Next month the Canadian songwriter Cat Clyde will release Blood Bone Bone, a new full-length album on Concord Records. An effort to reposition or reimagine her relationship with love, the record sees Clyde turn her indigenous Métis heritage for inspiration, as well as the wide natural world, and serves as a expression of everything from exasperation and fury to personal growth and joy. New single ‘Man’s World’ falls at the former end of that spectrum, though repurposes its anger into something cathartic. “This is an expression of the frustration I feel existing as a woman in a patriarchal world,” Clyde explains. “It sometimes feels difficult to be on a 24 hour clock rather than a 28 day cycle, and a 12 month year instead of a 13 month year. I love and crave masculine energy when it’s strong, protective, and emotionally aware. It has been difficult and deeply disappointing to have had experiences dealing with masculine energy that is childish, cowardly, and encroaching on the feminine space. ‘Man’s World’ touches on my own ideas of what being a woman means in this society and how dangerous and violent it can be for a woman’s heart.”

Watch the video directed and shot by Lukas Hyrman below:

Mud Blood Bone will be released on the 13th March via Concord Records and you can pre-order it now.

Dayydream – Proximity

Back in 2025 we introduced Dayydream, the Glasgow-based indie rock project led by visual artist and musician Chloe Trappes. “Straddles shoegaze, slowcore and indie rock to create a sound both hazy and deep,” we wrote of single ‘Fucked Up’, “its title perhaps belying the song’s inviting warmth but describing its confessional tone to a tee, the sound suspended with a light mist yet not without its own internal force.” Now Dayydream are about to release Trace, and EP which builds upon these foundations to delve into the strange, melancholic way the past persists into the present. True to this mood, the sound is often restrained and reflective, the tracks playing as though in the aftermath of something, Trappes and co. left alone but for the footprints on the ground, the fading fog of breath on glass. Single ‘Proximity’ is a good place to dive in, the upbeat rhythm of its opening belying the weight at its heart, a burden which slowly twists the sound into something altogether more hefty and dense.

‘Proximity’ is out now and available from Bandcamp. Trace will be released soon.

jack k – Welcome To The New World

A cross-gen collaboration between composer Jack Kilburn and his father, British poet Mark Kilburn, the forthcoming jack k album 8 Tracks sits at the intersection of music, narrative and memory. Using primarily guitar and piano, Jack creates soundscapes which gesture towards ambient and alt-jazz, and coupled with Mark’s distinctively Brummie spoken-word delivery, the songs come to represent not only reflection on personal experience and family history but something stranger and more abstract. A hauntological sense of imagined pasts and aborted futures which works to evoke the off-kilter, often melancholic sensation of the contemporary British moment. True to its title, ‘Welcome To The New World’ is the ideal entry point into this style. A track spacious and stark, as barren as the society evoked by Kilburn’s plainspoken lyricism, where the new world is not much of a world at all, but rather just the fading echoes of what we imagined as it falls away from us.

8 Tracks will be released soon.

Lamplight – Year 2083

“An exploration of how one’s sense of identity shifts and changes according to any number of present conditions, not least the place we call home at any given time.” That’s how we described the self-titled album by Lamplight back in 2024, the Western Vinyl release seeing Virginia songwriter Ian Hatcher-Williams grapple with a life which led out of a cult in his home state to a job in tech in NYC before eventually circling back around to returning to Virginia to marry a childhood friend. Glimpse at the title of the latest Lamplight single ‘Year 2083’ and you might think Hatcher-Williams has switched focus from the past towards the distant future, though in reality the song is very much embedded in the present. With hemlock adding supporting vocals, the track possesses all of the warmth of the previous album, not to mention the same emotional openness. As though written from within the fluidity of the current moment, with Hatcher-Williams working to establish what is important in real time. Grab it from Bandcamp now, with all proceeds going to MPLS mutual aid.

Lemoncello – Meet Me Halfway

There’s a very contemporary tension within Lemoncello‘s latest single ‘Meet Me Halfway’. A complicated relationship between intimacy and distance. A sense of push and pull. Out now via Claddagh Records, the song sees Irish duo Laura Quirke (guitar/vocals) and Claire Kinsella (cello/vocals) create a soundscape that’s spare yet loaded with latent feeling, as though the true weight of the track lies just outside of the frame. An atmosphere fitting for a song which explores how even though we’re now able to communicate more freely than ever before, we’re somehow as far apart as we’ve ever been. “To be so connected / And yet so disconnected,” as a pertinent line states. “What’s the point in speaking / With so much left understood.” But rather than settle for a dismayed commentary on such conditions, ‘Meet Me Halfway’ pushes further, reaching for the kind of concerted effort required on both sides of a relationship in order to sustain connection. Watch the video below, wih creative direction by Sophie O’Donovan, editing by AK Heisterkamp and title design by Stina Sandstrom:

‘Meet Me Halfway’ is out now via Claddagh Records and available from the usual places.

new body electric – every day

“It all started with a trumpet,” explain Portland, Oregon-based band new body electric (Aaron Peterson, Evan Smoker and Leah Vautar), but their music has come a long way since then. Following on from a self-titled album in 2024 which drew on everything from funk, electro and jazz to enliven its indie pop sound, the band have returned with new single ‘every day’ to continue to explore new ground. Full of easygoing groove, the result is assured in style if not in substance, the track’s lyrics delving into various personas we adopt to get through day to day existence. But no matter how blurry a sense of self might be thanks to the demands of living, new body electric are here to show this need not necessarily defeat us. Better to commit to the rhythm and groove your way on through.

