What she calls “[a song] about the experience of being both loved and misunderstood by someone,” ‘Poser’ is the title track of the forthcoming EP from Edmonton‘s Antonia Estelle. Built on a skeleton of stark acoustic guitar, the song is fleshed out with syrup-heavy drums and gusts of distorted guitar, the vocals swaying with quiet intensity like a flickering flame. The emotions underpinning it are gloomy and turbulent, focusing on the strange balance of a dysfunctional relationship and the ultimate unknowability of selfhood. “I had a dream that bears had butterfly wings,” Antonia Estelle sings, “it’s a picture I can’t paint—a feeling that stays inside.”

I don’t know why I even try to explain
Things that I know you won’t understand

Big Cry Country – Pest Control

Based in Washington D.C., Big Cry Country pour a whole host of moods and emotions into their sound, as latest single ‘Pest Control’ attests. Taken from their EP Living Conditions, the song finds inspiration in the likes of Cayetana and Remember Sports to offer something at once deliciously angsty and infectiously energetic. “I’m older but not better,” as the cathartic refrain states. “I’ve seen the afterlife and you are wearing my old sweater.” Big Cry Country might be a fitting name, but releasing emotion has never been so much fun.

Closebye – Hell’s Kitchen

Formed by Dallas-born, NYC based duo Jonah Paul Smith and Julian Paint Smith (unrelated), Closebye make folk-inflected indie pop inspired by the likes of Elliott Smith, Aimee Mann and Hovvdy. Following their debut album Lucid News, released in 2022, the band have returned with a perfectly autumnal single, ‘Hell’s Kitchen’, what they call “an ode to their libra birth season and to their home base of New York City.” The Smiths are joined by Ian Salazar, Margaux Bouchegnies and Simon Clinton, who together use a plethora of instruments to craft a “breezy pop banger” that’s tinged with just a hint of something more wistful, creeping in at the edges like the cool touch of the oncoming winter on an autumn afternoon.

Who are you gonna be?
When every day is Halloween

Check out the video, directed and edited by Elizabeth Kroner, below:

‘Hell’s Kitchen’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Dumb Things – Self Help

‘Self Help’ is the lead single and title track from the new record by Meanjin/Brisbane indie poppers Dumb Things, coming soon via Coolin’ By Sound. Influenced by the droll poetic style of David Berman, it’s a slice of breezy, dusty pop with a streak of yearning melancholy, the narrator looking to self-improvement as a remedy to past mistakes. “The original idea for the song is that it’s a letter from a guy who’s a bit down on his luck but still in the fight, to his ex, some time after they split up,” says vocalist Adam Vincent.

Lately I’ve been working hard on my personality
Cos you got to keep it up, to keep it together ah ha
Been trying to find the time to put the work in
Yeah, I’ve been working out how to work it out

Elephant in Red – Honey

The creative outlet of Glasgow‘s Loup Havenith, Elephant in Red make what they call “sappy sounds for earthly beings.” Latest single ‘Honey’ sees the band combine gently grooving, stripped back folk with a shimmer of shoegaze, full of rich textures and gently wavering vocals. Havenith is joined by Chris McRory (drums), Fin Logie (bass) and Alex Gyllos (piano), who together built the song from the ground up. “[The song is] a sort of longing for calmness and simplicity,” the band describe. “Wanting to move past the weird overwhelming coming-of-age feelings that come hand in hand with being young in a city full of people.”

Lando Manning – Driftwood

Written during what he calls “the final dregs of lockdown,” ‘Driftwood’, the new single from London‘s Lando Manning, is an exploration of the many shades of isolation and loneliness. A quiet folky song, it’s built on percussive acoustic guitar and soft peals of piano, full of loaded negative space and a film-grained cinematic quality. “I had moved to Brighton and felt that I had been isolating myself from my friends back home,” Manning describes of his time writing the song, “and the track was written as a letter to my friends to try to explain why I had been absent.”

‘Driftwood’ is out now and available on streaming services. Manning will release his sophomore EP on his label Mango Wax Records next February.

