“Picks through self-destructive tendencies in something like a lament, swapping guitar for organ to further amplify the sorrowful atmosphere of the Minneapolis-based songwriter’s work.” So we wrote of Annie Schultz’s recent single ‘MIS‘, a track which marked a conscious effort to move away from the blueprint of previous album It Bends Until It Breaks to open up new territory. Latest single ‘Search and Destroy’ is further proof such experimentation yields fruit. Schultz uses a woozily layered combination of drum machine and keyboards to evoke a dreamlike world, though a pressing electric bassline pulls the listener through. What emerges is something hypnotic and slightly ambiguous, playing somewhere between antagonistic and alluring and never quite showing its hand.

‘Search and Destroy’ is out now via Trailing Twelve and available from the usual places.

Bleary – Foyer

“If Bleary‘s new single ‘bug’ seems to carry a notable sense of depth, then it is with good reason,” we wrote in a preview of the Nashville band’s full-length Little Brain back in February, the song taken from a body of work first developed before the pandemic then more recently honed into something special. With the album’s release little over a month away via yk records, the outfit have shared brand new track ‘Foyer’, and the result is no less impressive. The perfect introduction to the signature Bleary aesthetic, where big wall-of-sound shoegaze sensibilities are paired with a mood more reflective and melancholic. The result is something equal parts visceral and thoughtful that’s sure to swallow you in its embrace.

Death Tennis – Racehorse

Based in Montreal, Death Tennis are a indie rock band unafraid of emotion, as new EP Thank You. No, Thank You attests. Talya Gad (vocals) Marco Petrella (guitar, vocals), Dave Hjin (electric guitars, acoustic guitars), Nathan Cann (electric guitars), Matthew McCormack (bass) and Daniel Pavkeje (drums) add healthy dollops of alt and shoegaze influences to bring these high stakes to life, allowing tenderness and weight to sit side by side. Take opener and single ‘Racehorse’, an emotive number which places Gad’s sincere vocals front and centre, though gradually deepens into something epic. “‘Racehorse’ is a song about loss, told from the perspective of the recently departed,” the band explain. “Do we get a chance to communicate with those we loved from the other side?”

Frog – Dark Out

“Thank you for the day but go slow when you walk out, its dark out,” sings Daniel Bateman on ‘Dark Out’, the latest single from Frog‘s new album Frog for Sale, coming soon via Audio Antihero. “The dogs are barking like Dachau / I need you when it’s dark out.” These lines might sound like depression condensed into half a verse, but the track itself is altogether more jaunty and cool, continuing the new sleek style introduced on previous albums 1000 Variations of the Same Song and The Count. The result has all the idiosyncratic style which has won the New York outfit such a following, managing to maintain a toe-tapping brightness despite the desperation and soul bubbling beneath the surface.

Golden Tiles – Peace

Portland trio Golden Tiles announced themselves to the world in late 2024 with The First EP. Back then we described their sound as “a bright, laidback brand of basement rock which combines playful melodies, fuzzy textures and reflective vocals,” inspired by the last forty-odd years of PNW lo-fi indie rock. Next month, Golden Tiles will release their debut LP, Set Up on the Leaves, via Antiquated Future Records, and the record looks to build on the band’s early promise. Expect catchy pop melodies, left-field song structures and an eye for improvisation, taking something that could feel nostalgic and twisting it into new shapes. Lead single ‘Peace’ is a great introduction. A fleeting sub two-minute rock song that feels warm and intimate but with an air of bittersweet mystery, there and then gone in a flash of satisfying guitar, rambling percussion and fragmentary lyrics.

Josephine Illingworth – The Mythical

The work of London-based musician and multi-disciplinary artist Josephine Illingworth sits at the intersection of song, storytelling and soundscape, drawing on traditions of folk music and folklore but with a modern, experimental edge. Her forthcoming EP, Bright Things I Found In The Dark, follows the narrative of a girl raised by wolves, mapped across the lunar cycle and enveloped in field recordings to intertwine each song in the rhythms of nature. Lead single ‘The Mythical’ was in some ways the record’s genesis, the first song written for it and a critical inflection point in the story where it is still unclear which direction it will take. “[‘The Mythical’] sits in the moment of childhood awakening where reality sharpens and the soft edges of fairytale fall away,” Illingworth describes, “when you can no longer see shapes in the clouds or voices under the bed. It’s about refusing to quite let that other world go.”

Bright Things I Found In The Dark will be released on 1st May.