‘every day; is out now and available from the usual places.

Paul Bergmann – West Rock

“A pleading dirge; a manic rumination on the human condition at the foot of a geological anomaly in New Haven, CT.” That’s how musician Paul Bergmann described his latest single ‘West Rock’, a song released in anticipation of forthcoming full-length Connecticut Cowboy. Across a total of sixteen releases, Bergmann’s work has shapeshifted from one album to another, moving from scrappy folk punk to sleek piano-led croons, not to mention psychedelic excursions too. But it has always been bound by an overarching thematic concern with existential ideas of life, death and all the dreams therein. As the above description might suggest, ‘West Rock’ sees Bergman return to the most immediate, raw form, pitching the audience into a shadowy world and barking confessions at us through the gloom. Think of the nocturnal volatility of acts like Bambara crossed with the Jason Molina’s bitter poetry and you’re getting close to the result.

Run Remedy – Jessie’s Girl

The alter ego of US-born, UK-based songwriter Robin Koob, Run Remedy embraces both the serious and silly sides of life in its folk rock sound, something embodied by latest single, a reimagining of Rick Springfield’s 1981 hit ‘Jessie’s Girl’. This version not only plays with the sound, swapping out the guitar solo for banjo, but also flips the gender to transform the track into a queer anthem. “I swear if I’m back home driving around South Jersey, ‘Jessie’s Girl’ will come on within the hour (shout out 95.1WAYV),” Koob explains. “It’s been stuck in my head my whole life. That level of cringey yearning is timeless, so obviously I had to make my own sapphic spinoff.” The single comes complete with a video to further cement the changes. “The original video is pure camp, so I basically Weird Al’d it with rainbow kids,” Koob continues. “We recreated almost every shot in one day, gorilla-shooting around Manchester, spared my bathroom mirror, and ended the day passing around the wig. Everyone looked better in it than I did, which feels correct.”

‘Jessie’s Girl’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Spirited Followers – Returning

Back in September we wrote about Cardiff-based experimental folk rock outfit Spirited Followers, describing how the project reaches across a huge range of influences to inform its singular sound. “With members hailing from Cyprus, India and Wales, Ireland, and England, the diversity of inspiration is perhaps unsurprising,” we explained, “though the work of Spirited Followers pushes beyond those backgrounds too. You’ll hear elements of Appalachian mountain music in the stark guitar, as well as a Greek flavour among several others.” Released via Libertino‘s new sister label BWGIBWGAN, latest single ‘Returning’ is no less ambitious, mining ancient songwriting traditons for their devotional power while still positioning their sound on the cutting edge of the contemporary movement too. It a glimpse at the band’s reflective side, “reframing themes of death,” as the label put it, “through warmth, acceptance and spiritual calm.”

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DUG have now announced their debut, titled Have At It!, will be released in September, and offered the title track to further whet appetites of fans. A world away from the darker tones of its predecessor, the single offers an infectiously bright sound which repurposes gospel sensibilities for the contemporary age. Existential musings delivered with toe-tapping rhythm and unapologetically sincere vocals. “Have At It! came from a text message my dad sent to our family WhatsApp group during COVID,” O’Reilly explains. “At the time, there was that short phase when everyone thought COVID could spread through surfaces. My mum was really worried, so she decided to get a will written. She took a photo of it and shared it in the group chat. In response, my dad sent a picture of his will—a napkin with the words ‘Have at it!’ scribbled across the front.”

Watch the video directed by Ellius Grace below:

Have At It! will be released on the 19th September via Claddagh Records/Decca and you can pre-order it now.

Photo by Rosie Sco

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The resulting release is both consistently beautiful and uniquely equipped to tackle the range of themes it wraps its arms around, lending near equal weight to the supporting artwork as it does the songs themselves. The style is introduced through the title track opener, where Constant Follower expound upon the maxim of the album’s name with their signature thoughtfulness and empathy. Utilising the tactile charms of plasticine stop-motion, animator, illustrator and puppeteer Emerson New breathes further humanity into the track.

Don’t forget what you said
The smile you send out returns to you

The rest of the record is just as attentive and complete, and each listener will likely have their own standouts. “Fingerpicked guitar evokes a searching emotional resonance, the track in many ways subdued but possessing a definite sense of power,” we wrote of ‘Whole Be’, “some charge in the vocals and harmonies lifting the otherwise grounded folk style towards something almost ethereal.” Again striking in its empathetic tone, the song details the contradiction inherent in the way we long for wholeness while acknowledging imperfection, forgoing the notion of completeness to instead champion the sense of meaning attained via perpetual striving. As though on some fundamental level, to be human is to be always wishing for something more. Watch the video directed by and starring Peter Lilly, Code Word Zebra below:

‘Almost Time To Go’ sees Andy Aquarius add harp, “crafting,” as we wrote in a preview, “a sound shadowy yet shot through with light, carrying a message of endurance in a typically compassionate manner,” while ‘All Is Well’ “mine[s] the title for all of its complications,” as we put it, “delving into the ways in which the contemporary reliance on comfort and convenience masks an ever-present dread below the surface of our society.” The latter, complete with its video filmed and directed by Kris Boyle, is an example of the real-life stories underpinning McAll’s work, the track dedicated to Jake ‘Taurus Mortimer’, a young person killed in the care of NHS Forth Valley Psychiatric services back in 2023.

