Based in LA, Aaron Weits is a self-described “musical explorer”. He uses guitars, computers, and modular synthesizers to craft an earnest, uncluttered style of pop music which explores themes of grief, joy and spiritual development. Latest single ‘Rapid Eye Movement’ is the ideal entry point for those unfamiliar with his work, the clarity of the sound not only reflecting on the loss of his mother as a child but making a space for her to persist alongside him within the present. “The lyrics embody a Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven moment for me,” as Weits explains, “what I might say to her if I could get a message to heaven.”

Abby Johnson – Wonder Why

Nashville-based songwriter Abby Johnson is also known for her film and photography work, and an attention to concision and detail carries through to her music. With a self-titled album coming this September via Earth Libraries, Johnson has shared ‘Wonder Why’, a track which encapsulates her ability to weave narratives with single snapshots. “Sometimes I pretend that I’m your moon / But still the daylight beats me to you,” go the opening lines, carrying the full weight of an emotional history. “I wonder why / I even try.” With band Ornament in tow, the record is full of such poetic clarity, positioning Johnson as a contemporary continuation of a seventies style birthed by the likes of Linda Ronstadt.

Field of Fear – Cold

The recording project of Oakland-based artist Drew Zercoe, Field of Fear is both a meditation on and escape mechanism from chronic depression, looking to chart the depths of the experience with a combination of ambient, industrial, metal and noise sensibilities. With a new album coming soon via Whited Sepulchre Records, Zercoe has released ‘Cold’, a new single which is every bit as evocative as this suggests. A song which is perhaps not as harsh or outright frightening as some of the previous Field of Fear releases, but instead offers a patient atmosphere, as though descending into the depths of gloom with a willingness to sit within it for however long it takes.

Magana – Afraid of Everybody

We first covered LA-based songwriter Jeni Magana, AKA straight Magana, back in 2016 with the Golden Tongue EP, praising the charged pop sound and its ability to evoke the nuances of relationships with yourself and others. A number of releases have built upon the sound, not least 2020 full-length you are not a morning person, and Magana’s latest single ‘Afraid of Everybody’ uses a careful hand and lush synths to weave one of her most searching songs to date. A subdued sound which rises intermittently to capture an introspective topography, coming to capture both vulnerability and strength as Magana shares her innermost fears. Or, as she herself puts it: “Sometimes you just don’t want to go to the party.”

Nora Kelly Band – Horse Girl

Recent singles ‘Roswell‘ and ‘Lay Down Girl‘ introduced the spirit of Rodeo Clown, Nora Kelly Band‘s forthcoming LP on Mint Records. An album which sees lead Nora Kelly ditching the grunge of previous project DIPSHIT in favour of an alt-country aesthetic. Described as a possible theme song for the band, latest track ‘Horse Girl’ is something of an origin tale for this transformation, with Kelly facing up to the difficulties of being a horse girl in stuck in a city with all of the heart and playfulness we’ve come to expect from her work, and ultimately choosing to own the persona. “I’m no ‘Okie from Muskogee’ or ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter’, as she puts it, “but I’m not the first city slicker to love playing ‘cowboy’ either.”

I always tip my waiter but I’ve never tipped a cow
I can rob a Dollarama
Never worked a plough
I like Hank Williams
And I like Townes
I could ride the range
But I don’t know how

Check out the video by director/editor Sasha Khalimonova and cinematographer Evangelos James below

Rodeo Clown is out on the 25th August via Mint Records and you can pre-order it now.

Patio – Sixpence

Back in June, we featured the single ‘En Plein Air’ by Patio, the post-punk band’s first new music since 2019. Details were scant at the time, but the Queens trio—Loren DiBlasi (bass, vocals), Lindsey-Paige “LP” McCloy (guitar, vocals) and Alice Suh (drums)—have since announced their long-awaited sophomore record, Collection, which comes out in September via Fire Talk Records. To celebrate, they have released a second single, ‘Sixpence’. “[The song] was conceived within an early seventies daydream of decadence, glamour, and self-indulgence,” the band explain. “It’s about false identities—how money helps us create illusions that affect how others perceive us, and how we perceive ourselves. Inspired by Roxy Music, David Bowie, and the lethargic boredom that remains when ambition is thwarted by apathy.” Watch the video directed by Ambar Navarro below:

Collection will be released on the 22nd September via Fire Talk Records. Pre-order it now on all sort of formats via the Patio Bandcamp page.

