LA-born, Nashville-based songwriter Alicia Blue has just released her most recent EP Inner Child Work via Magnetic Moon, and opening track ‘DTMTS (Don’t Tell Me To Smile)’ serves as the perfect introduction to her work. A song which seizes upon the pressure to present yourself a certain way, even when the world is overwhelming and smiling is the last thing on your mind. “I’m a real thing,” Blue sings, “If you want to be with me / know that sometimes the sun’s not going to shine.”

Inner Child Work is out now via Magnetic Moon and available at the usual places.

Angel Saint Queen – Diablo Lake

The product of a months-long road trip, Angel Saint Queen’s ‘Diablo Lake’ takes in the range of the American landscape, be it wide-sky deserts of Utah to the rainy mountains of the Pacific Northwest. A track which highlights the duo’s bittersweet tone, capturing a sadness for leaving and excitement for what comes next. A little wistful, a little upbeat, ready to roll the windows down and ride on through to whatever place should pop up next.

‘Diablo Lake’ is out now and available via streaming services.

First Rodeo – Didn’t It Rain Last Night

There’s a certain old-time charm to Portland‘s First Rodeo. A collaborative project between Nathan Tucker and Tim Howe, their sound has more than one foot in classic country rock. But there’s a contemporary freshness to the sound too, meaning wherever their boots are planted, there’s no question they are facing out over fresh ground. Lead single ‘Didn’t It Rain Last Night’ is the perfect introduction, a song contemplative and sometimes melancholic, its Americana roots accentuated by Sam Wenc‘s bowed banjo, though infused with a confident rhythm which rubs off on everything.

Goon – Emily Says

Fresh from releasing album Paint By Numbers, Volume 1 back in February, LA’s Goon are already back with brand new record, Hour of Green Evening. Described as the band’s “most complete statement,” the album sees Goon combine everything which came before to realise their most polished and detailed sound yet. Single ‘Emily Says’ shows off just how evocative this can be. A love song dedicated to frontman Kenny Becker’s wife Emily Elkin which celebrates the transformational power of forming a bond while acknowledging it cannot alleviate all external ills.

it hinges here in the air
a garden in wait
blanket of sunshine
and i’m like “i wanna be there”
and emily says “hope still appears”
and though i know in my heart it’s right
feeling like hurting myself tonight
nobody’s candle is burning bright
the wind inside the blades of grass will unbind it

Hour of Green Evening is out now and you get it from the Goon Bandcamp page.

Indigo Sparke – Pressure in My Chest

This October sees Australian songwriter Indigo Sparke return with their second full-length album, Hysteria, on Sacred Bones. With focus on themes of love, loss, history and reconciliation, the record is a raw yet far-reaching collection of songs, pushing beyond the relative minimalism of debut echo yet retaining the intimacy at its core. Lead single ‘Pressure in My Chest’ pitches the listener straight into the deep and honest sound, building with the slow intensity suggested by the title until its cathartic conclusion.

Jack Keyes – The Moon is Too High

Louisville songwriter Jack Keyes released his second record Dissolving in Dusk this month, an album we’ve described previously as “wrapped in an easy-going sincerity that holds both melancholy and fondness.” After ‘Grey Balloons‘ offered a conflicted picture of a relationship slipping away, final single ‘The Moon is Too High’ searches for a way in which to appreciate the present moment, however difficult and fleeting it might seem, with an endearingly lo-fi and intimate sound.

Kramies – Hotel in LA

With a brand of folk-inflected dream pop willing to combine history with folklore and myth, Kramies has made a name across several acclaimed EPs, but this September sees the release of a self-titled debut full-length on Hidden Shoal. Featuring Todd Tobias (Guided By Voices), Patrick Carney (The Black Keys), Jason Lytle (Grandaddy) and Tyler Ramsey (Band of Horses), the record offers a layered, ethereal sound which challenges the distinction between real and dreams when contemplating the past. Which is something single ‘Hotel in LA’ captures perfectly. “It kind of follows that timeline of my life where there was a beautiful blur between the lines of what was real and what was nostalgia in the making,” he explains. A space in which experiences are processed into memories, and all the emotional significance attached. Check out the video by Derek Lee LaJoie below:

Kramies is out on the 9th September via Hidden Shoal.

Lee Baggett – Fruit Dog

Born in the Philippines, Lee Baggett moved to Sanger, California as a kid, going on to form a band in high school and becoming part of the San Luis Obispo music scene through the eighties and nineties in bands like Unknown Origin and Fever Tree. Work with Kyle Field’s Little Wings and the Be Gulls followed, as well as a solo career which stretches right through to the present with Anyway, a new record coming soon on Perpetual Doom. Single ‘Fruit Dog’ taps into this history, like a long-lost seventies summer jam complete with a surreal slacker spirit which captures that easy-going West Coast swagger.