“For an album which deals with such profound themes, it sounds disarmingly tranquil,” we wrote of Neither Is back in 2022. “But head more than an inch below the surface and darker waters lie. Because within the humble rhythm pull a variety of currents, conflicting forces which culminate in a sense of tension. A struggle between calmness and distress, between the real and imaginary, and indeed between the desire for and fear of such clear boundaries.” With The Smile You Send, Constant Follower don’t so much further their meditation on such themes as expand it, drawing a myriad of others into the work both in terms of the subject matter of the songs and the actual practical matter of their creation. The fact the release is no less heartfelt and intimate then its predecessors is a testament to McAll’s writing and the skill of his collaborators, but also, and perhaps most importantly, evidence that the convictions which underpin its every aspect bear fruit within the real world. The receptive soul will finds others and thereby comfort. The smile you send out returns to you.

The Smile You Send Out Returns To You is out now via Last Night From Glasgow and you can get it from the Constant Follower Bandcamp page.

Artwork by Heather Nevay, design by Timothy O’Donnell

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Toronto-based indie rock outfit Arenas are gearing up to the release of their debut full-length Truth Come Alive this spring, and new single ‘Quitting’ gives an indication of what to expect. Described by the band as “a snapshot of the fear associated with giving up on something,” the track uses a blend of playful energy and tangible weight to celebrate the cathartic joy of throwing in the towel. The result owes as much to acts like Pixies as it does contemporary post-punk, and packs a real punch with its sardonic charm. In a world of productivity and parasitic middle managers, giving up might be one of the last radical acts left available to us.

Brown Horse – Corduroy Couch

We featured Brown Horse‘s debut album Reservoir when writing about our favourite releases of 2024, praising their sometimes nostalgic, sometimes Gothic brand of folk rock. Maintaining the sense of momentum, the band are wasting no time with their second full-length, All the Right Weakness, which will be released this spring via Loose Music. Lead single ‘Corduroy Couch’ is available to listen to right now, a song which melds alt country and slacker rock to offer the same sense of sincerity, urgency, specificity and strangeness which marked the previous release.

We watched The Matrix on a corduroy couch
The smell of the ocean was drying on your skin
Your big retriever’s name was Hank
And I know I’ll miss him

The Burning Hell – Bottle of Chianti, Cheese And Charcuterie Board

Writing of the album Garbage Island back in 2023, we described how The Burning Hell lived up to their name, making “everything from tongue-in-cheek anti-folk to racing indie rock,” to offer “a bright and mischievous ode to a pre-apocalyptic world.” Coming soon via You’ve Changed Records and BB*ISLAND, the new Burning Hell album Ghost Palace continues this mission, albeit with the requisite correction that the world it is being released into is now comfortably mid-apocalypse. Single ‘Bottle of Chianti, Cheese And Charcuterie Board’ finds Mathias Kom, Ariel Sharratt and Jake Nicoll in a familiarly impish mood, pouring scorn on materialist bourgeois distractions with an oddball lyrical journey. Strangers named Jason, collectors of medieval swords, a Buddhist book club in the sky frequented by long-haired former tennis pros and part-time Rabbis. No, it’s not a new Pynchon novel. The Burning Hell are back.

Watch the video directed by Graeme Patterson below:

Ghost Palace is out on the 7th March via You’ve Changed Records and BB*ISLAND and you can pre-order it now.

Byland & The Bones of J.R. Jones – Jubilee

“Trac[es] the disappointment and exasperation loaded into any search for belonging, while arcing towards a sense of acceptance.” That’s how we described Heavy For A While, last year’s album by Albuquerque-born, Seattle-based artist Alie Renee Byland, AKA Byland, praising the release for its willing to allow “competing and seemingly contradictory emotions to occupy the same space.” With a tour with Deep Sea Diver on the horizon, Byland has teamed up The Bones of J.R. Jones for new single, ‘Jubilee’. It’s a duet that utilises the chemistry between the vocals to great effect, mining a sense of hushed intimacy in its slow bloom before the poignant drama of the weighty finale.

Constant Follower – Almost Time To Go

Towards the end of 2024, we introduced The Smile You Send Out Returns To You, the forthcoming album from Glasgow‘s Constant Follower, singles like ‘Whole Be‘ and ‘All Is Well‘ highlighting how the band have adopted a newly ethereal sound to explore a myriad of themes from parenthood to addiction and recovery. With the album’s spring release fast approaching, Constant Follower have unveiled new single, ‘Almost Time to Go’. Berlin’s Andy Aquarius adds harp, crafting a sound shadowy yet shot through with light, carrying a message of endurance in a typically compassionate manner.