Laurel Bluffs – Richmond

“Losing myself in the mirror / drenched in alcohol and smoke / I called, you came and picked me up / laid me down, turned out the lights.” So opens ‘Richmond’, the latest single from Phoenix, Arizona-based project Laurel Bluffs. A drive to Richmond follows, a hungover nausea, the bumpy road, and with it the kind of wistful reflection which blooms in the sorry aftermath of things. The folk rock sound and unadorned delivery lend an intimacy to the track, where fondness and longing are present without spilling into sugary sentiment. Instead, there’s just the highway, a building pressure, and the accumulated weight of actions as gathered over the course of regretful years.

‘Richmond’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Neighbours Burning Neighbours – Neil Young

Specialising in a brand of meaningful chaos, Rotterdam noise pop act Neighbours Burning Neighbours have been crafting songs from disorderly melodies and left-field harmonies since 2018. Following a couple of single releases, the band set to work on their debut full-length, which they plan to release in 2024. To whet appetites, they have released the record’s first single ‘Neil Young’, a typically discordant but infectious track which challenges gender norms and the harmful status quo. Watch the video, directed by Charlotte Brand and produced by A Small Production Company, below:

‘Neil Young’ is out now via streaming services.

Twin Bridges – A Dream of You

Led by cellist Zach Gerzon, Twin Bridges are a band from Portland, Oregon who combine folk and indie rock songwriting with neoclassical arrangements and elements of chamber music. They recently released Fertile Ashes, a new record which Gerzon wrote in the aftermath of some very difficult personal circumstances. “These songs explore what can feel like an impossible task, overcoming grief from loss, trauma, and failed relationships,” he says of the album. “Making this album helped me let go of things I held onto for so long.” Perhaps the record’s most personal cut, ‘A Dream of You’ is an ode to Gerzon’s late mother, suffused with an elegant simplicity and sorrow.

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Hailing from Regina, Saskatchewan, Darryl Kissick has made a name with the band Foxwarren along with Dallas Bryson, Andy Shauf and brother Avery Kissick. But he records solo under his own name too. Forthcoming album Goodbye Patterns invites Avery (drums/percussion) along with Andrea Hedlund (vocals/violin) to help create its sound, exploring themes as diverse as aliens, werewolves and various other extra-dimensional things. With that in mind, lead single ‘In the Middle’ might sound surprisingly subdued, though in reality, intricacy lies beneath the surface as Kissick works through the drifting strangeness of a depersonalised state.

In the middle of it
feel a little unlike yourself
saw a vision
from another dimension
now you don’t recognise yourself

Fast Romantics – Smoke + Lightning

Toronto’s Fast Romantics have a new record, their fourth, slated for released at the end of next month. Titled Happiness + Euphoria, the album sees core duo Matthew Angus and Kirty finally create something that has been on their minds for the best part of a decade. Latest single ‘Smoke + Lightning’ sees Kirty take on vocal duties to achieve an ethereal sound which questions the distinction between reality and dreams. One in which pressing emotion and unanswered questions are pursued with a kind of intuition, the dream logic of the subconscious brought to the surface and allowed to flow. Watch the video by by Raven Shields below:

Happiness + Euphoria will be released on 29th September via Postwar Records and you can order it form the Fast Romantics website.

Jordan Murawa – Let Her Dance

A cover of sixties rock & roll band The Bobby Fuller Four, ‘Let Her Dance’ is the latest single from Phoenix, Arizona singer songwriter Jordan Murawa. The original (which you may recognise from a certain Wes Anderson Roald Dahl adaptation) has a manic clockwork energy, but Murawa’s take is very different, instead sculpting the song right the way down to its gently aching heart. George White’s percussion adds a sense of widescreen weight, and the whole thing comes together with a feeling of lived-in emotion.

‘Let Her Dance’ is out now via streaming services.