Motherhood – Kyle Hangs Ten

Canadian rock outfit Motherhood have never been content to sit still, constantly hopping between genres and moods across their five full-length albums, and often within those records too. When working on last year’s Thunder Perfect Mind, they couldn’t quite settle on a single form of one of the songs, vacillating between surf and spaghetti western sensibilities. The later vibe won out for the eventual album track ‘Kyle Hangs At Noon’, but the sister version was also recorded and is now being released as a b-side. ‘Kyle Hangs Ten’ is an interesting counterpart to its twin, ramping up the tempo to make for a perfect slice of summer, while also serving as a window into the creative spirit of a band constantly pushing at the boundaries of their own work. “Usually by the time we release a song, the original influences have been hidden under layers of subterfuge, with our attraction to play far outweighing our ability to stay put,” they explain. “With ‘Kyle Hangs Ten,’ we were trying to write the most surfy song we could without over-complicating a genre that, at it’s core, is just swaggy country music.”

Nic Panken – Out in the Rain

“An compassionate number which takes the image of its title further than you might expect, pushing the love song beyond romance and into something existential.” That’s how we described ‘2 Hearts‘ by Nic Panken back in March, the latest single from the Spirit Family Reunion frontperson’s forthcoming solo album, Near Divine or Merely Rhyme. With the record now just a week away, Panken has unveiled brand new single ‘Out in the Rain’ to further whet appetites. A song which again elevates a personal experience into something near spiritual, it finds Panken positioning love and beauty as things which connect us to older, more mysterious forces. “Did I see you baring your soul / Uncovered the holy portal,” as he sings in one typically striking verse, “Heart was free then, resting in flight / A parcel of light immortal.”

villagerrr – Swimming

Last month we shared ‘Locket’, the lead single from villagerrr’s new record Carousel. We described how the record celebrates the act of opening up, that combination of fear and joy involved in, as we put it “the attempt to communicate in earnest with another person within a world which often seems designed to hinder such a thing.” Winspear will release the record at the end of next month, and villagerrr have dropped a new track to tide us over until then. Titled ‘Swimming’, it’s another slice of sincere indie pop, this time nudged in a country-ish direction with sparkles of pedal steel and Mark Scott’s signature heart-on-sleeve lyrics that focus on small pleasures in the face of the day-to-day trials of existence. “I cried watching the TV, it felt a lot like healing,” he sings in a typically frank line that captures the song’s balance between struggle and self-acceptance. “This song will be my enemy / My brain it wants to kill me.”

Zoon – One Too Many Nights (feat. Sam Jr.)

We have previously described the work of Daniel Monkman’s project Zoon as “an ever-evolving sound rooted in shoegaze that explores themes of activism and Indigenous experience.” The Polaris Prize-shortlisted musician draws as much from traditional First Nations music as they do contemporary indie rock, and in doing so explores themes both national and intensely personal. June sees the release of a brand new Zoon record, Happy Thought School, on Paper Bag Records, and lead single ‘One Too Many Nights’ is our first glimpse. Monkman is joined by Sam Jr. for a cathartic exploration of the strange unmooring caused by the end of a relationship. “When a relationship ends, it’s not just the person you lose it’s the version of yourself that existed beside them,” Monkman describes. ‘“One Too Many Nights’ is about that recalibration. I don’t date often, so when something shifts, it shifts my whole orbit. In that moment, being alone felt like the honest path forward.”

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Building on the acclaim earned by Animal Poem, Anna Tivel is now set to return with a set of additional songs from the recording period. Fittingly titled Animal Poem B-Sides, the EP will not be released until next spring, though lead single ‘Swan Song’ shows the new tracks are just as evocative and finely crafted as their sisters on the main album. Described by Tivel as “a rumination on ephemerality and all the ways this life will move us before the whole thing flies away,” the song pairs a relaxed rhythm and poignant tone with something urgent beneath the surface, a loneliness hurried by the violent pressing of time. “The trumpeter swans leave the past in the fields / and head for a better unknown,” Tivel sings, “everything moving, a madness, an engine / flying down the road to forget that it’s ending / a star in the night is just air in the morning / up there burning alone / and you will be here ’til you’re gone.”

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The single was a fitting introduction to a decidedly existential record. Rudick uses the songs to dig into every facet of his identity in search of answers to life’s needling questions. Everything from the relationship between children and parents to the complications of maintaining a marriage, not to mention the spectres of violence and substance abuse (‘Fist Fight’), and the not insignificant effort of persisting in a band at a time when creativity is so often disregarded or disabused (‘Buyer’s Market’).

