Drawing on a combination of sixties British folk and seventies country rock to explore the intersection of humanity and the natural world, the album is Cameron’s first full-band offering and a fitting follow-up to the Polaris Music Prize nominated Sad-Eyed Lonesome Lady and Daybreak Over Jackson Street. “These songs share my curiosity about the mystical world, drawing on my attachment to the forests and the plains,” Cameron explains. “This record explores the sounds of those places while telling stories revealing what makes us human.”

New single ‘Rain’ gives listeners a further glimpse at what Blood Moon has to offer. A clear indication of Steph Cameron’s newly rich arrangements, using the stripped back folk of Sad-Eyed Lonesome Lady as the foundation to build a style of which Stevie Nicks would be proud. Most importantly, this transition loses none of the heart or depth of feeling, but instead uses such features as the fuel to drive a freshly propulsive sound.

Blood Moon is out on the 25th April via Neon Moon Records.

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Based in Brooklyn, Ben Van Bonn has made a name combining the traditional and the contemporary, taking a classic American fingerpicked style and reaching in new directions. Debut album Myth of the Middle Rung displayed how evocative this style could be, with singles like ‘Concord, MA’ highlighting a distinctive combination of archaic and digital sensibilities which created something delicate, spacious and shot through with some cryptic ancient power. Now Van Bonn is back with Further Than Thought, a new full-length which strips things back further, forgoing any vocals and removing all instruments but guitar and electric bass. Named after an aquatic portal in the Farallon Islands, first single ‘Great West Arch’ doubles down on intricate fingerpicking to transport the audience to the Californian coast, and serves as a timely reminder that less is often more.

Further Than Thought is out on the 29th November and available to pre-order via Bandcamp.

Blue Deputy – Cypress

Blue Deputy was formed by Andy Bunting in Philadelphia in 2020, and immediately won fans with the self-produced single ‘New Jersey’. Since then, Bunting has moved to Belfast and recruited Caoilfhinn McFadden (bass) and Cathal Francis (guitar and vocals) to form the current Blue Deputy lineup. The band are currently working on their debut EP, and new single ‘Cypress’ is perhaps our first taste of that. Released via new Dalliance Recordings imprint Under The Rolling Y, the song combines everything from soft bedroom pop and lyrical folk rock to the emotional intensity of Midwest emo. Bunting’s vocals smoulder and sway over steady percussion, subtle synths and wistful slide guitar, all coming together to from something that feels soft and raw with a clear-eyed clarity.

Daughter of Swords – Alone Together

Daughter of Swords is the solo project of North Carolina‘s Alex Sauser-Monnig, who you may also know as one third of Mountain Man and one half of The A’s. Their debut album, Dawnbreaker, came out in 2019, and followed a similar folk blueprint to those other projects. But the last few years have been ones of great personal change for Sauser-Monnig, and new single ‘Alone Together’ very much reflects that. Created with help from log-time pals Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak, Flock of Dimes), Nick Sanborn (Sylvan Esso), and TJ Maiani (Weyes Blood, Neneh Cherry), the song pulses with synths and blossoming electronics, driven forward on a stream of potent guitar and muscular percussion. It’s a dispatch from what label Psychic Hotline describe as “[a] fresh chapter of exploration and liberation,” exuding a buoyant confidence as we all trudge on through the barrage of bad news and complicated feelings.

Elori Saxl – Grows Along The River Fast

“Arrangements which combine digitally processed recordings of natural phenomena with analogue synths, MIDI samples and woodwind by Stuart Bogie, evoking not only the interplay between geography, ecology and human development in the area, but also the emotional landscape which results.” So we wrote last month when introducing Earth Focus, the new album from  New York-based composer Elori Saxl on Western Vinyl. A soundtrack to the PBS documentary of the same name, the record evokes the Southern Californian topography, especially along the LA River, highlighting the environment’s rhythms and changes, so it is fitting latest single ‘Grows Along The River Fast’ offers a different take to first single ‘Grows Along The River Slow’. A variation which switches up the length and tempo to offer a different picture of the same waterway, susceptible as it is to the varying conditions of the land.

Max García Conover – coming up low

A new month, a new single from Max García Conover, and this time he has company. ‘coming up low’ sees Buenos Aires’ Paula Prieto and New England’s Ben Cosgrove lend their talents, joining Conover on what is a characteristically sincere and tender track. Because while there are more voices in the mix, the song is a lesson in understatement. Mining the image of the moon in all of its isolation and pale sympathy, not to mention the way it encapsulates the stark power of a simple image. “I watched you dress in the soft light of the moon,” as one verse goes, “I was desperate and I was hopeless except for hoping that you wouldnt notice / I watched you dress in the soft light of the moon.” Elsewhere the night comes crashing down, and worst fears are realised, yet the lasting impression is that familiar blend of melancholy and hope experienced when looking up to see the moon rising again.