Loose Wing – Capital Alphabet

Loose Wing are an indie rock band from Seattle, led by Claire Tucker (who also plays in psychgaze outfit Black Nite Crash). Along with her husband Jack Peters (bass), Aimee Zoe (drums) and Bill Patton (pedal steel, guitar), Tucker writes songs that combine catchy college rock with arty, left-field pop. Later this year, Loose Wing will release Miracle Baby, a brand new full-length on Drums & Wires Recordings and lead single ‘Capital Alphabet’ is our first taste of what to expect. It’s a gritty and defiant indie pop song that rallies against the soul-sucking drudgery enforced on many by the capitalist overlords, what Tucker describes as the “prevailing model of life where you get up, put all your energy into a job, then go home drained and exhausted.”

Things are looking up for the company
They’re gonna buy the moon
Things are looking up for the company
We’ve got a flash sale on single-use plastics

maeve & quinn – I Know I Will

Alaskan twin sisters Maris and Bryce O’Tierney, AKA maeve & quinn, are set to release their new LP Another Door in the very near future, and latest single ‘I Know I Will’ should convince anyone unaware of the duo to take note. Drawing on the landscape of their home of Anchorage, as well as their Irish heritage, the song offers a spacious, compassionate soundscape into which the listener is invited. Where the searching emotion of the narrator is balanced against something larger and unmoving, as though beyond personal trials exists solid ground upon which we can find our footing and realise who we are meant to be.

i’m not sorry that i’m on my own — /
the sky is clear…/
but my memory has a memory
that brings me back to you; /
and my memory has a memory /
and i don’t know what’s true //
on the outside /
i know i will //

Sea Lemon – Breakdown

We’ve featured several songs from Sea Lemon‘s EP Stop at Nothing in recent months, first the oneiric ‘Cellar‘ and then the ominous ‘Vaporized‘. With the release now out via Luminelle Recordings, Sea Lemon has released final single ‘Breakdown’, which sees Natalie Lew team up with Oakland’s Day Wave to create a nostalgic duet submerged beneath throwback nineties reverb. “The song is a campy story,” as Lew explains, “all about the aftermath after being wronged by someone where you’re trying to figure out if you should forgive and forget or seek revenge.” Watch the video below:

Stop At Nothing is out now on LUMINELLE and you can get it from the Sea Lemon Bandcamp page.

So It Was – Dance Now!

Back in June we wrote about ‘Speak Now!‘ by Daniel Lobb’s So It Was, a “combination of earnest heart and laidback charm” which “draws on a rich selection of instrumentation—from trumpet, trombone and clarinet to keyboards and electronics—yet always maintains a sense of casual ease.” With album Round the Mountain now out, Lobb has released brand new single, ‘Dance Now!’ A song which swaps out the languid calm for something altogether more taut and building, confronting the uneasy truth of change with as much positivity as it can muster. If things are uncertain, then why not roll with the punches and lean into life’s unpredictable rhythms? Watch the video directed/produced by Matt Boyle and Chris Monroe below:

Round the Mountain is out now and available from the So It Was Bandcamp page.

trash girl – Static

The project of New York‘s Shaughnessy Jones, trash girl has been making gentle and intricate folk-inflected bedroom pop songs since 2017. Following bedbug-produced debut the whole place is titled a little, and last year’s Rock N Roll, trash girl has returned with new single ‘Static’. It’s a characteristically hushed folk song painted in pastoral greens and earth tones, conjuring the cool breeze and slanting sunbeams of a late summer afternoon. Short and sweet and very beautiful.

you get me higher than heaven
you get me madder than hell
can you see me through the static
can you hear those wedding bells

Wastelander – Be Where (feat. Erin Rae)

Wastelander is the recording project of singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Cooper Formant. Soon he will release his debut album What is Left Of Me, which although ostensibly a solo record, draws upon the wealth of talent in Nashville’s Americana scene. This includes Jo Schornikow, Paul Defiglia (Langhorne Slim, The Avett Brothers), Spencer Cullum and singer-songwriter Erin Rae, who has a starring role in latest single ‘Be Where’. A throwback to the classic folk rock stylings of the Laurel Canyon scene, the song sounds sepia-toned and wistful without abandoning its sunny buoyancy. Rae’s vocals match Formant’s in effortless harmony.