Those familiar with Young Elk’s previous work will recognise the atmosphere which emerges from such themes. Calm Down exists beneath the shadow of some great weight, representing the accumulated baggage of life that haunts every minute of our days whether we are aware of it or not. “I was also figuring out how to process the toxicity of my family after realizing their implications in childhood trauma and abuse,” as Rudick explains. The album does not offer an escape from this history, it doesn’t even try. Instead it acknowledges exactly what it is which sits above our heads in the hope that honesty and openness might go some way to lightening the load.

Living up to its title, ‘Little String’ explores these ideas further by positioning the American ideal of the family as a kind of tenuous binding, something which is supposed to hold a life (and society) together yet too often sees individuals lashed to people and places which drag them into darkness. “Give your fingertips some time / to unwind that tiny little string / that you used to bind your inner life / to someone’s complicated feelings,” Rudick sings in the opening verse, his voice as ever charged with equal parts compassion and fury, fighting to hold onto restraint amid the gravity of the realisations bestowed upon him. But, of course, it is not as simple as untying a knot. The past returns no matter what we do to release ourselves from its bindings. As demonstrated in the closer ‘Palmer ’68’, a song every bit as stark and tragic as anything else on the record, yet lit from within by something like love in spite of everything, even if it feels pitiful to admit.

palmer, alaska ’68
you were missing mother in a terrible way
you wrote her the same letter everyday
saying ‘baby, i still love you. are you ok?”

are you ok?

Calm Down is out now via Rue Defense and available from Bandcamp.

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Based in Humboldt County, California, songwriter and producer Gabriel Izak makes contemplative, emotionally earnest songs which fall in the centre of a venn diagram between folk, pop and rock. Latest single ‘Sin Eater’ is the ideal entry point for the uninitiated, embodying the spirit of the project and the mood which results. It traces how personal pain so often has familial roots, and how one might go about absolving themselves of this weight. “[I] wrote this three years ago, after I had a conversation where someone told me I should visualize sending family guilt ‘up to the cosmic compost heap’,” Izak explained in an Instagram post. “Couldn’t manage to fit that line in a song but wanted to write about intergenerational stuff. And how it can feel like you don’t deserve to move through it and let go, but you totally do.” Supporting vocals from Marley Jarvis only deepen the emotion of the track, and fans of acts like Big Thief and Hovvdy are sure to find plenty of admire.

Cut the cord, but still we’re tied
To the shame of legacy
Prehistoric, hollow eyed
No man is my enemy
And all I ever wanted was to set you free

JJJJJerome Ellis – Evensong, Part 1 (for and after June Kramer)

“A space carved out of the hectic every day into which the listener is invited, Ellis using the album as a kind of intermission within ordinary time where we might consider histories both personal and communal, as well as those of the natural world, and thus come to honour and understand ourselves more faithfully.” So we wrote of Vesper Shadow, the new album by JJJJJerome Ellis coming next month via Shelter Press. In the preview, published back in September, we described how the title track “breath[es] new life into the Gospel mainstay ‘His Eye is on the Sparrow’ in a way only Ellis could” to introduce “the dynamic between detail and space which marks Vesper Sparrow, but also the sense of reverence and possibility inherent within the style.” With the record’s release steadily approaching, Ellis has unveiled album opener ‘Evensong, Part 1 (for and after June Kramer)’ to allow audiences another glimpse inside. “The stutter can be a musical instrument,” they say in the opening line, before proceeding the prove the statement with such invention and grace.

Jordan Whitlock & Memory Spells – False Lights (Reprise)

“Suffused with the lush, shadowy grandeur of Lynch at his most romantic.” That’s how we’ve described collaboration between Jordan Whitlock and Matt Bauer‘s Memory Spells, tracks like ‘Take My Hand‘ and ‘Heaven and Here‘ demonstrating an orchestral, cinematic brand of folk rock fit to support the poetic songwriting of the duo. New song ‘False Lights (Reprise)’ reimagines a track from Bauer’s 2015 album Dream’s End, evoking the old maritime legend of wreckers luring vessels onto rocks in order to plunder their goods to explore more personal ideas of loss and ruin. As you might expect from such a description, the track sits at the darker, more melancholic end of the project’s spectrum, though within its tales of deception and devastation flickers something more hopeful or defiant too. A true light to match the malicious mimic, however black the night.