The Coral Gables – Heavy Load

New York-based trio The Coral Gables have made a name combining country twang with good old fashioned rock and roll, not to mention a distinctively smart lyrical style. Latest single ‘Heavy Load’ is the perfect introduction for the uninitiated, bringing to life an existential wander around the streets of Washington DC by riffing on the Bob Dylan classic ‘Mississippi’. I’ve been through the wringer / I’ve been through hell,” lead Kenny Hoffman sings in the opening lines. “I’m walking through a city / That I used to know well.” The sound itself is full of warm country tones and easy-going confidence, yet Hoffman’s vocals carry a tangible edge. Something which sits at the intersection of desperation and wry fatalism, the voice of a man baffled by the world occurring all around him.

I’m doing what I can
Doing what I must
I’m serving my sentence
And the sentence was just
It’s not an undue burden
I’m reaping what I sowed
I’m carrying a heavy heavy heavy load

Dayydream – Fucked Up

Led by Glasgow-based visual artist and musician Chloe Trappes and featuring Loup Havenith (drums), Samuel Rafanell-Williams (lead guitar) and Dillon Salvi (bass guitar), Dayydream is a project which straddles shoegaze, slowcore and indie rock to create a sound both hazy and deep. Latest single ‘Fucked Up’ embodies this style, its title perhaps belying the song’s inviting warmth but describing its confessional tone to a tee, the sound suspended with a light mist yet not without its own internal force. The drums lead a gradual build across the track’s length, but any expectation of a shoegaze crescendo is unfounded, instead allowing a more understated, emotive air to be the lasting impression.

Molto Ohm – Sponsored #1

Molto Ohm is the new project from Italy-born, Brooklyn-based artist and composer Matteo Liberatore which examines the contemporary moment—where the rise of digital connection seems inversely proportional to relations within the physical world, and the fabric of society is changing if not disintegrating altogether. The electronic sound combines dance beats and shimmering melodies with vocal samples and environmental sounds, leading to something ostensibly intimate but ultimately alienating in its synthetic form. Ahead of debut album FEED on New Focus Recordings, single ‘Sponsored #1’ introduces the style. A track which “delves into the commodification of self-care,” as Liberatore describes, “where the quest for mental well-being is shaped by algorithms and consumer-driven promises of a better you.”

FEED is out on the 21st March via New Focus Recordings and you can pre-order it now.

Pink Must – Morphe Sun

Based on mutual genre-bending inclinations and a deepening chemistry, Pink Must is the new recording project of Brooklyn-based sound artists and musicians Mari ‘More Eaze’ Rubio and Lynn Avery. Forthcoming via 15 love, their self-titled debut is both something of an introduction and mission statement. It establishes an interplay between polish and dissonance, as well as an often wryly sardonic vocal style and conscious resistance to easy labelling at every turn. Take opening track ‘Morphe Sun’, a glitchy song Avery describes as “almost a remix of itself” which presents a vainglorious figure from the perspective of a friend who can’t help but find some part of their personality charming. “u hated the sunset / didn’t match the shade of the palette / u wore that day / could have been worse,” as the second verse goes. “reignited / the taste of smoke in teeth / gotta confess i kinda found it sweet.”

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With the album set for release in February 2025 via Last Night From Glasgow, the band have returned with brand new track, ‘Whole Be’. “It’s about exploring the paradox of seeking ‘wholeness’ while acknowledging our inherent imperfections,” as McAll describes. “It resonates with the idea that our efforts to achieve completeness are what define us at a basic level, even if the end goal remains elusive.” Fingerpicked guitar evokes a searching emotional resonance, the track in many ways subdued but possessing a definite sense of power. Some charge in the vocals and harmonies lifting the otherwise grounded folk style towards something almost ethereal.

As ever with Constant Follower, the music is accompanied by a strong visual element too, from Heather Nevay’s artwork to the video directed by and starring Peter Lilly, Code Word Zebra. “I think the video offers a poignant narrative in reverse,” McAll explains:

It shows a man cycling through a sequence of events that undo a potential future of despair. It ends at the beginning, staring straight into the eyes of the protagonist as he experiences a powerful moment of clarity, symbolising the realisation of the fork in the road that he’s on. It’s a story of reversing the path to catastrophe and finding hope in such moments of clarity.

The Smile You Send Out Returns To You is coming soon.

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Back in May we wrote about Turn Around For Me / See You Soon, the new double single from Glasgow‘s Constant Follower ahead of their anticipated second album The Smile You Send Out Returns To You, coming early next year via Last Night From Glasgow. “[Stephen] McAll and co. breathe extra life into the arrangement,” we wrote of ‘Turn Around For Me’, “and the song swells with an affirming rhythm which tips it towards indie rock territory.” The follow-up ‘See You Soon’ is no different. A continuation of the band’s exploration of memory which draws on the concept of saudade—the nostalgic longing for some absent person or thing—the song captures a picture of everyday life as haunted by a missing piece. Something which can never be resolved, a wound which will go on hurting.

