Sonically, the album builds upon Ora Cogan’s previous record Bells in the Ruins, blurring the distinctions between dream pop, psych, country and folk to create a sound rooted in traditional balladry yet constantly pushing boundaries. Guest appearances from the likes of Y La Bamba and Lankum’s Cormac Mac Diarmada add further dimensions, and the result is somehow at once cinematic and intimate, Cogan accumulating small details as a means to broach the wider sweep of our times. A style willing to delve into the darker side of things, to poke bruises and scars alike, but always with the purpose of challenging the cruelties of our world, and with the unfailing hope of emerging on some more welcoming other side. “I want to feel good,” as Cogan concludes. “I want other people to feel good. My way of getting there is going towards the pain, through the swamps and finding beauty in the ridiculousness of being human. If it hurts, I want to roll around in it a bit before metamorphosing.”

With its picture of social isolation, the album’s lead single ‘Cowgirl’ serves as our introduction to this world. A sedate jam that’s slow in the way late night always is, the air clouded with one too many cigarettes, something like panic or regret building with a slow drip. But counter to this rising sensation is a sense of distance too. The track plays as a half dream, an out of body experience, a survey of those things felt so keenly at every other hour of the day as taken from above. “There was blood in the corner of your mouth / Stars were falling,” as Cogan sings, “All the dogs were howling / Streetlights were glowing.” Once upon a time, it might have seemed a contradiction to offer this weave of the physical and ethereal, the close and distant, but we have all lived through the same trauma. Have come learn there is no contradiction at all.

I went out on the roof
I felt so dizzy and
I saw the wasteland moving towards me
Someone come get me now

The single comes complete with a suitably cinematic video directed by K Bray Jorstad, utilising VHS/Super 8 textures to evoke the barroom smoke and nocturnal atmosphere. Watch it below:

Formless is out on the 25th August via Prism Tongue Records and you can pre-order it from the Prism Tongue Bandcamp page.

Cover photo by Stasia Garraway, album design by Malcolm Jack

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The Mazzy Star influence is immediately apparent, as on the velvet curtain sway of opener ‘Sleeping’. David Parry adds bass and slide guitar which, along with Keenan Mittag-Degala percussion and subtle synths from Reggie Bast, carry Cogan’s vocals like an updraft. The track comes complete with a video, directed by Natasha Lavdovsky, which doubles down on the surreal atmosphere and proves to be the perfect companion.

It finds the masked figure from the album’s cover floating in the ocean alone, a stark vision of otherness that alternates between floating languorously, struggling to climb onto a small rock and standing indifferent as the tide ebbs and flows around it. This oddness is contrasted with cuts to spangles of sunlight dancing across the water’s surface in a fitting visual allusion to the transient beauty across the album.

and all through the ruins
the bells are ringing out

Bells in the Ruins is never content to settle into a groove, morphing and reshaping across its nine tracks. The jittery, off-kilter ‘Kills’ feels almost manic next to the lush and lazy ‘Tell’, while ‘Skull’ lands somewhere between the two, a persistent drum beat doing its best to stop Cogan’s ethereal vocals from drifting off into the ether. ‘Fixe’ represents both one of the record’s strangest moments and the clearest representation of its spirit, the guitar sneaking and slinking over ticking percussion and a swirling background ambience as Cogan delivers vocals in a breathy rush, each line spilling from the end of the last.

Bells in the Ruins is out now on Prism Tongue Records and you can get it from the Ora Cogan Bandcamp page.

Photo by Zoe Alma

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Seen as a spiritual successor to Swell Tone’s Summer of Sad comp on Z Tapes, the release features takes on tracks by everyone from Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young to Björk, Mazzy Star and even Mr Rogers. Better yet, all proceeds are going to Homeward Bound Animal Rescue, which gives dogs a second chance at life. So when not support the release and relax in the knowledge that you are helping a good cause too?

The release is ostensibly one of love songs, but such a description belies the depth and ambiguity of emotions on offer. Opening the album, Basement Revolver gloss a layer of melancholy sweetness over Springsteen’s ‘I’m On Fire’, subtle percussion and winding guitar allowing Chrisy Hurn’s vocals to come to the fore. Changing tack completely, Anna McClellan takes on ‘Dear Someone’ by Gillian Welch, transforming the original into a romantic piano song that sounds haunted by a sense of long-lost nostalgia, as if it’s floating across a quiet room from a war-time gramophone.

This diversity continues across the rest of the compilation. Yes these are all love songs, but stylistically no two sound quite alike. From Lucy Stone’s heartfelt guitar ballad (a contemporary update of Bonnie Raitt’s ‘I Can’t Make You Love Me’) to the gentle droning pulse and ghostly vocals of Ora Cogan’s Björk cover, the album twists and turns through styles and emotions, from naked declarations to heart-broken longing to that lingering wistful feeling that’s woven into the fabric of things. There’s no sugary Hollywood sentiment here, rather love in its true, maddening form, so closely related to pain and sadness as to make the distinction obsolete.

The mood is perhaps best captured in Rosie Tucker‘s singular take on Connie Converse’s ‘How Sad, How Lovely’, a track which manages to hold tender beauty and creeping loss in the same hand. “How sad, how lovely,” go Converse’s lyrics. “How short, how sweet / to see the sunset / at the end of a street.” To take notice of the small wonders of the world is to notice their slow dissolution, but to take no notice at all is to already have died.

Sixteen Jackies lift the mood with a bouncy rendition of Pete Townsend’s ‘Let My Love Open The Door’, before Honey Moon arrived with their sultry take on ‘Lovefool’ by The Cardigans. Both tracks come with a technicolour finish, their sounds so lush and textured that you can wrap yourself within them, which juxtaposes well with Porridge Radio‘s stripped back version of Neil Young’s ‘Only Love Can Take Your Heart’. However, despite the track’s stark simplicity, the earnest tone and authentic delivery forms an enveloping texture of its own, radiating warmth and a kind of nostalgic grace.

The collection ends with a a hushed and intimate cover of Mr Rogers song ‘It’s You I Like’ by Ings, Inge Chiles delivering Rogers’s trademark earnestness and sentimentality in a near-whisper. The gently plucked guitar keeps its voice down too, leading to a finale as quiet and peaceful as it is suffused with feeling.

Summer of Love is out now digitally and on cassette, and you can get it from Bandcamp.

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