Worriers – Cloudy And 55

“A song which leans headlong into the spirit of freedom and self-discovery, shaking off the nagging doubts and second guesses with its building momentum.” That’s how we described the title track of Trust Your Gut by Worriers. With the release of the LP fast approaching on Ernest Jenning Record Co., Lauren Denitzio has unveiled new single, ‘Cloudy and 55’, which offers an altogether more reflective sound. “This song is for your soundtrack to missing Autumn in New York,” as they put it, “where every corner has a memory you can’t shake.” Though true to the new Worriers spirit, the track rises through its wistful mists towards the widescreen clarity of its climax, even if that epiphany is merely coming to terms with the omnipresent emotion of missing the things which constitute your history.

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Only, the result might prove surprising. Because though physically confined in time and space, Moore found her mind departing elsewhere. As though only in quiet can memories blossom into their true richness. “Its 1995, before the roads were paved,” she sings in opener ‘Koszmary’, harking back to a childhood in Phoenix, “the dust storms in July testing our tiny legs / laughing at the danger then / watch our bodies disappear.” The song also introduces the album’s distinctive sound, where ethereal and idiosyncratic details coalesce into a kind of carnivalesque playfulness.

The record returns to Arizona in the way of a dreaming mind, a repeated image bubbling to the surface. Take ‘Canals of Our City’, a dispatch from the life of a teenage crust punk which describes a youth spent in the canals of Phoenix with something like fondness. But then the second half moves on to the murder of a boyfriend’s cousin and the fracturing impact of such violence. “You got the call that he was gone / murder in the first degree,” Moore sings as though suddenly back there again, “disappeared for days without a phone, without a warning / cruel are all the ways this world will give you life, unravelling.”

But of course the mind is far from a one channel package, and stillness lets in all sorts of broadcasts. Tracks like ‘Mania’ offer a view into the less welcome visitors, while ‘Slapstick’ dwells on the uncertainty of past social encounters. The theme is continued in ‘Goliath’, a spacious, woozy track where vacuous “pleasantries at a function” descend into the search for an exit, and the yearning for solitude overtakes everything.

go
its ok that you wanted to
fall back into that thing you do
go
it’s ok that you want to go
to a place you can be alone

What emerges is delicate line between peace and unease, a sensation which fades against the wider tragedy of the pandemic yet resonates deeply all the same. For life’s relentless motion eased for some, and new ways of living began to suggest themselves. “Wander to the window / a patch of sun to see / softening the first snow / softening in me,” as Moore sings on ‘Saddle Up, Cowboy’, as though the slow movements of those days brought physical changes. But then songs like ‘Cheers!’ reveal the anxiety that follows into the quiet too, and of course there were all the good times to mourn.

It is the stripped back ‘A Body’ which reflects on this experience most fully, probing into the strangeness of living as both a physical object and mental state. If Alone with the Sound the Mind Makes discovers anything from its time in isolation, it’s that the wheels of consciousness keep turning, both a blessing and a curse. “Where does the mind go when a body’s finished?” asks the final line, as though having experienced the kaleidoscopic potential of thought and memory. It seems suddenly impossible that something something so vivid and powerful can merely cease to be.

Alone with the Sound the Mind Makes is out now via Bar/None Records and you can get it from the koleżanka Bandcamp page.

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As if to set out their stall immediately, Nanami Ozone open with ‘Sidewalks’. The track initially sounds like murky post punk but soon blossoms into something altogether expansive, the voices of Miller and Opich like liquid light at the centre of a tangled grey cloud of static energy. A song about occupying an awkward no-man’s land, follow up ‘Alone Too’ combines catchy dream pop vocals with rumbling guitar and slapped drums, showing the band are capable of earworm melody as well as raw power. “I don’t want to be with you but I don’t want to be alone too,” sings Opich, the sentiment representing the first sign that Nanami Ozone are not interested in making sickly pink love songs.

