Now recording under the alias Salt, Nankof has announced a brand new album on Philadelphia label Sleeper Records. Titled after the project, the album sees Nankof develop his style from the sundog days (think warm but introspective bedroom pop built on acoustic guitar) with a newfound creative confidence.

Today, Salt unveils the album’s lead single, ‘Summer Swimming.’ The song starts hazily introspective, folk, pop and indie rock influences colliding in the blend of acoustic guitar and Nankof’s yearning vocals. But the energy grows as the track advances, heralded with the snarl of electric guitar and shambling drums. The vocals grow increasingly passionate, ending with a repeated line that holds unspoken power in its sheer simplicty.

oh I miss my friend

The track also comes with a video by Gabriel Vozza Garcia, which we are delighted to share today. It sees Nankof take a drive and explore a deserted shoreline, and although it’s a strangely chilly-looking scene given the title (there is snow on the ground and the trees are bare), almost every shot is suffused with light. Whether it’s flat white light of the beach scenes, or the sun beaming through the windshield, it becomes something of a visual metaphor for the longing at the song’s centre, its fleeting heat a reminder of the enveloping warmth of summer.

Salt will be released on 17th September on Sleeper Records. Pre-order it now on cassette tape or digital download from the Sleeper Records Bandcamp page.

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The mischievous, frolicsome style is made clear from the intro of opening track ‘Beach House’, the pseudo-ironic title announcement (“The co-oh-ne!“) preceding a plucky and playful opening verse. There’s an innocence to the sound, but one more adolescent than childlike, the vocals balanced between earnestness and vulnerability and edged with antagonism too. But the latter is as much in self-defence as spite, a kind of school years jostling for fun and friendship with in-jokes abound, the days of falling out and making up within the same day, creating abstract loyalties on a whim that change as often as the direction of the wind.

The style extends right down to the way the tracks are put together. Often short and boisterous, these are songs of fickle rhythms, heading in one direction then pivoting in another on a flight of fancy. The guitars meander one moment and bounce off in jagged arcs the next, the vocals at times sugar sweet one and others confrontational. Songs that want to be your best friend but then do a double take, looking you up and down, twirling gum around around their finger with a cool detachment.

Photo by Julia Leiby

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From the opening slow-dawning instrumental ‘Wait 1’, Nothing Left Behind unfurls in Henriksen’s signature style, soft and deceptively simple as cotton wool clouds. The songs are illuminated from within, a warm glow that brings the gentle melodies into clear relief, but all the while with a slight wistfulness, something accentuated on ‘Wait 1’ by the violin that comes sawing in around the halfway mark.

As well as the guitar, violin and keyboard from Henriksen himself, the album also features Andrew Keller (bass), Will Kennedy (drums), Jack Washburn (guitar) and Ari Ratner (vocals). This full band setup allows Henriksen to inhabit a diversity of styles, from the German Error Message-esque ‘Goodbye’ to the spacious low-key indie rock of ‘Stone’. But each song still has the Will Henriksen MO stamped all over it. Even the louder moments, where guitars squeal and drums thump, feel restrained and considered. Take ‘Whiteboard’ as an example, in which guitar and percussion build to peaks that threaten to engulf Henriksen’s mumble. Still it takes its own time, running along in an unhurried organic flow.

The final song is the title track, a very pretty slice of minimal indie pop that illustrates everything Henriksen does so well. This time it’s just guitar and Henriksen’s vocals, creating something with a beautiful simplicity. “Easy to erase,” Henriksen sings, “things appear, disappear many ways.”

Nothing Left Behind is out now on Sleeper Records and you can get it on cassette from their Bandcamp or digitally from the Will Henriksen Bandcamp.

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Such ideas, of course, range from lazy generalisations to dangerous pomposity. Based in Chicago, Joey Nebulous are an example of a band utilising the twee aesthetic for greater ends, their synth-based sugar pop able to explore themes of love, intimacy and identity. Indeed, where such weighty topics lead many bands toward melodrama, Joseph Farago and co. explore them with a playful air, approaching the songs with a near childlike innocence in order to present a fresh and endearing picture of one person’s experience of the twenty-first century.