All month the moon coming up low coming up low coming up low
I awoke and you were missing and you left me a letter in the kitchen

Pocket Full of Crumbs – Ice Water

This summer, San Francisco outfit Pocket Full of Crumbs released In My Hands I Hold A Lucky Cricket, a full-length album on Cherub Dream Records. With its marriage of post-punk, alt rock and shoegaze, the record embraces the twin forces of gauzy texture and crushing weight to create something which nods to the nineties while keeping its eye fixed firmly forward. It saw an admirable degree of variation across the songs—from the twitchy energy of tracks like ‘Blink’ to the altogether heftier ‘In My Home’. Fan favourite ‘Ice Water’ offers yet another dimension, where increased clarity grounds a downbeat and ambiguous sound which threatens to spill over into dark chaos but never quite does, highlighting an understanding of mood and sense of control which is sometimes lacking within the genre.

Sonya – Inside & Out

Sonya released their debut At What Cost? earlier this year, a succinct collection of songs as comfortable offering late-night emotion as it was an upbeat swagger. If this duality marked the album, then new single ‘Inside & Out’ confronts such an idea head on. Another example of Sonya’s fantastic ability to sound at once confessional and carefree, intimate feelings communicated without sacrificing any of sense of confidence or attitude. With a taut rhythm that pulls the audience in and a singalong finale keeping them there until the close, the song is yet more evidence that the star of Sonya is rising and one to watch in the coming months.

‘Inside & Out’ is now available via streaming services.

Steph Cameron – Today

Having just announced a UK and European tour along with fellow Canadian songwriter Abigail Lapell, Saskatoon’s Steph Cameron has shared new single, ‘Today’. Her first new release in seven years, the single offers a glimpse of a full-length forthcoming next year on Neon Moon Records, and sees Cameron build upon the atmospheric and thematically charged style of folk which made previous records Sad-Eyed Lonesome Lady and Daybreak Over Jackson Street so special. A song as assured as it is emotive, simmering with brooding longing as it contemplates complex ideas of identity and history with a straightforward confidence. “’Today’ is a song about reconnecting with both our living and ancestral communities,” she explains. “It is about the pain of turning away from your identity and the strength and pride found in turning toward it.”

‘Today’ is out now via Neon Moon Records. You can find the dates of the Steph Cameron and Abigail Lapell tour here. 

Stephen Becker – Range

The forthcoming album from  LA-born, Brooklyn-based songwriter Stephen Becker, Middle Child Syndrome is a record concerned with change in all its guises, exploring the duality of permanence and decay inherent within existence itself with a distinctively personal slant. “The album sees Becker lean into this unorthodox style with an almost stream-of-consciousness immediacy,” we wrote in a preview, “as though the audience is given a direct invitation into his daily existence.” With vocals from Alena Spanger, latest single ‘Range’ puts forward a more subdued, restrained aspect of the record, the absence of drums creating a kind of torpor into which anxious thoughts inevitably seep, and the slow drift of time offers not peace but unease.

Microcosm of your parents, brother left LA
By this age you already had Michael I was late
Melody recycled wind me up and watch me spin

I’m not lost, I’m just outside my range
I’m not lost, I’m just a little spaced

This Lonesome Paradise – Into the Ether

Led by E. Ray Béchard, This Lonesome Paradise specialise in a dark and mysterious brand of Western noir. Last week they released a new record, Luna Nocturna, via Bad Vibes Good Friends, a collection of eight songs that we previously described as “a meditation on the American Dream with all its brutality, broken promises and betrayals.” Likening it to a Cormac McCarthy novel, the label describe the album as “an evocative journey through desolate landscapes and haunting narratives, capturing the raw essence of the American West.” This is very much apparent on centrepiece and standout track ‘Into the Ether’, a slinky and surreal slow-burn rock song that feels like a midnight cruise along a desert highway, taking us deep into the shadowy heart of the nation.

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The result is something full of both detail and weight, and one which rewards repeated listens. For these are songs that work on a visceral level, pulling the listener into frantic eddies and wide swells, but within these currents lie hidden depths. Be it clever lyricism, dual meanings or ambiguities in the mood that warrant closer inspection. Songs like opener ‘I Need the Darkness’ might feel like a kind of stalemate at first glance, the heaviness unable to blast away the sense of needling dread, but the reality is more dynamic. Slow Down Molasses are too interested in contradiction, too taken with change. There is no prevailing mood or conclusion, just a committed decision to embrace the energies of the contemporary moment in all of their frustrations, aggressions, vulnerabilities and dread.

We had the opportunity to ask the band a few questions, so read on below to find out more about the record.

Thanks for much for speaking with us. Congratulations on the release of Minor Deaths. How’s does it feel to have new music out in the world?