Jordan Whitlock, Memory Spells – Heaven and Here

Back in February, we wrote about the collaboration between songwriter/producer Jordan Whitlock and Matt Bauer‘s Memory Spells, describing single ‘Take My Hand’ as “Suffused with the lush, shadowy grandeur of Lynch at his most romantic.” Now the duo have returned with a brand new single ‘ Heaven and Here’, another impressively atmospheric piece of cinematic pop music. Combining ambient and classical elements with Whitlock’s piercingly poignant vocals, it has all the drama and aching emotion of a tragedy. Sombre strings ache and sway over glitchy atmospherics and the muted thump of percussion as Whitlock delivers lyrics that possess a spare and opaque poetry.

Wildflowers bloom
Bend toward the sun
I follow you out through the waves
Nothing between
Heaven and here
Only the words I couldn’t say

‘Heaven and Here’ is out now via streaming services.

Lutalo – Ocean Swallows Him Whole

Following on from 2023’s AGAIN, a record which explored the various forms of oppression woven through our societies, Lutalo is returning this September with debut full-length The Academy on Winspear. Described as a time capsule of lessons learnt in their first chapter of life, the album sees the Vermont-based singer-songwriter delve into their past and invite the audience along for the ride. Single ‘Ocean Swallows Him Whole’ uses the doomed figure of Icarus to capture the peaks and troughs of this journey, drawing an energizing momentum from adrenaline rush, even if it comes from a fall.

Watch the video by director, cinematographer and editor Rich Smith below:

The Academy is out on the 20th September via Winspear and you can pre-order it now.

 Melanie MacLaren – Heaven Is

A song she says is “about a lot of the myths and imagery we’re fed about the afterlife,” ‘Heaven Is’ is the latest single from Nashville singer songwriter Melanie MacLaren. Delivered in an easy country-pop style and with equal helpings of bittersweet feeling and wry humour, it combines existential musings with observations altogether more terrestrial. So heaven becomes both “a place up in the air” filled with lost loved ones and something in the here and now, like “sipping beer in folding chairs,” or “eating fruit straight off the vine.” “[‘Heaven Is’] is about the experience of how deconstructing those myths leads to reality check that we really have no idea what happens,” MacLaren describes, “besides that we leave, and everyone else does too.”

Heaven is the place where the dead girls go
Heaven is the place up in the air
Heaven is a place i don’t think about much
But I’ll have to one day I’m aware

‘Heaven Is’ is out now via streaming services.

Miserable chillers – Great American Turn Off

Miserable chillers has made a name with an idiosyncratic, constantly inventive sound, following a myriad of creative directions from Kate Bush-esque art pop to SNES soundtracks and field recordings. A mixtape featuring recordings made between 2018 and 2024, Great American Turn Off not only personifies the spirit of Miguel Gallego’s work, but serves as the ideal introduction for those looking to dive in for the first time. The release functions best as a full entity, rewarding those who take forty minutes to lose themselves in its easy rhythms, but we recommended single ‘The Shaft’ for anyone who needs a quicker dose.

Great American Turn Off is out now and available to hear in full here.

Molly Murphy – Seabird

Specializing in what she calls “lo-fi folk tunes summoned from the Blue Ridge and set loose in New York City,” Molly Murphy makes bright and emotionally resonant folk music. Her latest single is a cover of  The Alessi Brothers 1976 song ‘Seabird’. Complete with vocal harmonies, subtle mandolin and slide guitar, it’s a lush and laidback take on the original. Murphy’s vocals take centre stage, confidently but vulnerably delivering lyrics that use the imagery of the titular bird covering vast distances of remote ocean as a metaphor for distances altogether more human. “Like a lonely seabird,” Murphy sings, “you’ve been away from land too long / Oh, too long.”

Old Amica – Tiden far

Described as a release about time, Old Amica‘s ‘Tiden far’ sees the Swedish project turn their attention memory, looking to invoke how we experience the past, where the amorphous drift comes to form strange patterns and meanings. As such, the single is suitably hazy and slow-moving, its drama arising from a concealed hand as though always masked by something. Familiar sights and sensations as experienced through a gauze curtain. Old voices coming through a crackling radio, messages moving through the accumulated years with something to offer us yet.

Shady Baby – Feel It

Following a couple of singles in 2023, Brighton garage rockers Shady Baby are back with a brand new single, ‘Feel It’. Comprising of Sam Leaver (vocals, guitar), Nick Varnava (bass) and Tom Jackson (drums), Shady Baby draw on late 90s and early 00s alternative rock, and ‘Feel It’ is no different. A rich,  enveloping wall of sound is punctured by energizing electric guitar and crisp percussion, with enough hooks to appeal to the radio and festival circuit and enough grunge to bring in the rock-heads. All this raw energy is used to explore feelings of agitation and doubt. “‘Feel It’ started off as a song about grappling with impatience,” says Leaver, “but along the way it evolved into exploring the uncertainties of new relationships.”

‘Feel It’ is out now on streaming services.