Back in 2017 the band put out high on daddy’s day with Philadelphia stalwarts Sleeper Records, setting out their tender and quirky sound. Everything about the release, from the short length of the tracks to the titles themselves (e.g. ‘househunter’s intl’ and ‘cher’), suggests a superficial slice of goofy fun, but dip below the surface and there is far more at work. The twee style, Joey Nebulous prove, need not represent a retreat from reality. It can provide sincerity and empathy, and thus become an oppositional force in a world lacking both.

Today we’re delighted to share a brand new album, Give Yourself a Kiss For Me, again out via Sleeper Records. Taking the style of high on daddy’s day and developing it further, the album adds further dimensions to the sound and feels like a realisation of the Joey Nebulous style. The playful nature of the music is unchanged, though this time it’s balanced with wistfulness and longing, as well as a fondness so keen that it registers as a strange kind of suffering.

From the sparkling and subtly carefree lead single ‘New Joey’ to the bittersweet sugar rush of ‘Cheerleader Mom’, Give Yourself a Kiss For Me proves that Joey Nebulous are experts in crafting the perfect queer pop song. ‘Superstar’ is all shuffling drums and dreamily synths, while the slow and considered vibe continues onto the minimally ramshackle ‘I Wanna Be On Tour’ with its improvised percussion and radiantly earnest vocals. But even in this radiance Farago has something important to say, with casually-delivered but still cutting lines such as “I like the sound of my voice but it’s shaking, I’m gay and that hurts / they’re leaving queers off the bills, they’re saying they won’t but they always will.”

This is the case across the album as a whole, the worries and difficulties of being queer entwined seamlessly into the nice shiny pop songs all the way until closing track. One of the album’s longest despite clocking in at barely over two minutes, ‘Pride Month’ explores the what happens after the initial buzz of identity discovery wears thin. “How can i be proud if I’m so unhappy?” Farago asks in a moment of typically naked clarity. But, just like the rest of the record, despite how heavy that sounds, you still couldn’t describe it as downbeat, in fact its undeniably pretty.

It is Pride Month and I haven’t done a thing
haven’t even watched a gay thing on TV

Album art by Halle Farago

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Now Ylayali is back with a new album, this time on Sleeper Records. caterpillar graveyard continues with the lo-fi ruminations, although sounds more suited to it’s late spring release date. Maybe it has something to do with that album art, but opener ‘little caterpillar graveyard’ immediately doesn’t sound quite so grey. The monochrome textures and tones of yy are replaced with a patchwork of the greens of new life, all the larvae and grubs emerging to wriggle around and chomp on leaves. Which is not to say it’s a sunny pop song exactly—the guitars still quiet and intimate, Lyons’s vocals still a sombre mumble.

‘coin pocket’ is up-tempo if not upbeat, the instrumentation forming a tunnel around Lyons’s voice, while ‘smilin down’ has hints of Told Slant in the almost spoken word vocals and sense of pensive regret. But that’s before the song’s second half, where it blows a gasket and explodes in a wall of noise, a runaway fuzz that hurtles toward an abrupt stop.

Two songs sandwiched into one track, ‘brighter inside + hum’ sparkles into life with the easy melody of a Free Cake song, Lyons repeating the line “a little brighter inside.” The track transitions into its second half with the thump of percussion, heralding a brittle lo-fi song that’s garbled with snatches of voices, like radio interference or the clamour of ghosts.

After an initial blare of noise, ‘first look back’ begins patient and sedate, but crunches into rock territory as it advances, garbled samples floating past in eddies of static and feedback. It’s a great example of what Ylayali does best, the fusion of the pretty and the harsh, of the intimate and the outward. The vocals don’t arrive until the final minute, and even then they’re barely there, gossamer thin against the messy background.

