Now Blue Deputy are back with a new single ‘Big Fleece’, and again the track finds an outfit willing to mix and match their stylistic influences in order to craft their own singular sound. The press release sites Alvvays, Slow Pulp, Indigo De Souza and The Beths as touchstones and with good reason, the song retaining the emotional vulnerability of its predecessor but adding shoegaze revival richness and sunbleached indie rock wooze. The resulting mood is also a patchwork of conflicting feelings, where the allure of romance and rawness of pain compete for the upper hand.

Watching through a lens, and getting in my head
Paralysed and seeing ceiling eyes
I target a flare to whom I feel it’s fair
The nerve I pressed, maybe I guess I acted out of turn

When you sink to cruelty, I button up my big fleece
And iron over the crease
And I will love you for just a bit too long

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[The album is] about facing the endless horrors of the world and remembering to pay attention to the good. People on the ground, activism, and remembering that we shouldn’t be hardened by everything we witness or we can lose empathy. And it feels like without empathy we’ll never be able to achieve class consciousness, and lose our sense of community.

Pulling no punches with its observations, lead single ‘All My Friends Are Depressed’ plays like a dispatch from the trenches of the present. An attempt to shake life into an exhausted population beaten down by work and expectations so that we might act to shape a better world. The song represents “my observation of the mental health crisis we’re in, how widespread it feels and how sociopolitical factors are playing such a huge part,” Cook explains. “It’s also a reminder to myself that I need to stop distracting myself from my issues and try and change something or face things or nothing will happen and I’ll never shake off the episode.”

Wield Your Hope Like A Weapon is out on the 16th May via Specialist Subject Records and you can pre-order it now from the Soot Sprite Bandcamp page.

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Their debut EP Infinity Mirror, out now via Future Gods, introduces such ideals by conjuring a vivid environment of its own. The lead single and title track evokes “a world nocturnal and neon-lit,” as we put it, “balancing lush textures and soaring energy to create something both reflective and forward-facing.” A song which considers conditions not as some exercise in nostalgia or longing but motivation to press ahead to pastures new. The rest of the EP follows in this spirit, from the affirming soar of opener ‘Falling’ to ‘Softly’ and its hazy ebb and flow. The latter, written during a period of intense depression and suicidal ideation, finds a comforting vividness punctuated by towering crescendos, as though Bandoquillo is building a sound capable of consoling those in pain and lifting them from the depths of their feelings.

Closer ‘Fix Yourself’ is a striking follow-up and closer. A harsh, caustic track of barrelling momentum, forgoing some of the richness of the previous songs in favour of cathartic release. If its predecessors are about finding safe spaces for healing and progression, then ‘Fix Yourself’ is about the actual act of moving forward. Even if that means razing the things you have been attached to in the past. An act of defiant disowning of all the things which might have once dragged you down in order to live life anew.

Infinity Mirror is out now via Future Gods and available from  the St. Kio Bandcamp page.

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With the EP a month away from release, Wishy have now unveiled follow-up single, ‘Too True’. Shoegaze, power pop and alt-rock sensibilities are drawn upon in weaving the song’s tactile atmosphere, again pairing punchy weight and hazy dreaminess to more fully inhabit the nuances of the themes. Namely how the passage of time gradually alters the shape of relationships, and moreover learning to accept such changes as an inherent part of any friendship.

What results is a sound confessional but assured. Delivered with the kind of wisdom only earned through lived experience. “Too true I wanted to be like you / Wanted to reverse myself,” Krauter sings in the opening lines. “Tough break all the hell that I created / Finally pouring out my mouth.”

Open up your eyes you can see what I see
Learning to survive only half empty don’t bother me
Cause no one knows from the first taste
We can never go back to the same place

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With new album everett coming soon on Track Number Records, Schiaffino has shared the title track to hint at where the body / negative sound has gone since. Developed with a team of collaborators including Madeline Johnston (Midwife), Justin Maranga, Dawood Nadurath and others, the album was set to be recorded at Johnston’s New Mexico studio, though Schiaffino’s father subsequently fell ill and the album’s creation was fundamentally changed. Instead, everett was brought into being while Schiaffino cared for their father in the hospice, and inevitably the record bent towards themes of grief, love and remembrance. With vocals captured on telephone handset instead of a microphone, the sound takes on nostalgic, melancholic tone. An attempt at communication through planes of existence and accumulated time. Continuing the ideas first introduced on Fragments but charged with a newfound immediacy amid the direst of personal circumstances.