Special World – Cloak in the Attic

This month saw Special World, that’s the solo recording project of Philly‘s Andy Molholt (who you might know from Speedy Ortiz), released their debut physical release with a self-titled collection. Described as ‘early’ songs, the cassette provides a peek into the inventive and often idiosyncratic style of the Special World sound, something demonstrated by the single and opener ‘Cloak in the Attic’. Starting with a glass smash but progressing with a lethargic rhythm, the song slowly crawls over the listener and absorbs them into its peculiar world. A place often strange and always colourful, where the light bends in odd shapes and everything takes on the loaded, abstract logic of dreams.

the cloak in the attic is hidden
obscured by a flowering gem
where is the proof?
no fumes left to reduce
cannot refuse a bargain which i cannot lose

night after night we misconstrue

Stelth Ulvang and the Tigernips – Dissolve

Described as “a visceral journey through the late-night mental crumblings of summer, capturing the essence of spontaneity and sincerity,” ‘Dissolve’ is the first single from Stelth Ulvang’s upcoming self-titled album, Stelth Ulvang and the Tigernips. Ulvang might be best known as the pianist for folk sensation The Lumineers, but has long pursued a variety of creative outlets, and the new album is something of an antidote to radio-friendly anthemic polish which has come to mark The Lumineers sound. ‘Dissolve’ is our first glimpse of a collection of songs which instead leans into the vulnerable and raw side of things, allowing Ulvang to show a slightly stranger but altogether more authentic side to his work.

YULLOLA – Silk Nightdress

At the end of last month, Maine songwriter and producer YULLOLA released Zen Maiden, a brand new record that exists in an unreal world of its own. Direct, pop-inflected indie rock songs sit next to cinematic spiritual jazz segues and dreamy spoken word sections. All of which makes sense when you understand where the album came from. “This year I truly was considering becoming a nun whilst getting obsessed with vocal inflections of kulning and female Bulgarian choirs,” YULLOLA describes, “spending hours in the forests of Maine just making sounds.” Opener ‘Silk Nightdress’ is the perfect introduction, a spoken word track with all the shimmering unreality and dark cinematic romance of Twin Peaks at its most melodramatic.

Zen Maiden is out now and available via the YULLOLA Bandcamp page.

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It’s an apt encapsulation of the message at the heart of Even Days Dissolve. Let us head back into the environment around us, Scott William Urquhart and Constant Follower suggest. Stitch ourselves back into the fabric of the land. For the land is already within us and always has been. It just takes a moment to remember it, to understand.

Constant Follower have now returned with a new double single, Turn Around For Me / See You Soon, and the songs are no less evocative. Co-produced and mixed in Austin, Texas by Dan Duszynski (Loma, Brian Eno), ‘Turn Around For Me’ opens with the hushed grace so familiar to previous Constant Follower work. But as the track develops, McAll and co. breathe extra life into the arrangement and the song swells with an affirming rhythm which tips it towards indie rock territory. A spaciousness, perhaps, taken from the landscape in which it was recorded. “To stay out in the middle of nowhere in the Texas Hill Country for a month while we worked was quite the experience,” McAll explains:

I slept in an old RV nestled amongst pecan trees and would be woken in the night by the coyotes. I’d go for night walks to try and spot them, but all I’d see were the sparkling eyes of countless spiders watching me from the grass. We’d spend long days in the studio mixing what I’d recorded in Stirling, adding magical touches. This track won’t be on the album. I felt like it needed its own space, and a 7″ provides just that.

The track comes complete with a video by Tsumugi Yagi. “[The song’s] immediacy made me want to focus the video on a single character’s journey,” Yagi explains. “I filmed the character dancing in a simple setting, creating a visual that harmonizes with Constant Follower’s evocative music, which wraps around the heart of the listener. The video is intentionally not dark, yet it has a sense of enclosure, aiming to capture the nuanced emotions of the protagonist’s inner world.”

Turn Around For Me / See You Soon is out now via Golden Hum Recordings and available from the Constant Follower Bandcamp page.

Photo by Harri Reid, album artwork by Peter Russell

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In January, Chayse Porter will release his third album Endless / Boundless, what label Earth Libraries describe as “nine new musical excavations and epiphanies the Birmingham-based songwriter dug up from life’s bedrock and polished to a shine in his basement lair.” ‘Flowers in Chains’ is the final single before the record’s release and is the perfect introduction. On the surface it’s sweet and jangly, all warm breeze and syrupy sunlight, but this is a song of contrast and juxtaposition. Porter describes the lyrics as “jutting barbs left for someone clueless to their own cruelty,” and close inspection sees the sweetness sour and the breeze leave goosebumps on your skin.

Do you ever get the feeling
That you’re not so kind of a person
Do you ever stop to think
That your words, they hurt
You’re so sweet, sweet like dirt

Hank Tree – Sweet Saltpeter

With Fergus MacDonald (formerly of State Broadcasters) joined by Roy Shearer (Ultras, Inspector Tapehead) and Bart Owl (Eagleowl, Broken Chanter), Glasgow‘s Hank Tree take folk sensibilities and elevate them into something truly atmospheric with a mixture of field recordings and distortion. But amid their invention and subversion of genre, Hank Tree hark back to folk’s best roots, positioning themselves in the long lineage of artists using the form to write about social history and labour movements. Album The Big North is out now, and latest single ‘Sweet Saltpeter’ is the perfect entry point, capturing the individual experience within an industrial setting, where a worker is as replaceable as any other part of the machine. The track comes with a video by filmmaker Felipe Bustos Sierra, who saw clear links between the record and his documentary Nae Pasaran, and the result is a both moving and visually striking development of the presiding themes.