Sargasso – Balancing Act

With their second album, Further Away, coming out later this month on Dead Definition Records, New York indie pop band Sargasso have released a new single titled ‘Balancing Act’. What the band describe as a song about “traveling young and making plans, achieving confidence in spite of uncertainty,” it’s acoustic guitar and gentle vocals build an atmosphere that combines quiet melancholy with a sense of hope and boundless possibility. All this comes together with a raw energy and sense of immediacy. As the band put it: “It sounds more like our band in a room in real life than almost all our other songs do.”

Life is short so go wherever you please
Life is hard so hold your love tightly
It’s a balancing act
When to go, when to come back

Taylah Carroll – Monogamy

Naarm/Melbourne-based songwriter Taylah Carroll is preparing to release her latest EP The After Party in the coming weeks, and latest single ‘Monogamy’ offers an indication of what to expect. A soulful, languid track which nevertheless possesses a building tautness through its heart, a tension which ratchets up as the song progresses to reveal the wounded anger beneath the polished sound. “I’ve been blaming the whole thing on myself,” Carroll sings in the opening verse, “But I know you ain’t no good for my health,” and the rest plays as an extended version of this realisation, hurt crystallising into something sharp-edged and brilliant.

Weave me a tale so I’ll stomach your pride,
Say a limp in your gate need not break your stride,
I learned it all fast, the guise of my past,
Selflessness is not self-sacrifice,
And feeling bad is not trying hard

Watch the video directed by Nick Mckk and Carroll herself below:

‘Monogamy’ is out now and available via the Taylah Carroll Bandcamp page.

the world famous – Hollywood Pawn

“It’s nice enough beneath the palm trees, it’s where I go to make ends meet.” So opens ‘Hollywood Pawn’, the new single by power pop band the world famous. It’s a line that captures something about the LA five-piece, mostly transplants from the East Coast—a kind of love-hate relationship with their new home. The track, lead single from the band’s forthcoming debut full-length totally famous, is based around the lead Will Harris’s experience of pawning and then buying back his guitar. It treats the Californian metropolis with a mixture of derision and delight, both ridiculing its oddities and excesses and riding the crest of its sunny, palm-lined feel-good factor.

totally famous will be released via Lauren Records on the 13th October and you can pre-order it now.

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Back in December we introduced a new release from East Vancouver post-punks Aversions with single ‘New Whip’, a track which “combine[d] heavyweight riffs, pounded percussion and acerbic vocals to comment on our contemporary moment.” Album You Wanted the Bike has now been released, and as single ‘Undecider’ shows, the record builds upon the promised heft, leaning towards post-hardcore in its pummelling momentum. Written in the chaotic final days of the Trump presidency, it’s a song full of anxiety and latent violence, drawing on a whole host of political and social themes in three and a half minutes of Strummer-esque polit-punk. Check out the video directed by Bruno Trivelli of Death XII:

You Wanted the Bike is out now and available from the Aversion Bandcamp page.

Green Gardens – This Is My Fault

Leeds art rock outfit Green Gardens have announced a new record, This Is Not Your Fault, with the release of lead single ‘This Is My Fault’. Written in what the band say was “a whirlwind state of inspiration after hearing a Ralph Ineson monologue in which he’s crying and pleading with God to lift an imagined curse from him,” the track is the perfect introduction to the four-piece’s distinctive style, combining swaying, laidback harmonies with fuzzy guitars and an almost Medieval preoccupation with heavy themes and gothic imagery.

Gabby’s World – Mussel

When we say Gabby’s World, the project of New York producer and songwriter Gabby Smith, is releasing new album GABBY SWORD this this year on Carrot All Records, we mean year quite literally. Because Smith is unveiling a new song every month, concluding in a full release in December. The final offering of what Smith calls a “triad of gay awakening songs,” latest offering ‘Mussel’ represents the evolution of Smith’s sound and focus since albums like 2015’s O.K. A sincere engagement with what it means to become entwined with another person captured in a style at once physical and ethereal. Watch the video directed by Grace Weir, Barrie Lindsay, and Gabby Smith themselves below:

GABBY SWORD will be released on the 1st December via Carrot All Records.

The Handsome Family – Joseph

Hollow, the forthcoming album from The Handsome Family, originated in a single, unnerving moment shared by Brett and Rennie Sparks during a long winter night. “One night around 4 a.m. Rennie started screaming in her sleep,” Brett explains. “She screamed, ‘Come into the circle Joseph! There’s no moon tonight.’ Scary as it was, I thought, man, that’s a good chorus!” The resulting track ‘Joseph’ develops this moment into a wider context of supernatural foreboding, though within the ominous imagery lies a sense of humanity too. Something nostalgic, a sense of longing, as though within the portents and omens lies the promise of something almost romantic.