‘On the Ground’ is a celebratory shot of shoegaze goodness, while ‘Affection’ builds from blown-out guitar into a leaden 90s alt-rock. Miller’s vocals are initially little more than a downbeat mumble, the song dragging itself along on its belly as guitars chug and drums stomp, but the second half sees things perk up, the vocals straining for something higher as the atmosphere brightens.

Miller handles lead vocals on ‘The Art of Sleeping In’, a dark and smoky track that pairs a towering storm front of intertwining guitars with propulsive percussion and Opich’s disarmingly soft backing. He then continues on ‘3 Mile Drive,” where wiry guitar gives way to bursts of punchy noise, the vocals stitched into the fuzzed-out instrumentation to create a shimmering MBV-style sonic blanket.

‘Erase Time’ is one NO‘s more sedate moments, existing in a sense of twilit negative space, while ‘Make It Alright (Damage)’ gets all grungey around a sighing centre, proof that elemental noise can have an emotional core. The album then closes on ‘Think of Me None’, an Opich-led song that dials back the volume in favour of Mazzy Star-esque aching sentiment.

Please stay
or I’ll miss the way that you taste
like toothpaste

A record that takes three decades of influences and turns them into something genuinely thrilling and new, NO is a delight. Come for the all-enveloping noise, stay for what’s just below the surface, the melody and feeling that elevate these songs beyond simple indie rock.

NO is out now and you can get it on LP or cassette from Tiny Engines or as a download from the Nanami Ozone Bandcamp page.

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Ahead of said release, the band have unveiled the first single, ‘Tired’. The song captures pretty much everything that’s great about 80N7 releases, ramshackle rock accompanied with the forced indifference of cool youth. That said, Captain Samurai break the illusion of hipness by revving themselves past apathy, the song building into a cacophonous, angsty catharsis where instruments are pounded and Diaz howls with his heart on his sleeve. Take that, fashionable detachment!

Hey Thanks Goodbye will be released by 80N7 in November and you can pre-order it via their bandcamp page. And why not check out the band’s previous music while you wait?

Photo by Albert Gonzalez, art by Amador Diaz

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Tracklisting:

1. Carry On Wayward Son (Kansas Cover) – Gwar^
2. Rebellion (Lies) (Arcade Fire Cover) – Trampled By Turtles^
3. Hickory (Iron & Wine Cover) – Pilots & Errors
4. Candy O (The Cars Cover) – Richard Buckner
5. No Diggity (Backstreet Cover) – Chet Faker
6. All Hell For a Basement (Big Sugar Cover) – Jordan Soles
7. Locked In (Wesley Wolfe Cover) – Schooner
8. Hollywood Forever Cemetry Sings (Father John Misty Cover) – Tashaki Miyaki
9. Motor Away (Guided By Voices Cover) – Bill Times a Billion
10. Kid’s Allright (Bettie Serveert Cover) – Three Blind Wolves
11. (What’s So Funny ‘bout) Peace Love and Understanding (Brinsley Schwartz Cover) – Shovels & Rope
12. Red Comet Dust (Jason Molina Cover) – CFCF
13. I Would Not Die in the Springtime (Stephen Foster Cover) – Field Report
14. On of Us Cannot Be Wrong (Leonard Cohen Cover) – Father John Misty
15. True Love Will Find You in the End (Daniel Johnston Cover) – Isaac Delusion
16. Entertainment (Phoenix Cover) – Dinosaur Jr.
17. Hey Tonight (Free Energy Cover) – Patrick Stickles
18. Los Angeles, I’m Yours (The Decemberists Cover) – Mariachi El Bronx
19. Days of Heaven (Randy Newman Cover) – Phosphorescent
20. Everything Trying (Damien Jurado Cover) – Night Beds*
21. I Got You Babe (Sonny & Cher Cover) – Mark Kozelek

* – Taken from the Night Beds Chapel Session by Fuel Friends
^ – Taken from the A.V. Undercover series.

This mix is intended as a way of giving artists some publicity. Please have a closer look at the bands you enjoy, then maybe go to a show and buy their records. They probably have families to feed too.

The Covers Mix: Volume #7 from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

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