The Big North is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Islands – Headlines

Earlier this year, Montreal indie rock/pop stalwarts Islands released And That’s Why Dolphins Lost Their Legs, their latest full-length which further developed their idiosyncratic vision and infectious energy. They’ve now released a new video for the single ‘Headlines’ directed by Vali Chandrasekaran, who is perhaps better known as a TV comedy writer for the likes of 30 Rock and Modern Family. A short film which centres on an artist trying to achieve the apotheosis desired by all musicians—the transformation from fallible flesh and blood to mythical rock star deity.

And That’s Why Dolphins Lost Their Legs is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Lizzie No – Annie Oakley

Next January, New York‘s Lizzie No is releasing their latest full-length album, Halfsies, via Thirty Tigers / Miss Freedomland. The record follows on from the likes of Hard Won, as No braids the personal and the political into something unique. Latest single ‘Annie Oakley’ is a perfect example. A road song which embraces the affirming experience of moving through a landscape while refusing to succumb to the romantic side of the genre. ““Most of the great songwriters in the Americana genre have darkly determined road songs featuring dirty motels, gas station coffee, the exhilaration of seeing America’s plains rushing toward them from behind a car windshield as if on a roller coaster designed by Willa Cather,” No explains. “Behind the scenery are some difficult questions, like ‘why have I chosen to do this with my life?’ and ‘will I ever be one of the greats?’”

Watch the video directed by Cole Nielsen and Mary Glen Fredrick below:

Halfsies will be released on 19th January. Order it now from the Lizzie No Bandcamp page.

Meiwei – Stare at the Sun

The project of singer-songwriter Michelle Mouw, Meiwei specialises in fingerpicked guitar, stirring arrangements and emotive lyrics. Mouw was born and raised in Beijing, moving to the US aged eighteen, and her music is an effort to explore the disparate parts of her life, identity and the wider world. It contrasts the USA and China, the past and the present, and the bustle of the city and the calm of nature. The new Meiwei record, On This Trail Till I’m Home, is the culmination of all this exploration, full of themes both deeply personal and welcomingly universal. Single ‘Stare at the Sun’ is a case in point, what Mouw calls an “indie-folk queer anthem” which builds from earnest guitar strums into a rich arrangement that marbles wistfulness and hope, strength and vulnerability.

Other Vessels – Empty Afternoon

Other Vessels is an Austin indie folk outfit led by singer-songwriter Miranda Haney. Back in the Spring, the band got together to record the debut Other Vessels EP, Empty Afternoon, a collection of songs Haney describes as “intimate portraits of the partnerships – romantic, platonic, and familial – that shape (and save) our lives.” The title track is our first glimpse of how this might sound, a warm and serene folk pop song that Haney says is about “letting someone love you even though you feel like absolute dog shit.” “You’re coming over in 25 minutes, don’t trust my judgment when I’m so deep in it,” she sings, “Pulling a razor over my knees shaving my armpits to prove that I’m happy and clean.”

Pari Eskandari – Chador

‘Chador’ is a new single from Iranian-German artist Pari Eskandari, offered in memory of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Iranian killed in custody in Tehran in 2022. It is a statement of defiance sent to those who would use violence in the name of so-called morality. Released via Tricky’s False Idols label, the song is dark and dramatic and full of ominous power. It comes complete with a video directed by Nikolas Meyberg which depicts a female ritual designed, as Eskandari explains, “to elevate the women from the ordinary to the sublime.” An expression of solidarity conducted through music and dance “for the women in Iran who risk their lives every day.”

‘Chador’ is out now via False Idols and available from Bandcamp.

Shady Baby – All Too Late

Life has been a bit of a rollercoaster for Brighton‘s Shady Baby since we last featured them. Bursting onto the scene after a single gig, they signed with tastemaker label Nice Swan Records and were played on BBC Radio 1. But a series of interruptions, including the departure of their lead guitarist and the cost of living crisis, slowed this momentum and things have been quiet since. That is, until now, as Shady Baby are back with a brand new single, ‘All Too Late’, a fittingly rousing and cathartic ode to fresh starts. “‘All Too Late’ is a song about looking to the future and wanting to feel in control of your own life,” describes lead Sam Leaver. “It was written as a piece of advice to myself to not be stuck in the past, to take charge of my own life and to know I have the power to change it.”

‘All Too Late’ is out now via streaming services.

Symbol Soup – Husky Dawgs

Sad Club Records label-mates Symbol Soup and Kitty Fitz have teamed up to write a Christmas song, ‘Husky Dawgs’. A warm and cosy slice of charming indie pop, it’s a song about seeing old friends when returning home for Christmas, complete with two fictional huskies named after Duster and Shuggie Otis. It’s jingly, jangly and perfect for a warm room on a cold festive evening. And you never know, could catapult the band to Christmas royalties stardom. As Symbol Soup’s Michael Rae puts it: “every family friend or person you meet at a wedding will tell you that the way to make money is to have one Christmas hit.”

‘Husky Dawgs’ is streaming everywhere now.