Oh how many wrecks like
Run aground chasing all false lights
Broken apart with want
For what‘s not there’s to have?
From the shore, strangers rifle their pockets
Rip the lockets from around their necks
Gentle waves lap the decks
And still the stars shine ever brighter

‘False Lights (Reprise)’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Joyer – At the Movies

We’ve featured a couple of tracks from Joyer‘s new album On the Other End of the Line… in recent weeks, with ‘Cure‘ showing how the pair have “sand[ed] down the shoegaze scale of the previous record while maintaining its pop melodies […] pushing the Joyer arrangements into newly ambitious territory.” While ‘Glare of the Beer Can‘ “sit[s] in [the] half space between reality and daydream,” as we wrote, “breathing a sense of romance into the ordinary, even if the longing at its heart seems destined to go unsatisfied for a good period yet.” With the album coming soon via Julia’s War Recordings, the duo have returned with ‘At the Movies’, a song which paints another method of retreating from life’s pressures. Where its predecessor used romance as a way to overcome the everyday, the new song champions the safe harbour of the pictures. A space away from the world, even existence itself, if only for a few hours.

Watch the video animated by Sabrina Nichols below:

On the Other End of the Line… is out on the 24th October via Julia’s War Recordings and you can pre-order it now from the Joyer Bandcamp page.

Lisa SQ – Make It Up to You

Recording under the moniker Lisa SQ, Montreal-born, Hamilton-based multidisciplinary artist Lisa Savard-Quong creates indie rock with an avant garde edge, bending the conventions of the genre with a playful, curious and slightly surreal personality. With debut album Reel Me In coming next month, Lisa SQ has released new single ‘Make It Up to You’ to introduce the style. A delightfully bittersweet ode to self-destructive tendencies brought to life with a team of friends and collaborators, including Tyler Kyte, Adam Hindle and Michael Brushy (all of Dwayne Gretzky fame), Simeon Abbott and producer Ian Docherty (July Talk). “Tyler Kyte (Dwayne Gretzky) and I were talking about people who always invite drama into their lives, and I kept picturing these classic tragic heroes, doomed but relatable,” as Savard-Quong explains. “The song grew out of that and my own pacing, daydreaming, and writing in the attic.”

‘Make It Up to You’ is out now and available from Bandcamp. Reel Me In is coming soon.

Rivulets – Came

Under the moniker Rivulets, Portland, Oregon-based songwriter Nathan Amundson has created stark, emotionally charged music which sits at the intersection of folk, slowcore and electrified rock for several decades. Latest single ‘Came’ sits at the dark, downbeat end of this spectrum, a lonely song stripped back to its essential features, the guitar and murmured vocals enveloped by a shadowy emptiness, as though the real weight of the sound lies in its negative space. Amundson’s voice plays within this atmosphere as something hushed and half-defeated, his questions rhetorical and addressed to nothing but the night itself. Like the words of a man clinging on through the dark hours in the hope of glimpsing some streak of light on the horizon.

roman around – Moves pt.2

We last wrote about roman around (AKA Fresno, CA’s Roman Rivera) a year ago upon the release of full-length The Toll of Unconditional Love on Trailing Twelve Records, describing how the album drew on intensely personal experiences to explore how love can persist and flourish within the most difficult circumstances. Now Rivera is back with brand new release Wish (Tapes EP) which looks to both continue the style and evolve the project to chart new sonic territory. Fittingly, single ‘Moves pt. 2’ serves as a extension of the track ‘Moves’ from the previous album. A meditation on the passage of time which explores not only that which changes but also those things which remain. Not least those features of US policy, be it the long years of military occupation or the contemporary rise of mass deportation.

Wish (Tapes EP) is out now via Trailing Twelve Records.

Silver Liz – Dream More Vivid

Early next year, Brooklyn-based dream pop duo Silver Liz will release III, a brand new full-length album put out on their own Extremely Pure label. Carrie and Matt Wagner have made a name with an imaginative, idiosyncratic style of shoegaze and dream pop, previous albums I Can Feel the Weight and It Is Lighter Than You Think owing as much to the contemporary cutting edge as the nineties classics, expanding the possibilities of a genre often prone to imitation. The new record promises to be their most ambitious to date, embracing a maximalist approach to create something colourful and shifting, each track its own kaleidoscope packed with texture and detail. Listen to lead single ‘Dream More Vivid’ now:

Sulka – Halloween

The recording project of Glasgow-based songwriter Lukas Clasen, Sulka originated as a DIY effort, Clasen not only playing all the instruments on the early releases but producing and engineering them too. That era of the project peaked in 2021 with the release of Take Care via Lost Map Records, and by the time 2023 full-length Distractions came around, Sulka was recording in a studio with a full-band for the first time. The first release since that album, latest single ‘Halloween’ finds Clasen still evolving his sound, pairing subdued vocals with an eerie backdrop of distorted guitars and synths to evoke the season of its title. The track which emerges captures the duality of Halloween, where nostalgic comfort meets the shadowy unease of the unknown.