Tyson: Thank you so much. It’s so exciting and amazing to have it released, but also totally weird. It was supposed to come out in 2020, but the pandemic scuttled those plans, then we were supposed to spend the release week on tour in the UK, then pandemic cancelled those plans as well. So there is an odd underwhelming element to it with us not being on tour, but equally, we’ve received some very great support and have had many kind words written about it, so that has been really lovely. And just before the release we played packed festival shows in Germany and Estonia that were our first shows since the pandemic and were some of the most joyous moments I’ve ever had on (or off) stage.

Could we talk a little about the title? Minor Deaths. There are a number of ways to interpret it, but there’s a certain contradiction in the pair of words.

Tyson: There is definitely a certain contradiction to that pair of words, which worked well with this album. Lyrically, there are a lot of ruminations on how we interpret or react to changes whether they be within ourselves or society-wide. Often it is really easy to take something overly seriously and be over the top in your reaction to it, when in the long run it’s likely relatively minor.

This seems to be particularly true with men in our current era. How many men do you know that were called out or “cancelled”, but then within a short period of time, it was as if nothing had happened? But the frequent drama and self-pity of having to accept (often very minor) consequences is pretty ridiculous consider the impacts others have had to endure. One song, Revisionists, is specifically speaking to that. The fragility and outsized drama in many men’s reactions is remarkable. Not that the whole album is about that, but I think there is something to that mindset of questioning the out-sized reactions to your own personal situation that permeates a lot of the songs.

Also, from a more general perspective, I think the contradiction of those two terms suits the band and this album well. At first glance it SOUNDS like a badass album title, then you realize it isn’t, then you see the see the very lovely album cover and it all nicely contradicts how this is by far our most aggressive album. I think that captures our band well. No matter how dark or aggressive we may get, we’ll always undermine any overly self-serious or macho elements that may exist.

I’m interested in the interplay between anxiety and release on the record, often within the same song. The tone is set from ‘I Need the Darkness’, where nervous post-punk energy meets a sheer force of sound. Even a song like ‘Some Fine Action’, one of the album’s most buoyant, has a twitchy, ominous section after the big middle chorus that circles back to this disquiet. Did you consciously set out to fashion something so caught up between catharsis and unease? Looking back at it now, does either win out for you?

Aaron: That’s an interesting way to think about the album. No, I don’t recall that we had any discussions about intentionally writing uneasy or boisterous parts that would counter the more melodious moments; it just happened that way. During the early writing periods for Minor Deaths, I began bringing song ideas to the band that were far outside the scope of what we were doing at the time, and those riffs were rightly rejected. But even if the idea wasn’t going to be used by the band, playing something different was a good exercise for us, so I kept bringing various ideas no matter what they were. There was even a Brainbombs-sounding riff that we played over and over again while I screamed. Because the band had opened itself to trying new ideas even if they didn’t gel, we naturally began writing in a different direction and taking more chances.

As to your question about whether catharsis or unease is the triumphant feeling on the album, I think that depends on the listener. What you hear is reflective of what you bring to the listening experience

Tyson: I think Aaron’s answer does a great job capturing the significant changes in our writing process. For years the band typically deferred to me on arrangements, despite my protests and desire to be challenged, but after touring 100% Sunshine we’d fallen into a much more collaborative approach with Aaron bringing a lot more ideas and taking more leadership in shaping songs. To me, this was amazing and at times uncomfortable, but amazing because I desperately wanted to be pushed outside my comfort zone. Despite my love of the more challenging, abrasive or tense free jazz or post-punk, I wasn’t always able to capture that in my writing. My writing tends to fit with some of that but more often leaned more towards building into those big cathartic releases, so it was amazing to have someone as thoughtful and musically knowledgeable as Aaron bringing new ideas to finally push us beyond what came intuitively to me.

So I guess, to answer your question more directly, yes, there was a conscious decision to change how we wrote, but maybe not to explicitly ride the line between tension and release. In the end I’m so happy that that is what you took away from it as it does really better capture what we as a band tend to like and want to be playing.

I think it’s fair to say Slow Down Molasses has always balanced a variety of styles, and of course there’s been an evolution across the years too. Who do you consider your biggest musical influences? And has this changed since the earlier years of the project?

Chrix: The membership of Slow Down Molasses has changed drastically since the bands’ first iteration came together in 2007, and with it has always come a diverse array of influences. It’s always been interesting seeing how our individual influences diverge and overlap, and, in more recent years, how our collective love of noisy indie rock, punk and more challenging instrumental music has simmered to the forefront of our songwriting.