The post Weekly Listening: December 2023 #2 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

MacCaig and the coastal wilderness which so often features in his work are inspirations Constant Follower have always worn proudly, and the songs of Even Days Dissolve feel like direct descendants from this lineage of Scottish literature. But the record goes further to cement the link by having “the grand old man of Scottish poetry” posthumously appear on a pair of the tracks. “Bringing two of these songs together with the voice of our beloved Norman MacCaig has been a real highlight of this project,” McAll explains. “His poetry was introduced to me by my high school teacher Mrs Tatarkowski, and it was the first prose I was able to read and understand when I was recovering from a traumatic head injury. So his work holds a deep space in my heart. I don’t think any poet or songwriter has matched his ability to capture the space and wonder of the natural beauty of Scotland.”

The first example of this is ‘Wildlife Cameraman (Summer Farm)’, where McAll splices his own story of the titular cameraman into MacCaig’s rendition of the poem ‘Summer Farm’. An ode to a life in the outdoors, where solitude inverts upon itself so as to find company in open spaces. Be it through the ducks and hens and swallows, or even the “straws like tame lightnings” hung from from hedges and strewn on grass. The poem offers the landscape as a place in which to escape interior turmoil if never quite transcend it, and serves as an archetypal example of MacCaig’s ability to bend the apparently trivial into something with true existential significance.

I lie, not thinking, in the cool, soft grass,
Afraid of where a thought might take me—as
This grasshopper with plated face
Unfolds his legs and finds himself in space.

Self under self, a pile of selves I stand
Threaded on time, and with metaphysic hand
Lift the farm like a lid and see
Farm within farm, and in the centre, me.

The song comes complete with a stop-motion video directed by Erentia Bedeker and the animation studio Wreckless Creative, furthering the track’s strange sense of solitude/non-solitude:

‘Space Between Stars’ offers a moodier sound, a certain tension runs through Urquhart’s guitar even as it evokes the sprawling distances of its title, while ‘Ash Wednesday Slow’ sees hip hop artist CRPNTR deliver an evocative spoken word segment which itself seems to charge the guitar with a newfound momentum, as though Urquhart taps into the energy found between the words themselves. The song serves as a perfect example of what Urquhart offers the record. Because if MacCaig and McAll capture an image of the landscape, then his guitar offers the movement, be it fine detail or sweeping elegance, lifting the songs from static poems into something breathing, tableaus animated with moving time.

Closer ‘Comes A Silence (Basking Shark)’ is a fitting conclusion, the guitar this time accentuated by saxophone and harp by Matt Carmichael and Andy Aquarius respectively as MacCaig returns to detail an encounter with the titular creature via his poem ‘Basking Shark’. A “roomsized monster with a matchbox brain” met while rowing on a “sea tin-tacked with rain,” which inadvertently triggers something of a crisis of identity. Because for all of its ancient size and cryptic silence, MacCaig experiences the shark not as some mystery rising from the depths but a thing in its proper place. Rather it is he who is cast adrift, representative of humankind having forgotten its position within the natural order of things. “Swish up the dirt and, when it settles, a spring,” MacCaig writes. “Is all the clearer. I saw me, in one fling, / Emerging from the slime of everything.” Here the basking shark is a kind of sublime experience, a visitation able to submerge us back into the ecosystems we have spent so long trying to escape.

It’s an apt encapsulation of the message at the heart of Even Days Dissolve. Let us head back into the environment around us, Scott William Urquhart and Constant Follower suggest. Stitch ourselves back into the fabric of the land. For the land is already within us and always has been. It just takes a moment to remember it, to understand.

Even Days Dissolve is out now and available from the Constant Follower Bandcamp page.

The post Scott William Urquhart & Constant Follower – Even Days Dissolve appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“This album comes from a six-year long space of change,” Leif explains, “from a life I was living as someone afraid of my own brain and body, into someone a lot more openly unshiney. Painful and seeping. I think that distance and decisions and loss and conflict are all things that can birth you into a different kind of being.” This is achieved with contributions from Clea Anaïs, Bill Wells, Matt Swann, Clarissa Cheong and Bart Owl (of eagleowl) and Faith Eliott and Mark Hamilton (of Woodpigeon), leading to a sound that’s minimalist but rich in its quiet detail.

Latest single ‘Pass Back Through’ captures the album’s tone. A song written in the aftermath of loss, confronting the non-linear phenomenon of grief and its penchant for dragging old wounds back from the past. A time in which it is all too easy to get baffled by the repetition of your interior landscape, lost in circling thoughts. But with ‘Pass Back Through’, L.T. Leif seeks a way out through the clarity of cold air and wide open spaces. Looking to the northerly landscape as a kind of catharsis.

“There’s a smallness I would feel when walking in the cold Finnish nights that brought a kind of clearness or release,” they explain. “There’s this feeling I sometimes got when a bird would fly low over my head from behind, like they were somehow a thought of mine that was bursting forth and flying off, fading out there into the distance… I can get really mired in my own thoughts, and there’s like a release, or a lift that comes when you can let the rich pain and pleasure of the world just be.”

The post L.T. Leif – Pass Back Through appeared first on Various Small Flames.