It’s 1:49AM
Crawl under the bed
Whisper my name
It’s time to begin

Hollow is out on the 8th September and you can find out more on The Handsome Family website.

Katherine Kyu Hyeon Lim – As It All Goes By

Starling, the debut album from New York-based composer and violinist Katherine Kyu Hyeon Lim, is both an encapsulation of an individual’s unique understanding of patterns and sound and a testament to the value collaboration. Together with Alfredo Colón (EWI/soprano saxophone) and Kalia Vandever (trombone/fx), Lim creates soundscapes within this spirit—unapologetically singular in its improvisation yet fully dependent on the input of others—with each musician offering one solo track on the album as though to call attention to their individuality before knitting back into the wider sound. Closer ‘As It All Goes By’ plays as the triumphant reunion of the these forces, bringing Lim’s vision to life it all of its detail and wonder. As Joey Chang’s album notes so cogently conclude: “Starling demands the right to self-determine, to be the driver of one’s own story, and to say, without apology, who you are.”

Oceanator – Part Time

We’ve written about Elise Okusami’s Oceanator quite a lot over the last few years, taken with her ability to explore pretty deep themes and feelings with fun and energetic indie rock. Co-written with Greg Katz (of Cheekface), new standalone single ‘Part Time’ (out now via Polyvinyl Records) might be the catchiest thing Okusami has made to date. A song about taking small steps toward making positive changes, it captures a sunny 60s rock & roll vibe with springy keys, crisp guitar riffs and the ear-worm chorus of “I know that I can get by if I try /Part time!”

Patio – En Plein Air

Their first new music since 2019 LP Essentials (which we described as “a knowing smile, a bitter laugh and an angry scream, all at once.”), ‘En Plein Air’ is the new single from New York post-punk trio Patio. Released via the good folks at Fire Talk Records, the song immediately shows that the band have still got it; all negative space, skittering percussion and razor-sharp stabs of guitar. There’s deadpan delivery and wry humour, a luminous vulnerability and even a subtle glow of disco bliss. The band say its a song about “winning a fight, for once, but by proxy—finding the right thing to say, but five years too late.” But as they say, better late than never.

‘En Plein Air’ is out now via Fire Talk and available via the Patio Bandcamp page.

Snake Lips – Smooth Brain No Wrinkles

Portland, Maine punk outfit Snake Lips are set to return with Dice EP later this summer with Repeating Cloud and Totally Real Records, and lead single ‘Smooth Brain No Wrinkles’ invites listeners into the distinctive personality of the project. Because, as the song’s title might suggest, the Snake Lips style combines its compelling energy with a mischievous irony, tapping into a Japandroids-esque momentum to unleash the cathartic potential of self-deprecation. Couple in the FromSoftware-inspired video, and the ‘Smooth Brain No Wrinkles’ will have you dodgerolling right the way through the summer months.

Dice EP is out on the 11th August via Repeating Cloud and Totally Real Records and you can pre-order it now.

 Strawberry Runners – Circle Circle

Their first new release proper since 2017’s superb In the Garden, In the Night, Strawberry Runners have returned with single ‘Circle Circle’ on Duper Moon Records. Lead Emi Night arranged the track alongside Michael Cormier O’Leary, and invited the likes of Benedict Kupstas, Erika Nininger and Stephen Becker to lend their talents. Written during the fevered state of illness, the song taps into the cyclical movements of a troubled mind, though Night pushes through the experience to find solid ground on the other side. As though learning to suspend attempts to fight against exhausting rhythms and instead recognise them as a part of life. What emerges is a sense of stability informed by understanding an compassion, a patience which lessens the impact of any specific discomfort or frustration in favour of a wider curiosity.

Find out more about Strawberry Runners here.