 Nwando Ebizie – Myrrha

Nwando Ebizie is a multidisciplinary Afrofuturist artist gearing up to release debut album The Swan this month on Accidental Records. A lesson in speculative world building, the release conjures an fictional matriarchal society which feels both timeless and utopian, Ebizie’s use of found sound and footage bending the lines between the historical past and imagined futures. An enthography of what was and what could be. Described as “a lament,” single ‘Myrrha’ confronts the intricate relationship between pain and change, finding space to mourn and celebrate those who have suffered through a process of transformation.

The Pleasure Majenta – Gardens

Hailing from New Zealand and now based in Berlin, The Pleasure Majenta craft a deliciously dark sound which draws upon goth and noise influences with a cowboy twang too. Their latest record Looming, the Spindle came out recently on Dedstrange, and final single ‘Gardens’ serves as a great introduction for the uninitiated. Opening with a palpable foreboding, the track coalesces around itself with shadowy grace, the mood decidedly Lynchian as it unfurls, beckoning the listener further into its slowly sashaying heart. Check out the video filmed, directed and edited by Anna Winslow below:

Looming, the Spindle is out now via Dedstrange and you can grab it from The Pleasure Majenta Bandcamp page.

Sun Kin – I Wanna Believe

Following on from ambient EP Painting Whales, Part 1 earlier this year, Kabir Kumar has turned Sun Kin back toward a more indie pop direction with new single, ‘I Wanna Believe’. A bright, smooth track packed with upbeat energy and heartfelt emotion, its tone never quite erring on the side of irony or sincerity but instead embracing a duality within its retro glitz. On the one hand there’s a playful side (“I wanna believe in love / I’m eating a chocolate bar named for loneliness”) but there’s a more earnest thread to the track too. What Kumar describes as about “gaining love by treating it as a spiritual foundation.”

vireo – Coyote

Following on from 2019’s leaf heap, an album we described as “slow and patient and peaceful as the late autumn dusk,” Pittsburgh‘s vireo are set to return with brand new record, Moss Longing. Lead single ‘Coyote’ introduces a collection of songs centring around “climate anxiety, folklore, wanderlust and children’s books,” its careful folk pop sound blossoming gradually into something bright and affirming, the vocals of lead Chris Beaulieu shaded by a sense of sadness but not beholden to it.

Moss Longing is due to be released on 18th August. Pre-save on Spotify, or keep on eye on the vireo Bandcamp page for pre-order info.

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But running alongside this is a sense of melancholy too. For every dream is counterbalanced by a sense of loss and longing, a mourning for what does not exist. After tender opener ‘soft gestures’ introduces the savedhistory sound with its slow style and whispered vocals, ‘within me’ charts the depth of this sadness. Ostensibly about the loss of something once held, the track pushes beyond the specificity of any given moment, serving as a elegy not only for the past but the unrealised future too. The places you’ll never visit, the people you’ll never meet.

i wish i could tear these thoughts away
listen to the voices (it’s calling for you)
is this existence?
around me i see,
lost and falling
running and hiding

There’s an urgency to ‘everyone else seems to have left’ that pushes beyond stereotype, casting loneliness as something desperate and consuming. There are vocals to the track but nothing you can quite parse, the voice unable to cut through the swirling noise. Closer ‘trying’ adds a newfound depth, the steady drum beat ironing the ambient tones into a sense of forward motion. It might not be enough to break free of the cloudy soundscape, but it feels like a possible beginning—an attempt to confront the tension at the heart of things, be it through keeping up or letting go.

distantly speaking in the language of silence is out now and available from the savedhistory Bandcamp page.

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The journey from her mother’s CD collection to Uttarkhand is more than an interesting anecdote to flesh out a bio, each step is intrinsically linked to what has become Ana Roxanne’s distinctive and evocative brand of music. “It was [in India] that she began to see the singer – the Diva – as a symbol of divinity,” explain the liner notes of her EP, ~~~. “That the unique power of one’s voice comes from the vulnerability of using the body as an instrument.” Viewed in this way, Roxanne’s life has been less a linear journey and more a gradual uncovering of something more profound, each new experience unveiling a wider network of interconnection and meaning.

Swirling within the smoky ambience and subtle drones of opening track, ‘Immortality’, the first words on the release make this clear. “I was only dreaming,” Roxanne says in a plain, spoken-word delivery. “A past encounter resurfacing / from deep violet water.” In keeping with the meditative aims, the track never rises beyond its subdued sound, and indeed neither does follow-up ‘Slowness’—the background drones never making good on their threat to push through the digital babble. That the lack of crescendo is conspicuous and acknowledged by spoken word lyrics quoting Milan Kundera.