The title track might be the album’s closer, but it is the ideal introduction too. A hint at both its texture and depth, as well as the mournful yet fond atmosphere which results. Aided by the distinctive Midwife style, ‘everett’ sees body / negative reaching across seemingly impassable gaps to ensure the line between loved ones remains open, regardless of how distant they might come to seem.

The track also comes complete with a video directed by Ryan Betschart and Rachel Nakawatase which you can watch below:

everett is out on the 8th December via Track Number Records and you can pre-order it from the body / negative Bandcamp page.

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The latest single from the record, ‘KITM’ offers a glimpse at yet another dimension of yoyo. A Beacon School at its most dreamlike, the vocals suspended within a gauzy haze which even the not inconsiderable energy struggles to fully puncture. As though all of the track’s feeling and weight is submerged beneath a heavy mist, lending a lethargic air even as the guitars and drums attempt to rally.

It’s a fitting mood, given the themes behind the track. The title is short for ‘Keep It To Myself’, and the song sees Smith explains the inexplicable stasis which descends upon even the most enthusiastic artists. Where inspiration is no issue, but acting upon them feels like wading through treacle. “On ‘KITM’, I’m very much talking to myself, voicing my frustrations with how long it takes me to do anything,” as he explains. “I have all these plans and ideas and frustrations, but never act on them. It’s kind of a pep talk to say ‘hurry up and do something!'”

Watch the suitably dreamy video by Alex Beebe and Chase Wagner below:

yoyo is out via Grind Select on the 13th October and you can pre-order it now.

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A few weeks ago we wrote about Stolen Time, the upcoming album by Abigail Lapell on Outside Music, an album “built on solid 70s folk rock foundations while retaining the freedom to get experimental and expansive.” Ahead of its release, Lapell has unveiled new single ‘Land of Plenty’, a track that explores themes of escape and refuge to evoke both history and the contemporary moment. Lapell’s own family fled the Holocaust to North America, and the song’s mournful clarity plays like a hymn offered to those seeking their own safety and place to belong. Check out the video by Sam Tudor below:

Stolen Time is out via Outside Music on the 22nd April and you can pre-order it now.

Constellation Myths – Young Lions (Constantines Cover)

Massachusetts trio Constellation Myths are hard at work on a follow-up to last year’s debut Everything and Time, but found a moment to record a take on the Constantines classic, ‘Young Lions’. The Constellation Myths version strips the taut menace from the original in favour of a half-paced country tone. What was gruff fervour is recast as wistful reflection, though the track is no less emotive as a consequence. Listen to the cover below:

Drench Fries – Out My Window

The recording project of Seattle-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Levi Nattrass, Drench Fries made a splash back in 2019 with EP Ballad Salad, a record which combined retro pop polish with a folk rock twang. Ahead of follow-up Being Silver which arrives later this month, Nattras has unveiled the single ‘Out My Window’, a track which builds upon the previous release to realise its fond examination of friendship and love. Think classic country regret made hazy by the sea mist of the West Coast, with dollops of indie rock fuzz and playful pop synths adding an idiosyncratic charm.

If I need you would you come through, if I called would you pick up?
When the going gets a-rough I’m tired of trying my luck
Six white horses on the hillside, seven ravens in the sky
coming towards me as I turn away and try to insist
on leaving tonight

Emma Geiger – Flock

Ahead of a new EP Haven on Ghost Mountain Records this spring, Durham, North Carolina-based songwriter Emma Geiger has unveiled her latest single, ‘Flock’. Written at dawn amid the aftermath of a relationship and cross country move, the song’s gentle rhythm embraces the strange halfway quality of crepuscular light. The fleeting moment between night and day that carries its own inherent stillness. Geiger’s vocals emerge within this space neither soft or stark, their tone caught somewhere between hesitant and assured in their reflective mood, though always swelling with the promise of change.

Haven is out via Ghost Mountain Records on the 1st April and you can pre-order it from the Emma Geiger Bandcamp page.

Jess Williamson – Texas Blue

Now based in LA, but a Texas native, Jess Williamson‘s latest release is an ode to her home state. A two song cover EP, Texas Blue features a take on Townes van Zandt’s ‘Loretta’ and the ‘Texas River Song’, a traditional song of unknown origin which Townes also made his own. Williamson is joined by Ben Schwab (guitar, bass and organ) and Noah Jeffries (mandolin and fiddle) to flesh out both tracks into timeless folk songs, and in doing so, as the press release puts it “reckons with a state, and state of mind, that feels so close but so far away, and breaks a spell that these songs, and Texas’s big, starry skies, have held over her for so long.”