Tyson: The sound throughout has definitely changed, but there have always been some pretty consistent touch points, specifically bands like Mogwai, My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive. I think what’s changed is what element of those bands’ influences was brought to the forefront with the changing lineups that we’ve had and what other influences got brought along or highlighted. Obviously there has been a shift from the prettier, more hazy elements of those bands, to the more intense and aggressive elements. To me it feels like it’s been a fairly natural progression, though some days Minor Deaths feels like after years of dancing around our more intense or aggressive influences, we finally just jumped off the cliff and fully embraced them.

With its nods to Virginia Woolf, songs like ‘Street Haunting’ show how you reach beyond music for influence too. Are there any particular artists, writers or artforms that you consider important to your own creative style?

Tyson: To me, the built environment and how we interact with it and exist within it has always been somewhat of a primary influence on how I’ve thought about music and lyrics. I think visualizing the spaces and interactions I’m trying to capture goes hand in hand with song writing both on the musical and lyrical side of things. When I stumbled up the Virginia Woolf essay Street Haunting, it immediately had me inspired, as she so wonderfully captured that feeling of moving through an urban environment and the multitude of ways react to it or interpret ones existences within it.

Similarly our 2015 album Burnt Black Cars was inspired by a series of photos my father had taken in Paris during the protests of May, 1968. None of the lyrics were necessarily protest anthems or directly referencing specific occurrences, but they tried to capture the feeling of unrest and inspiration that existed at that time, in that place.

‘Street Haunting’ also explores life and art away from traditional centres of culture. I wondered if you could speak a little on being a band based in a place like Saskatoon, and the pros and cons versus somewhere like, I don’t know, Toronto? We’ve noticed how many people still seem intent on moving to Brooklyn to ‘make it’, even in this interconnected age.

Chrix: Most of us grew up during a time when regional scenes would blow up and ultimately bands associated with those scenes—I’m thinking Halifax, Montreal, etc.—would suddenly get a lot more notice. I’m not certain that this type of hype phenomenon happens to the same extent anymore, so we’ve never been inclined to relocate for the sake of being more centrally-located. For the most part, we’ve found a lot of success abroad as opportunities to play international festivals come up. We’ve been fortunate to play across the world, in scenes as far away as the UK, Iceland, Germany and, most recently, Estonia. And while we’re stoked to get to travel as much as we have, Saskatoon has always had an amazingly supportive scene that we are happy to be a part of.

Minor Deaths is out now via Noyes Records and Divine Schism and is available from the Slow Down Molasses Bandcamp page, including special vinyl and CD editions. Fans in the UK/Europe can order via Divine Schism for better shipping rates.

Cover photo by Levi Manchak

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This month sees the return of Slow Down Molasses with a brand new single, ‘Street Haunting’, ahead of album Minor Deaths this autumn. Inspired by the Virginia Woolf essay of the same name, the track continues to develop the style that marks the outfit, using visceral sounds to explore sophisticated themes. “The song ruminates on the casual, but oft-underappreciated beauty of the urban environment and the predictability of a person’s daily tasks,” frontman Tyler McShane explains. “A place sometimes overflowing with creative energy, but where it’s often necessary to remind oneself of the casual brilliance of one’s peers and the places we typically tend to haunt.”

But Woolf haunted London, walking the streets of Westminster, Trafalgar Square and Regent’s Park. Slow Down Molasses position themselves within less renowned Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. The song therefore serves something of a dual purpose, finding that the ‘rest’ of which Woolf speaks is still present in the smaller urban spaces, while also exploring the strange isolation inherent in places so far removed from traditional centres of culture. This is captured in a taut, twitchy sound, McShane’s vocals fighting against growing disorder as peals of feedback threaten to unhinge the track. Though just as it rises to breaking point, the tense rhythm wins out. Just another flash of unease on the ever-spinning world.

A street haunted that’s the missing link for us
Built of bricks and the failing state of man
Tells the story of a secret history of
Something new. Something that won’t change at all.

Let me hide as I walk right past it all
A faded ghost in this new dialectic’s drone
I step aside of the reasons that got you there
Someone lost, or someone set to lose their way

Artwork by Brandi Strauss, layout by Chrix Morix

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All we have in way of a preview so far is this video trailer, though the sample is more than enough to suggest that Lucky’s brand of warm folk and evocative songwriting is sounding as good as ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLDRNxn-oAo

To help along physical pressings of the album, Zachary Lucky has set up a Pledge Music page with a variety of pay scales and prizes for those who donate. Not only do all pre-orders come with an early download of the full record, but depending on how much you have to spend you could also grab yourself a personalised postcard, signed record, test press vinyl, a photo book, acoustic house show and even a (possibly awkward) Skype call with Lucky himself.

Everywhere A Man Can Be will be released on the 7th October via Wroxton Recordings, and you can support the pre-order campaign right now on Pledge Music. Also, be sure to delve into the Zachary Lucky back-catalogue on Bandcamp.

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