It’s Halloween, we’re out tonight
But your mask can’t hide your eye
I’ve been down, but I’m alright
The world can end, but you’ll survive

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With the record out now via Rue Defense, Simple Shapes have shared new single ‘I’ve Never Learned a Lesson’. The song encapsulates the themes of the album as a whole, exploring nostalgia in all of its contradictions, the past a place full of allure yet not exactly one you’d want to experience again. The project has always aimed to combine late nineties/early noughties indie rock sensibilities with contemporary production and here Pete Bensen (guitar/vocals), Quin Saunders (bass), Justine Yee (guitar), Jeremiah Larsen (drums) and JJ Shafe (synth/vocals) are firing on all cylinders. A band that should appeal as much to fans of Archers of Loaf as those of of MJ Lenderman, and which appears to have fully found their groove.

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Those familiar with previous Léna Bartels releases will appreciate how this multifaceted style applies to the very sound of her music. From the punchy, cathartic indie rock highs of debut Preservation to the intimate, wintery folk of recent split It’s Gonna Be a Wonderful New Year, the Portland-born, Brooklyn-based songwriter has explored a vast amount of terrain in a short space of time. The Brightest Silver Fish pushes this variation further still. Seventies songwriters such as Judee Sill are a touchstone, but so are alt rock and grunge acts from the nineties, electro pop and even mainstream country. The latter apparent on single ‘Bad Sugar’ with its simmering verses and bright, confessional choruses, as well as the genre’s classic concerns like working too hard for too little. But for all the stylistic shapeshifting, the album is notably cohesive, each venture out in a new direction not the consequence of idle wandering but the very thing demanded by the emotional landscape of each specific track. As though the songs are not traversing new spaces at all, rather showing the same thing viewed under a changing light.

Indeed, the image of light recurs across the record, reinforcing this sense of competing perspectives. Consider the morning rays on ‘Give Myself a Way’, a song loaded with double meanings right down to its playful title. Give myself a way easily becomes give myself away, agency flipped into submission depending on how you choose to hear it. Or ‘Amber’ with its rose-coloured curtains and shadows moving slow, at once a towering, shoegaze-inflected rock song and late night confession voiced to an empty room, where what might be a parent or lover speaks to the person submerged in their protective instincts. “While you’re sleeping I’ll brush the knots out” Bartels sings, an image that can again be split in two. A demonstration of tender intimacy that grows stranger and more foreboding within the song’s dark heft, the fine line between care and control blurred by the desperation of love.

Unfurling with slow grace, ‘Fighter’ approaches a similar situation from a different angle. The narrator is another mother or lover twisted up with the blessing of caring for someone, afflicted by the curse of being unable to guarantee that person’s constant comfort and joy. The taut, urgent rhythm of ‘I Knew’ captures the same despair in a very different manner, playing like an anxious thought on a loop. The result is curious, its perpetual motion paradoxically suggesting stasis, like a mind struck in a single groove. And while the whispered opening of tentative follow-up ‘Nothing Makes Me Feel Touched’ could hardly be more contrasting in style, the effect turns out to be very similar. “I confess that nothing’s getting on me / And nothing gets me off / And so I lay back in the twirl / As they are watering the brush” Bartels sings in another image of inertia, only for the track to again into a fervent, noisy conclusion based upon a repeated refrain: “When I insist there’s light to see / When I hold it up.”

Given the title and the artwork, it is tempting to return to the metaphor of the fish. One hooked in the mouth perhaps, being reeled through its surroundings with dizzying speed, overcome with pain and panic and doubt. Until the moment the surface is finally breached and the angler confronted, this fish can have no idea of the future before it. Whether its fate is to be kissed and released to go on swimming, or cracked on the head and stowed hollow-eyed on ice.

It is this torment of not knowing, both for themselves and those they care about, that concerns Léna Bartels’s narrators. Figures stuck between the simultaneous desire to fight against the line and submit to its inevitable pull. The Brightest Silver Fish offers no solution to the problem, just a picture of those muddling through. Consider the title track again, opening as a hushed, almost hesitant folk song, the lines delivered with a contradictory tone somewhere between intense concentration and absent-minded distraction. As though something intense and dramatic is unfolding outside the frame of the track and Bartels is determined not to look at it. Feeling, perhaps, to ignore its presence is to make life liveable. To be occupied within the song is to go some way toward shaping the conditions of the world.