Mousey – Pudding and Pie

Based in Christchurch, Mousey is the recording project of Sarena Close. Described as “the cold, damaged heart” at the centre of the record, ‘Pudding and Pie’ closes the book on a toxic friendship with all the ups and downs such a process entails. Over six minutes the track shifts from quiet fury to racing energy and back again, the elastic rhythm relaxing outward before snapping to taut attention and eventually rising into a big spacey crescendo. “I think this song is the longest because the torture this person put me through meant there was so much emotional fuel to burn and so much to say,” Close explains. Little could survive such a burning, a wound cauterised in the heat and light.

I won’t be your patsy schmuck
I won’t be your spitting cup
I won’t be your dumping truck
Flags up, don’t push me no more
I’m tired, I’m tired

Steven Lambke – Every Lover Knows

Speaking of Constantines, their very own Steven Lambke has a a brand new solo record Volcano, Volcano coming later this spring on You’ve Changed Records. Described by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson as “an invitation, an exploration of potential, an opportunity for listening and thinking and relating that holds space for otherwise thinking and shared meaning-making,” the album feels like the essence of Lambke’s career distilled into a collection of songs. A record built on trust, community and experimentation, fuelled by those small, fleeting moments of joy amid an otherwise difficult world. Lead single ‘Every Lover Knows’ introduces the style, acknowledging ever-present hardships but bursting with life.

The truth is
every truth is tested
by the world
until it’s busted, twisted, or frayed,
as every lover knows

Young Prisms – Outside Air

Later this month, San Francisco‘s shoegaze outfit Young Prisms return with Drifter, their first record in a decade on Fire Talk Records. Latest single ‘Outside Air’ shows a band transcending the throwback pastiche of the genre and realising a sound fully their own. Described as a song about “about the struggles and difficulties in modern marriage, monogamy, and parenting at a young age,” the track draws on the Californian wildfires that blazed during recording to evoke the suffocating damage resentment can wreak within a relationship. But in reflecting on these truths, the oppressive forces are challenged by a commitment to perseverance and quiet improvement. Check out the video directed by Gio Betteo below:

Drifter is out on the 25th March via Fire Talk Records and you can pre-order it now from the Young Prisms Bandcamp page.

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More than capturing this mood, the repeated refrain which closes ‘Blame’ acts as a kind of pledge for the rest of the record. “Stick around, find out.” A lure, a promise. Because Possessions is not some nostalgic pastiche or cheap copy. It is a continuation of a conversation which started over thirty years ago. A clear message that the styles and sounds established then are not only persevering but capable of innovation. Shoegaze is alive and kicking. Blushing are here to prove it.

We took the opportunity to ask Blushing a few questions, so read on below to find out more about their love of nineties shoegaze and the honour of working with your heroes.

How does it feel to have a new record out in the world?

Amazing. We have to keep reminding ourselves that for everyone else this is the first time they are hearing these songs. We’ve had them in our lives for over two years and so for them to finally be out in the world feels like such a huge accomplishment. It’s a milestone we’ve been looking forward to for a very long time so we are thrilled the time has come.

I’m interested in the balance between lightness and weight on the record. There seems a coexistence between the soaring dreaminess and heavy textures of the songs, as though neither could exist without the other. Could you talk a little about this sound, and how it relates to the themes of the album?

The lightness and weight of the album seems to be directly connected to our experience when we were creating and recording it. It was (and still is) heavy times. There was an overall sense of chaos and despair in the world which can certainly be felt in the album but we also didn’t want to lean into that theme too much, instead choosing to go to the opposite direction with a few sparkling, shimmering, pop choruses. I think we are happiest with our sound when it’s able to exist in both of these spaces.

Collaboration seems an important part of Possessions, from Miki Berenyi’s appearance on ‘Blame’ to Ride’s Mark Gardener mixing and mastering the songs. Why did you look beyond the band this time around and how do you think these outside influences shaped the album?

Who wouldn’t want to collaborate with their idols! Our partnership with Miki really came about unexpectedly, we had no preconceived notion that she would have any interest in collaboration but to our surprise she was on board and enthusiastic to join in. Once we started working with her on ‘Blame’ it gave the band a renewed sense of energy and drive during the rest of the lengthy recording process. To get her approval and have such a respected artist tell us how much she liked the song and then return a stellar contribution gave us the confidence we needed to push ourselves even further for the rest of the recording process.