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Adrianne Lenker – cradle
German Error Message – Hopelessness
Jo Schornikow – Incomplete
Grizzly Coast – Half-Light Boy
Taylor Hamilton – Might Say
Porridge Radio – Give / Take
Patio – Scum
Ruthie – Spirit Now Moves
Esther Rose – Don’t Blame It On the Moon
Blood Cultures – Flowers For All Occasions
Puddle-Cuddle – Compost
Mess – Dead Space
Cry Babe – Soft Honk
The Painters – Pieces of Life
Two Meters – Ground
Erin Durant – Take a Load Off
Michelle Blades – Ring
Eric & Magill – Thanks to Sciences
Foundlings – Caught Up on You
Craig Finn – Something To Hope For
JW Ridley – Homesick (Out The Blue)
Pieket – Eternal Recurrence
The Curfews – Rose
Emily Fairlight – Body Below
Raggedy – Brainwash
Barrie – Saturated
Blush – Forever Is a Long Time
Shane Leonard – Empire Builder
Con Davison – Sofa Bed
Gold Light + Snakemusk – The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter
The Chats – Pub Feed
Shutups – Yellowjacket
Izzy Heltai – Stuck In Stone
Adam Ostrar – Take It Back
The Death Of Pop – Last
Toledo – Some Samurai
Yot Club – Japan
Evan Thomas Way & The Phasers – Long Distance
K. Campbell – Heads Up
The Duke of Norfolk – As the Heralds Revere You
Leaky Engine-John Birch Society Blues
naps – treading
Vieo Abiungo – What the Rain Restores
Old Earth – The Friends ∴ The Gods
Good Good Blood & Astral Social Club – Heathen Astronaut

Like what you hear? Catch up with the rest of our Monthly Mixes!

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Patio don’t just make throwaway pop songs, their music will likely resonate with scores of people across the (Western) world. These are songs for those people who have been given a lucky draw in life and still don’t feel quite right. Those people who sometimes feel sad and bored and confused despite having friends and family and enough money to not have to worry about going hungry […] people disillusioned and struggling to find meaning in their twenty-first century lives.

But if such a description makes Patio sound super serious, then it misses the mark. The band began as a kind of sarcastic thought experiment, a Spring-hope themed imaginary outfit that was more about dreaming up colour schemes and album art than actual music. But then McCloy had an idea, as described in an interview with AdHoc, sending a text to DiBlasi that read simply: “What if Patio was real?”

Some live shows followed, then a blessing from Mitski and the debut EP, which lead to Patio becoming a fixture in New York’s DIY scene. Three years later, the band are finally ready to release their debut full-length album, Essentials—a record that sees them take all the frustration, boredom and wry humour from Luxury and run with it, dialling up both the melodies and the melodrama. The result is multifarious—a knowing smile, a bitter laugh and an angry scream, all at once.

A perfect shot of angular post-punk, ‘Endgame’ is all elbows and knees, the vocals sitting in a pocket of laid-back cool amongst the scrap. If you’re unfamiliar with Patio it’s a great introduction, tangles of wiry guitar and nervous percussion periodically smoothing out into a disarmingly catchy chorus, the lyrics partly humorously ironic and partly painfully direct.

Many of the songs on Essentials have echoes of Ottessa Moshfegh‘s novel Year of Rest and Relaxation, sharing a glassy-eyed, stone-cold-dead-inside apathy that hides a scathing humour. Like Moshfegh’s narrator, who turns to consumerist salves for her existential woes (be they luxury goods or pharmaceutical sedatives), Patio pitch a world in which happiness and satisfaction are outside forces to be acquired, a process that strips any joy from the experience. “I went shopping the other day,” McCloy sings on ‘Boy Scout’, sounding like she’s mumbling into a phone while gazing absentmindedly from a window. “This week I can afford to feel better.” These vibes continue, the emotions flat and drained even as the song progresses into a break-up (“I think it’s me, not you. Maybe I’m just—”), no life event pointed enough to puncture the all-encompassing lethargy.

‘Scum’ sounds like The Courtneys without that west-coast, wide-eyed wonder, sharp and streetwise pop with an edge of blurry introspection. The song eventually transitions into a sluggish final third, the sonic embodiment of exhausted indifference, before threatening to accelerate again in a genuinely anxiety-inducing outro. The building momentum spits out ‘Vile Bodies’, a catchy post-punk song that comes complete with spoken word interludes, all delivered with the deadpan indifference that Patio do so well.

This piece of glass feels great
but now I can’t see straight
your skin is cracked and peeled
I’m already forgetting how you feel

A dread worms its way through the half-paced cadence of ‘Open’, where any optimism is born of a carefully maintained system of distractions. “Anything to keep from thinking,” go the lyrics, “anything to stop what’s inside, anything to keep her brain preoccupied / Whenever she got drunk she cried / about the bad things that hadn’t happened yet.” Again, Moshfegh’s narrator comes to mind, a woman who refuses to engage with the news beyond tabloid headlines on the bodega rack. “I couldn’t stand to watch regular television,” she says, as though to acknowledge the world is to let it destroy you. “TV aroused too much in me.”