Only the brightest silver fish
Shows when the light hits
I suppose I imagined it
Gasping for air in the beak of a gold goose
Greedy to want and dumb to refuse

The Brightest Silver Fish is out now via Glamour Gowns and available from the Léna Bartels Bandcamp page.

Photo by Morgan Healani Mein

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This attitude is the cornerstone to Feels Like Hell, the record representing a rejection not only of the myriads of forces which make our current culture so bleak and painful, but the all-too-common apathy with which so many react to such conditions. A collection of spiky, confrontational and cathartic songs, notably different from the tone of the Portland, Maine outfit’s previous LP Quitter. “Every soul-destroying facet of our present moment is used as fuel on the fire,” as we continued in our preview. “The hegemony of global capitalism, complete with its mass surveillance, environmental destruction and rampant inequality, is enough to drive anyone to despair, but Weakened Friends are determined to deny it that one last victory. Better to scream, yell, bring the whole thing crumbling down with us.”

With the release of the album only weeks away, Weakened Friends have returned with latest single, ‘Nosebleed’. A song driven by grungy guitars and punchy energy, not to mention the distinctive vocals of lead Sonia Sturino which feel like they are always wavering on the verge of a scream frustration or desperation. “The song came out of a conversation with a friend who was talking about their breakup,” the band explain. “On the surface, they sounded like they were over it, but underneath it all, you could feel the weight of what they weren’t saying. It’s a feeling most of us know too well: pretending we’ve moved on while still being haunted by the past.” And while the track functions perfectly on this level, it is impossible not to push the ideas further when viewed in the context of the rest of the record. How better to speak to the present moment than to conjure a picture of soul despairing but pretending otherwise?

Watch the video by director and cinematographer Tadin Brego below:

Feels Like Hell will be released on the 9th October via Don Giovanni and you can pre-order it now.

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Drawing on the sensibilities of ambient, folk, post-rock, spoken word and sound collage, Dao Strom’s latest full-length Tender Revolutions is the embodiment of this style. A joint release between Antiquated Future Records and Beacon Sound, the album comes complete with an accompanying book, released via The 3rd Thing press, to support and expand upon its themes. “These songs are, for me, inward and outward (ex)tendings across boundaries of self, diaspora, modalities of voice, across fractures and refractions,” as Strom explains. “They are attempts at honoring small points and lines of connectivity I’ve been entangling in, for over a decade now, namely through creative collaborations and friendships with other Vietnamese women writers and artists.” A mission set out in the title itself. “The word tender is born of a gesture, an image, of something being stretched (the root ten- meaning “to stretch”),” Strom continues:

A thinning, an invocation of vulnerability, thus occurs with this action of stretching—to become tender, to tend toward in order to make contact with (an)other, requires stretching oneself; a thinning of the fabric or barrier between, occurs. What is a revolution that leads with this pretext of thinning—of allowing a softening, even a porousness, of that which holds us apart? And what does it mean to re-volve? To turn back (re-) again and again, to roll (volvere), in the cyclical way of celestial bodies or seasons, following a larger logic of changes as recurrent, trusting that this movement of a continual turning and turning (rolling back) will eventually arrive us also at a turning over: a (r)evolving of the old into a possible new. [R]evolution as ongoing, inevitable, as both instigating and returning.

But/and: a tender is also a boat—a smaller vessel that can access waters the larger boat is too big for; a tender is needed, for instance, to carry passengers from the larger boat to shore, to ferry objects between two larger vessels. Smallness is needed to access the spaces in-between, those shallower waters and narrower channels, to navigate aspects not visible until one gets closer in. Tender is, too, a form of currency—exchange: value of one good validated by another. Does this mean to tender is to navigate certain transactions from the level of the water?

Tender is our form of currency
The hands of the tenders also tender
(and sometimes raw)
We could follow the river

Unfurling with a slow pace that could be read as either calmness or solemnity, latest single ‘take’ taps into the larger rhythms Dao Strom alludes to in the above artist statement. Its lush ambient patience is not so much glacial as seasonal or celestial. What results is the sense of a new plane opening up within the ordinary arrangement of space and time. One created free from the strictures of normal human order, or else in defiance of such self-imposed limitation. That is, a place where history, memory, physical experience and dreams can coexist, coalesce, combine to form a radical new sense of possibility. “I’m taking something back / I’ll let you know where I find it,” as Strom sings in the opening lines. “The world might slip off track / when your pain moves away from the centre.”