We had known about Mark’s OX4 Sound studio for a while and of course are huge fans of Ride, so we decided to reach out and see if he would be interested in mastering the album. We felt confident he would understand the overall sound we were wanting to achieve. He was excited to come on board and was really easy to work with. When we were recording ‘The Fires’ we just felt the song had a different vibe and there was something about it that Mark could bring out in the mix. So we asked if he would like to do the mixing work on ‘The Fires’ and he was happy to oblige. Sure enough both the mixing of that song and the overall mastering came out incredible.

We are really pleased with the entire album as a whole and another huge factor for that is teaming up again with Elliott Frazier, who also engineered and produced our last album. He understands the sound we want so well and knows exactly what to do to achieve that sound. He also just has great ideas. Some seem really wacky at first and then once executed end up becoming our favorite part of the song.

Even beyond Berenyi’s influence, there’s a palpable nineties feel to the songs, one which feels very much part of a wider turn back toward that decade. What is it about that period of shoegaze and dream pop that is so appealing? And, more generally, what exactly do the nineties represent for you?

I think music in the nineties but more specifically shoegaze and dreampop at that time represented a lighter, less serious, uncomplicated place to just get lost in. There was some heavy stuff going on at the time just like now and some music is made to address those things and some music is made to escape them. Both are extremely valuable. I think people turn to music as a way to comfort or distract and what better way to do that than with a warm fuzzy blanket of sonic texture or the soaring romantic voice of Harriet Wheeler. The nineties represent optimism and playfulness.

Finally, if a tweet inspired the collaboration for this album, let’s try and repeat the positive manifestation. Who’s next on your bucket list?

Haha, lets go ahead and manifest a future tour with The Smashing Pumpkins.

Possessions is out now via Kanine Record and you can get it from the Blushing Bandcamp page.

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Lead single ‘OK, Truce’ is the perfect example. Rising from static and reverb, the song immediately introduces the contradictions that make the Mount Fake style so interesting. The melody is clear, but competing with a brooding clatter of drums, and the shoegaze elements conjure a sound that’s expansive yet dense too. McLaughlin cultivates this sense of tension expertly, utilizing it to knit the track’s themes deep into its subconscious.

“‘OK, Truce’ is pretty much about just being pissed and scared all the time,” they explain. “But finding surprising little moments of softening acceptance here and there that remind you that you don’t have to wait until you’re completely exhausted to rest. To me, this song somehow both soothes and expresses that kind of restlessness.” So when McLaughlin’s vocals emerge from the chaos, a human voice either riding the storm or attempting to remain above it, they do so with a persevering hope that safe harbour might be close, however temporary such security and quiet might be.

Honestly
Don’t worry so much
We could be something good if we wanted
Anyway
We kind of already have it all
But can’t really find it I guess

You’re always high
You’re always high
But so am I
Ok truce

There’s so much room
Why shouldn’t we be happy
Let’s make some moves and go far away
And be closer

You’re always right
You’re always right
But so am I
Ok truce

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This autumn sees the release of the debut Lespectre album, A Stray, A Dream, Forgiveness. Built from the above principles, the record draws upon shoegaze, dream pop and folk to conjure a sound heartfelt in the most tranquil sense, its energies directed not towards melodrama or bombast but the construction of a completely immersive atmosphere. One of ambiguity, allusiveness of direct meaning. A place where intuition reigns. As Hackwell put it: “Some of my favourite pieces of art give the viewer space to decide what it’s about themselves. Rather than making it a dot to dot drawing, it’s nice to let people exercise their own imagination.”

The band have unveiled lead single ‘Such a Simple Thing’ by way of introduction, and the song proves a worthy starting point. Building from a confessional hush, the track draws upon each member of the quintet (as well as Douglas Joshua on the cello) to grow gradually, its stark space slowly filling out into a momentous crescendo. “It’s a track that shows off everyone’s strengths,” Hackwell continues. “It all came together to form this whole picture of Lespectre that’s indicative of the band’s sound. It’s the one song that every other song on the album takes something from. It’s like the well from which the forest drank, this song that fed everything else.”

Oh we don’t talk much
Not since you came to me
It was all such
All such a simple thing
And I watched
I watched as we tore the house down

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