With its discordant guitars, there’s a nervous twitch to ‘New Reality’ too, channelling the contemporary disquiet so familiar to Protomartyr, where disaster lurks around every corner and forces larger than us take advantage. “Is it not real, or is it better not to know?” Patio ask. “Never over, waiting for a fall / Still scraping their plates, while they watch us crawl.” Growing into a frenetic rhythm, the track develops an intensity so-far unseen, as though dropping the cynicism and leaning into their paranoid convictions.

The tone is corrected by closer ‘Legacy Continued’, the almost-spoken vocals whip-smart and sneering, the razor-edged guitars slicing any suggestion of fuzz pop into tattered ribbons. In this way the trio evade the irony at the centre of cynical punk. That is, if you’re really all that cynical about things, would you get up on stage and sing songs about them? With their cool indifference and cutting style, Patio acknowledge this, just as Moshfegh’s tone recognises the paradox at the heart of her own solipsistic narrator. Patio are an imaginary band after all, a set of colour schemes and album art. Imaginary bands can’t challenge entrenched forces, or explore the vertiginous state that is the twenty-first century existence. Imaginary bands can’t use snark as a Trojan Horse for deep, even hopeful self-examination. But what if Patio was real?

Essentials is out now via Fire Talk Records and you can get it from their website or the Patio Bandcamp page.

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Tracklisting:

1) Evening Loving – Jenny Gillespie
2) Luxury – Patio
3) Low – Yours Are The Only Ears
4) Either Way – Sorority Noise
5) Home at Last – The Sports
6) Braver – Sally Fowler
7) Chow Chow – FAYE
8) Meant – Spartan Jet-Plex
9) Stained Glass Eye – The Dead Tongues
10) October – These Bashful Claws
11) Bad Vibrations – Naps
12) Baked Goods – Young Jesus
13) Heroine – BB Cream
14) Winona Death Ryder – Boy Problems (No Dice Tapes comp)
15) The Only Other Girl From Back Home – Advance Base
16) When it Feels – Soft Spell (STAY RAD SAV comp)
17) The Unnatural – Claire Cronin
18) Same Old Ocean – Crabapple
19) Diet Coke – Lake Michigan
20) Ferris Beuller – Flatsound
21) See Good – Jobless
22) Anything but Yourself – Tom Greenwood
23) Under the Mountain II – Mermaidens
24) Liars – Gregory Alan Isakov
25) Warning Sign – Mikko Joensuu
26) Candy – Fish Food
27) White Gold – Good Good Blood
28) We Bury Our Dead Alive – Coping Skills
29) Joke/Rope – Haybaby
30) Slacker – Will B & the Teen Creeps
31) Double Bacon Cheeseburger – Yikes
32) All I Have – Derek Ted
33) Try Hard – Hovvdy
34) Dark & Gloomy – Horse Teeth
35) Migratory Birds – Western Skies Motel
36) Endless Wave – Hanging Valleys

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“Nothing has a rhyme or a reason
can somebody distract me?
i shift between anger and apathy
luxury and violent tendencies
and I’m bored and i’m
and i’m bored and i’m stuck
and i’m bored and i’m stuck and i’m broke”

‘arbitrary numbers’ has a prominent post-punk bass line and tells a tale of social anxiety, of the inability to leave a cluttered apartment. “I can’t make myself go outside and pull it together,” she sings. “it’s a simple to go outside and get it together”. There are further post-punk vibes on ‘half dark’, a song which has some of the former apathy and confusion but also some kind of defiance, a my-life-isn’t-perfect-but-I’m-okay-with-that sort of strength. Next up is ‘gold’, a short and manic burst of punk which drives headlong at the paradox of preaching punk rock values in our consumer-driven, capitalist, society, before closer ‘takeout’ finishes up with another angular elbows-and-knees indie pop track. However this feels a little lighter than the previous ones, with the closing line capturing another pitfall of all this angst and anxiety. What if we’ve been misreading everything all along?

“Thought I was here but I’ve been somewhere else the whole time”

Patio don’t just make throwaway pop songs, their music will likely resonate with scores of people across the (Western) world. These are songs for those people who have been given a lucky draw in life and still don’t feel quite right. Those people who sometimes feel sad and bored and confused despite having friends and family and enough money to not have to worry about going hungry or anything serious like that. In short, people disillusioned and struggling to find meaning in their twenty-first century lives.

You can get Luxury now via the Patio Bandcamp page.

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