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Like all of Greg Jamie’s work, the album is a singular vision, yet that is not to say he did not have help bringing it to life. Guests across the record include Robert Pycior (violin), Elisabeth Fuchsia (viola), Mark Fede (drums), Josephine Foster (backing vocals), Keith J Nelson (clarinet, bass clarinet), Tom Kovacevic (ney flute), Michael Cormier O’Leary (drums) and David Rogers-Berry (additional percussion), not to mention long-time collaborator Colby Nathan (bass, synth, guitar, vocals, and “de facto interpreter of ideas”). Each musician helps Jamie venture out into a world of his own making, slipping between styles and genres with the seamless yet striking logic of a dream. “The strength of Across a Violet Pasture is its intuitive rawness,” as Claire Cronin writes in the album notes:

It’s art made at home; the product of a deep inner life and a personal mythology. And like Greg Jamie’s uncanny watercolor paintings, this record juxtaposes muted, dark backgrounds with shocks of vibrant color. The “violet pasture” of the title evokes a mix of passionate red and cool, sorrowful blue. The resulting purple is mystical and a little extravagant. It’s a color hardly found in nature. And when it is, like the violet flower, it survives only in dappled forest shade. Admired by hermits, fauns, and idealistic weirdos, there’s a secretive, melancholy, and ephemeral beauty to this work.

The true pleasure of such an album is found only in setting off for a journey of your own, immersing yourself in the vast, intricate landscapes, pondering the ambiguous imagery and existential musings over repeated listens. But for now ‘I’d Get Away’ stands as the first leg of the trip. A taste of the wider experience in miniature. The song a small world of its own. “Making [‘I’d Get Away’] felt like a breakthrough for the whole record for me, sonically,” Jamie explains. “It’s sort of a surf ballad about letting go of what you can’t change, and moving on from what is final. Transcendence and fog. Clarity after death. Blow up nostalgia and just be. Check out that slide and drift away.”

Photo by Paige Jamie Bedard, album artwork by Greg Jamie with design and layout by Gordon Ashworth

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There is a repeated line, a single word refrain, in ‘The Glow’, the new song from Aïda Mekonnen Caby, which you may have some trouble comprehending. Fjaðrárgljúfur is the name of a canyon in south east Iceland which Caby and her partner visited in the early days of their relationship, and the landmark’s cinematic majesty leaks into the song’s very DNA, transforming a gentle indie folk song into something rich with widescreen emotion. It also represents something of a new dawn. For one, it is the opening track of the debut Aïda Mekonnen Caby album, Mais Uma, which comes out at the end of August via Mtn Laurel Recording Co. But also because the trip that inspired it and the feelings it evokes marked a turning point in Caby’s life too, one which saw her move first to Portugal and then to France. Mais Uma promises to explore this period of personal change and all its associated heart swells and aches, illuminated throughout with that sense of wonder at newfound love.

Dead Tooth – Song of the Weak

Led by New York-based songwriter Zach Ellis, self-described ‘rodeo-core’ outfit Dead Tooth have made a name crafting an atmospheric and often slightly chaotic brand of post-punk, combining the brooding shadow of the genre with raw energy. With their self-titled debut out now via Trash Casual, Dead Tooth have shared single and opener ‘Song of the Weak’ to introduce their work to the uninitiated. A song full of volatility and bite, Ellis’s vocals spiking with frustration as though driven half-crazed by the constant motion beneath him, or else how it never seems to lead to anywhere new. “In so many words [the song is] about struggling with cyclical destructive decision making,” Ellis explains. “Choosing hedonism over looking in the mirror. I’ve spent many years in NY on what feels like a hamster wheel of trying to fill a void or chase some kind of unattainable self/other. A song written for the darker times that in retrospect I feel have eaten too many years of my life.”

Dead Tooth is out now via Trash Casual and available from Bandcamp.

Living Hour – Wheel

Winnipeg’s Living Hour have announced Internal Drone Infinity, their fourth record, which will release later this year. What the band themselves have coined “yearn-core”, their style combines slowcore, indie rock and dream pop into something shaded by the gauzy texture of memory. The record was in part inspired by lead Sam Sarty’s time as a cinema projectionist, and it exists in a similarly otherworldly setting, its dark backdrop illuminated by a wistful glow as the band express what they call “the quiet magic hidden in everyday life.” To celebrate the announcement, Living Hour have unveiled lead single ‘Wheel’, which shows off both the dreamy yearn and crunchy rock sides of their sound very nicely.