“Why has the pleasure of slowness disappeared?”

‘It’s a Rainy Day On The Cosmic Shore’ presents tidal field recordings pocked not by natural drizzle but rather a static buzz, a natural world melded to the digital, while ‘Nocture’ explores the stasis of late-night worrying, the body’s solitude matched by the soaring breadth of the mind’s wandering. The track is a good example of the sensitivity of the record, Ana Roxanne dropping guard and caution in order to more fully delve into the unseen. “Be it romance, love, or worship of a deity,” explains the album description, “in order to access such depths of emotional expression, one must be willing to be intensely vulnerable, lay one’s heart in the open air, expose what is kept hidden.”

The hauntological tone of ‘I’m Every Sparkly Woman’ evokes a version of reality that never came to pass, before closer ‘In a Small Valley’ draws things back the the present, finding beauty and meaning in the quotidian. The song highlights the true purpose of the album, Roxanne’s art not some linear quest toward a higher level of existence, but rather a considered attempt to understand and explore that which is around her.

~​~​~ is out now via Leaving Records and you can get it from the Ana Roxanne Bandcamp page.

Photography by Tammy Nguyen, cassette art and design by Jen Shear

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The multi-generational narrative focuses on the De Vera family, who are introduced through Paz. Rising from abject poverty in rural Philippines, she becomes a nurse and falls in love with Dr Apolonio ‘Pol’ De Vera, the heartthrob surgeon whose family background is starkly more privileged than her own. Paz takes the leap and moves to the US, and when Pol follows they have a daughter, Roni. Eventually, joined by Pol’s niece, Hero, the true protagonist of the novel. Living in California undocumented, Hero is a former doctor fleeing both her hostile parents and her past with revolutionary guerillas of the National People’s Army, seeking to make a new home in America, or else forgot her old one in the Philippines.

The world in which Hero finds herself is brought to life in painstaking detail through all five senses, from the gamut of musical tastes and a veritable banquet of regional cuisine to the infamous Milpitas smell from the nearby landfill site. Language too plays an important role, with English, Tagalog, Pangasinan and Ilocano all used and often interchangeably, in doing so mapping the lines of class and culture that permeate the society. Language is determined by context—the who, what, where, when, why of the conversation—and itself forms a kind of secondary communication, a mode of interaction beyond words that speaks of history and social standing whether intended or otherwise.

This is complicated by the fact that every person has an unique relationship with each language. Hero cannot speak Pangasinan but is fluent in the others, while her friend Rosalyn grew up with Tagalog but lost it somewhere in her teens. Eight year-old Roni, having grown up in the US, seems unaware of any distinction, switching between English and Tagalog and Pangasinan within the same sentence, speaking in her own hybrid super-language that, to her at least, is as organic as any other. The phenomenon is indicative of the nuanced hand Castillo lends to her characters, each unique and self-standing, tied to their community yet distinct too, kinship never eradicating the distances created by individual circumstances.

In this way, Castillo refuses to flatten the intricacies of the immigrant experience into a neat trope, her characters not some collective sliver on the pie chart of human possibility but a cross section of the whole thing. There are doctors and nurses and faith healers, security guards and restaurateurs, make-up artists and DJs and pop stars. There are chaste prudes and promiscuous progressives, not to mention rich, haughty Catholics and superstitious mystics and people who practice both with equal fervour or disinterest.

So, Hero’s bisexuality and romance with another woman is not Castillo’s version of the rebellious-outlier-takes-on-cloistered-society. Some people react badly to the idea, some happily, some barely react at all. To a certain degree, this can be mapped over the social lines mentioned previously, though the alignment is not perfect. Because, ultimately, how each character acts and reacts transcends their history.

Elaine Castillo’s true triumph is that America Is Not the Heart cannot be faithfully categorized purely as an immigrant saga or LGBT romance. This, aside from being a testament to her writing, serves as a scathing critique of just what those labels entail, and what it says about the white gatekeepers who control them. Hero’s story does not conform to the ideal Western immigrant story of foreigner done well. She is not a plucky underdog making a home against homesickness and long odds, her history not present only to be beaten smooth of its sharp edges. Ultimately, she does not exist to follow the fanciful arc us straight white people like to imagine an immigrant or queer person traversing—the palatable, enriching passage from alienation to total acceptance, and thus, of course, a more realised state of being.

Because America Is Not the Heart is a novel about human experience, about loving and being loved, where every detail—the Filipinx-American setting, historical context, bisexual relationships, class hierarchies, family dramas—is used not to build the characters but the world around them, Great American conditions that must be navigated in order to live.

America Is Not the Heart is out now via Atlantic Books (UK) and Viking (US).

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