There’s a reverential air to the guitar on ‘smoked’, glowing like a luminous thread amidst the purple-black shadows of negative space. Lyon’s whispered vocals are eventually joined by drums and ominous burps of heavy guitar. The result is a slow burning track as humid and barely-restrained as gathering thunderheads.

Finale ‘perfect fit’ returns to something lighter, both in terms of its mass and illumination. Stretching beyond the nine-minute mark, the track has two distinct sections, the track itself and a hidden outro. At first it sounds delicate and unsure, a slow-stepping drum beat joined by the soft sparkle of guitar and Lyons’s barely there vocals. But after around four minutes, the hush grows and the song is reduced to picked acoustic guitar and a textured background hum. The voice, when it eventually arrives, is little more than a quiet murmur, like secrets or truths uttered to the dark way beyond midnight.

caterpillar graveyard is out now on cassette via Sleeper Records and as a name-your-price download from the Ylayali Bandcamp page. The tapes come packaged in beautiful 3 color riso printed jcards, so grab one of those if you can.

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Wish you Were Here Tour is marked by its upbeat nature, retaining a sense of buoyancy even when describing more morose or troublesome situations. But that’s not to say the record is without a sad countershade, and indeed the 2nd Grade style could be described as an interplay between carefree progress and wistful retrospect. Opener ‘Favourite Song’ certainly errs on the second side of the equation, melancholic in comfortable way, where sadness is another version of fondness.

Tracks such as ‘No More Parties’ and ‘There’s Something I Should Tell You’ add an injection of loose-limbed energy, conjuring summer days of no plans and high cloud, while ‘Bad Idea’ and ‘Smart Enough’ are more contemplative, the warmth here derived from Gill’s humanistic nature rather than any environmental source. This sense of empathy and connection is intrinsic to all of the songs, from the frenetic ‘Knock Knock’ and lo-fi garage rock of ‘As Long As We Can Talk About It’ to the gentle longing of the title track, the binding skeleton around which Gill is free to experiment and mix up the 2nd Grade sound.

Which goes some way to explaining the themes of the record, too. With the title in mind, a sense of longing is omnipresent across the album, be it for another person or place or time entirely. However, rather than being the hollow escapism of much nostalgia, 2nd Grade use yearning as a mode of living and learning, as though the passing of things both good and bad lend life a comforting sense of flow. Gill evokes the past not in the hope of returning to it or recreating its dimensions, but rather as a way to remain mindful of the present. To not get bogged down in the moment, but rather lie back and float upon the current.

We’re delighted to be able to stream the record a few days before release, so grab your headphones, sit back and relax:

Cover design by Jon Samuels, photo by Abi Reimold

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This week sees the release of Crooked Spine’s brand new full-length album, Gary, via Sleeper Records. Taking the lyrical richness of 3 Songs further, Gary is a narrative-driven concept record that brings to mind the work of Craig Finn, achieving a blend between energy and nuance that so marks the music of Lifter Puller and The Hold Steady. The record has a thematic affinity with Finn’s work too, dropping a cast of characters into the seedier side of life, or perhaps just finding them there, where they were always going to be, scenes getting druggy and ugly and bloody, as is the way of these things.

The album opens with the suitably wonky ‘Gary, Getting Loaded For The First Time’, which introduces the titular character. Gary is a fifteen-year old high school freshman who has scored some dope from upperclassmen and now wants to detail the experience in the brash, overexcited tones common to such an adolescent. The track has an unnerving intensity, a teen fervor to do the things they think they deserve, which in this case is have a great time and get fucked up. The hyperactive sound verges on tantrum, as though angry at being told what to do before anyone has uttered a word, though, ironically, the rebellious act becomes its own rule. “He knew,” DeGrado sings, the drugs starting to hit Gary’s system, “he had made a friend for life.”

