholm in Sweden, are back with a brand new single, ‘Condensation’. The track is a great example of what Old Amica do best, lush layered electronics gild gentle vocals and a steady pulsing drum beat. It has a decidedly yearning feeling, but isn’t necessarily a totally sad song, a point highlighted by its warm, fuzzy undertones.

The song comes complete with a beautiful video, comprised of Super 8 footage found by Johan from the band when he visited his childhood home last Christmas, filmed by his late father when he arrived in Sweden back in the 70s. Watching the images feels like looking at memories themselves, ethereal footage of lonely gulls and blazing sunsets and lines of wandering reindeer providing the perfect backdrop to the song’s wistful dreaminess.

You can get ‘Condensation’ now from the Old Amica Bandcamp page.

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Tracklist:

1. She Reminds Me – Family Video
2. Jean Skirt Mystique – Naps
3. Sail – Swim Lessons
4. Mirror Threat – Waiters
5. Tibetan Clouds – Chips Calipso
6. Smokesquare – Fanpage
7. This City Will Eat Itself – Blush Response
8. Undone – Phoria
9. Lungs – Pixel Fix
10. Ancient Ways – Interpol
11. Have You Seen My Son – Benjamin Booker
12. Ballad of Big Nothing (Elliott Smith cover) – Arms
13. Stupid Boy – Owl John
14. Memento Mori – Hollow Wood
15. It’s the End of the World As We Know It (R.E.M. cover) – Free Cake For Every Creature
16. Youth – Thad Kopec
17. You Belong – Lucas O’Connell
18. Knives – The Meanest Creature Ever Known
19. Accept That the Mark Will Outlast You – Old Earth
20. If I’m – Sea Oleena
21. Joni – Old Amica
22. Autumn in the New Canaan – Lejsovka & Freund

August Mix from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

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Well it’s not yet September and the duo are back, this time with an album that was written and recorded in a far more intimate setting. Drone and Hum represents a landmark for Old Amica as it is in fact the very first record they have made while spatially and temporally together. After completing Fabula in the springtime, the pair decided to meet and play some music together. So they gathered all of the instruments they could find, set up a microphone in the middle of the room and began creating. A few days later, this lovely EP was finished.

The band then sent the new songs to Swedish filmmaker Jonas Börjesson, who wasted no time in creating the beautiful video for ‘Joni’ which you can see in the player below:

Old Amica – Joni from Jonas Börjesson on Vimeo.

We were lucky enough to get a sneak peek at the rest of the EP, and I’m pleased to say that the other songs are just as good. I was unsure when the band said that the record would be largely instrumental, but this is a worthy companion to their previous releases. In fact, it is the second amazingly beautiful instrumental album I have featured this week (see also Lejsovka & Freund’s Mold On Canvas)

Drone and Hum is due for release on a pay-what-you-want basis on the 5th of September. Check back at their Bandcamp page on release day.

P.S. If you’re not familiar with Old Amica’s previous releases, then do yourself a favour and remedy that fact. Start with The Burning Dot Part I, then The Burning Dot Part II and finally Fabula.

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If you’ve missed the previous editions, then check out January and February right now.

March Mix from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

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