The track comes complete with a video by Leigh Lugosi and Brett Ticzon, which you can see below:

Internal Drone Infinity will be released on 17^th October via Keeled Scales, Paper Bag Records (Canada) and Beloved Records (Australia). Pre-order a copy now from the Living Hour Bandcamp page.

Malena Zavala – MELT

Born in Argentina and now living between London and Mexico City, Malena Zavala is a self-taught musician and producer who first caught attention with her 2018 debut, Aliso. Drawing inspiration from both Latin American music and the likes of Devendra Banhart, Beach House and Feist, Zavala’s music layers poetic lyrics over hypnotic and haunting instrumentation. Latest single ‘MELT’, the first single from an EP of the same name that comes out later this year on Zavala’s own new label Paraná Records, is a good example. A soft and cosy love song that Zavala says tries “to express the feeling of being wrapped up in bed,” it’s built on gentle acoustic guitar and her hushed and intimate vocals and accentuated by ethereal harmonies and subtle synths.

‘MELT’ is out now via streaming services

Oh, Rose – For Art

Almost a year on from their last full-length Dorothy, Olympia/Portland mainstays Oh, Rose return in September with For Art, a brand new EP released via the good folks as Antiquated Future Records. The EP finds the band’s members in the midst of some big personal events, like getting married and starting families, and perhaps understandably this has them ruminating on family and relationships. As the label put it, the EP focuses on “themes of long-term commitment and partnership—both in romantic and platonic relationships, as well as to artistic practice itself.” Oh, Rose have released the title track by way of introduction, an unhurried and heartfelt song that captures these themes perfectly. “At first I feel so nervous to be this vulnerable,” Rose sings with courageous clarity, “it’s true that I was thinking about you.”

Routine Caffeine – Green Glass

“A track which marries a taut central rhythm with a dreamy haze, and hints at a sharp bite too, all highlighting just how much control Katie O’Brien Kelley (vocals, guitar), Madison Elizabeth Case (bass, synth, background vocals) and Emma Treganowan (drums) have over the mood of their work.” So we wrote of Routine Caffeine‘s ‘Philodendron‘ back in 2024, a track taken from the Louisville-based trio’s Weeds Under Concrete Stones. Their first release since that EP, new single ‘Green Glass’ is no less evocative, again crafting an immersive atmosphere to explore themes of nostalgia, belonging and the passing of time. “This song has served as a way for me to reflect on my family’s old farm in Michigan, one of my most treasured places,” they explain. But more than a lesson in simple longing for home, the track also charts the changes to the beloved place which accumulate with every return, adding an extra layer melancholy as the familiar slowly shifts into something different, and the past only grows further away.

runo plum – Lemon Garland

Minnesota singer-songwriter runo plum has slowly amassed a following over recent years, her detailed, wistful style of bedroom folk winning plenty of attention online. Having now signed with the ever-impressive Winspear, plum has released new single ‘Lemon Garland’ to celebrate. The first taste of forthcoming debut album patching, the song embodies the fondness and compassion of the runo plum style, as well as the longing for connection which underpins it. “Give me company / barefoot and muddy,” as she sings, “give me pointing / at the birds we’ve never seen before / we’ll stop to pick some veggies / for the big feast at our friendly table.” The result is inherently bittersweet, a hopeful vision of the future shadowed by the suggestion such community remains just a dream, though the lasting feeling is one of affection. As though it wishing for something so simple and fulfilling, runo plum shows our desires need not be so far away.

Watch the video directed by Karlee Boon below:

patching will be released soon via Winspear.

Scree – TV Sometimes

Brooklyn experimental maestros Scree return next month with August, a brand new full-length on Ruination Record Co. The band—that’s primary trio guitarist/composer Ryan El-Solh, bassist Carmen Quill and drummer Jason Burger, plus lots of guests—are hard to pin down, smashing together everything from Romantic classical music, dusty lonesome Americana, improvisational jazz and weighty indie rock to create some of the most interesting and deep instrumental music around. Scree released the title track as the lead single a few weeks back, and have now returned with a second cut, the enigmatically titled ‘TV Sometimes’. The song has been part of the band’s live repertoire for years, and here it gets a richer arrangement with contributions from the cast of collaborators. “It’s something like a love song,” El-Solh describes. “I probably should’ve chosen a more generally intelligible title, but at the time there was really only one person I was trying to reach with this bit of code and she got the message so the title stuck.”

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