Slacker rock song ‘Skinned Knees’ finds Gary two years later, in love with weed and skating and Pavement, and this languid freedom congeals into ‘Ovlov T Shirt’, a love song as born in a basement show, messed up kids with messed up hair falling for the symbols of the scene. Though, as ‘MTV Cribs’ asks, “how can it be love when you’re always doing drugs?” Gary might be in a relationship with a girl called Sally, but the lines between love and dependency and downright convenience are blurred, his new position as a dealer forming a cynical and apathetic tone, eschewing responsibility in the name of happenstance.

‘Water’ is a hushed bedroom pop song, the time alone between highs and hip masquerade, while ‘Dropping Out’ is a brooding track with a dangerous edge, the paranoia of come downs and business ventures, of weapons concealed in bedroom drawers. The track sees something of a breakdown for Gary, leading into the nadir of ‘Gary, Getting Loaded For The Last Time’, Sally and Gary pushing themselves into oblivion.

‘Sally Pt. 2’ sees DeGrado go full Malkmus, the kind of bummed-out layabout vibe juxtaposed with an edgy tautness. This comes to a head in the final section, when everything drops away except a tick of guitar and vocals delivering the repeated lines “being an asshole for a year / it seems to still be fucking with me”. Closer ‘Dog in the Window’ serves as Gary’s reflection, the synth pop opening pushing as close to earnestness as he manages before the track kicks into an indie rock rhythm which promises something better, personal improvement that might be enough to win Sally back.

We’re delighted to be able to stream the album in full a few days early, so click below and take a listen:

Album artwork by Santi Slade

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However, while the album is united by a certain mellowness, to label it one-paced would be to do it a disservice. Opener ‘Beautiful, OH’ is a sparse, elegiac number underpinned by the gentlest swells, the cyclical pattern interspersed with irregular rises in tempo which never quite culminate in anything like a climax, playing like time passing across a landscape. This is followed by ‘The Carter Starter’, a track positively chirpy in comparison, though violin still sweeps across at various interludes to add a wistful dimension. ‘Still New To This’ creeps out of its beginnings with a playful edge. The cyclical motif utilised once more, though each iteration is altered and built upon so that a sense of organic life is imparted to the flow.

As highlighted in the next three tracks, much of Tiny Houses is pitched somewhere between insular and expansive, the echo and hum suggesting loneliness, though one which could apply to a crowded room or wide open plain. Put another way, the sadness Hour conjure could be either external or internal—a mindful person living within a lonely space, or a lonely person trying to feel more at home within an indifferent one. “This collection of songs explores the cracks and crevices of the spaces we occupy and call home,” the press release explains. “Each song balances the transcendence and claustrophobia that can come with sharing those spaces with others, and the decision, at times liberating, at times painful, to leave and start the process over again.”

With its more insistent percussion and experimental sound, ‘Town Meeting’ has a disorientating undercurrent, the intermittent field recordings of wordless babble adding to the perturbed vibe. Samples are a key part of the title track too, with subtle birdsong and the great rush of wind filling out the background of the simple acoustic sound. The ambient hiss of this track continues onto the grand, slow-burning ‘Doxology’—the most cinematic, post-rock inspired song on the record, bringing to mind talons’ minus the lyrics.

The album is closed by ‘From a Bus Window in Central Ohio, Just Before a Thunder Shower,’ and the sincere preciseness of the title is a good indicator of the sound. Again, the song emerges in gentle waves, a naturalistic patience that eventually rises into some of the most affirming moments on the record. As a finale, it feels like a message of sorts, Hour’s insistence that there can be value and meaning within the simplest of things, beauty within quiet calm, a home within any place, no matter how great or small.

Tiny Houses is out now on Sleeper Records and you can get it from Bandcamp. Also, Hour recently put out three videos which, speaking to The Line of Best Fit, Cormier describes as “attempts at capturing slices of three distinct artistic lives and visions, in process and imperfect, connected by songs from the latest Hour release.” Check them out on Youtube:

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