With the album now out via Strolling Bones Records, we’ve now got the full picture of just how stylistically and tonally diverse a collection of songs it is. “I was playing a lot of chess when I wrote this album, so I started to think about these songs as if they were all different pieces on the board representing varying aspects of my songwriting, personality and experience,” Reynolds explains:

Each piece has its own specific purpose and its own strength to utilize, but you can’t play the game with only your queen or your knights, or whatever. That became such a comforting idea and ethos to operate within – not just accepting variety but finding its inherent value. I went into the studio without any fear of being all over the board. I wanted to be limitless in letting my influences shine through the music in different ways. The throughline of Rose Hotel is my lyricism and my voice, but musically, I wanted to stretch out.”

The chess metaphor comes to the fore on ‘A King and a Pawn’, a country-inflected indie rocker that paints a picture of a relationship at an impasse. It explores the temptation to linger in a situation that has reached its end, the frustration of being caught static in a difficult situation, and the risk of making the next decisive move for fear of being checkmated further down the line. “Cornering each other, avoiding every move,” Reynolds sings, “refusing to surrender, even when it’s the best we could do.” But despite the overall sense of deadlock, the song itself is energizing. Propelled by percussion towards a cathartic chorus.

All we got left
is a king and a pawn
we’re caught in a stalemate, baby
and that’s just what’s wrong

Other tracks on the record explore similarly difficult circumstances. ‘Not Like That’ “explores the dissolution of a friendship in a way which attempts to make personal opinions clear while acknowledging the other person’s feelings too,” as we put it in a preview, while ‘Drown‘ delved into ideas of intergenerational trauma and mental illness in an attempt to reclaim a sense of agency by relinquishing those familial relationships that might never be smoothed over. “[‘Drown’ is] about realizing that the only way to break the cycle is to address it head on and choose to heal instead of continuing the patterns of violence and abuse,” Reynolds explains. “It’s my attempt at claiming power and ownership over my own life by releasing familial relationships that may never heal.”

And that proves to be the take-away sentiment of A Pawn Surrender. It takes the myriad of messy relationships and emotions and attempts to view them not as unbearable burdens but as something that can be figured out and overcome. It preaches the virtues vital to any good chess player—patience, strategy, self-reliance—and applies them to life in general. It’s a reminder to rely on your strengths, to accept and work on your weaknesses and ultimately approach things in a slower, more considered manner.

A Pawn Surrender is out on the  7th June via Strolling Bones Records and you can pre-order it now from the Rose Hotel Bandcamp page.

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Such nuance is a signature of A Pawn Surrender, brought to life by an equally fluid and inventive sound. Indie rock, psych and folk influences are all clearly apparent, Reynolds drawing from each to better capture the gamut of emotions she details. “It’s caused me a lot of anxiety in the past,” she explains. “Even in the studio when we were mixing the new album, Drew [Vandenberg] and I had a conversation about how this is a bit of a gamble, making a record that’s not easily identifiable as one thing, because some people might not know what to do with it.” But with her distinctive vocals as the anchoring thread, the result feels less like a jumble of genres as an artist selecting specific tools for each occasion. Each style can do something others cannot, and Rose Hotel does not want to cut itself off from such possibilities.

Latest single ‘Drown’ pulls some slacker sensibilities into the mix to explore ideas of blissful ignorance. Or as one line puts it: “I won’t drown if I don’t look down.” “Drown is about facing the reality of intergenerational trauma and mental illness,” Reynolds explains. “It’s about realizing that the only way to break the cycle is to address it head on and choose to heal instead of continuing the patterns of violence and abuse. It’s my attempt at claiming power and ownership over my own life by releasing familial relationships that may never heal. The slacker-rock energy feels like my inner rebellious and sardonic teenager finally getting to tell ‘em how I really feel.”

The track also comes with a video directed and edited by Reynolds herself with cinematography and color by Pedro Rocha. Watch it below:

A Pawn Surrender is out on the  7th June via Strolling Bones Records and you can pre-order it now from the Rose Hotel Bandcamp page.

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Perhaps best known as a founding member of legendary left-field hip hop act Anti-Pop Consortium, Beans has been making abstract and poetic rap music since the mid nineties. His latest release is ZWAARD comes out next month, a collaboration with Finnish producer Sasu Ripatti (aka Vladislav Delay and Luomo) that sees a fusion of the pair’s singular and uncompromising styles. Latest single ‘ZWAARD 2’ is a great introduction, Beans hitting his formidable flow over Ripatti’s plinky and ramshackle backdrop which has all the homebrew complexity of a Rube Goldberg machine.

ZWAARD will be released on 13th March and is available to order via the Beans Bandcamp page.

Casters – Lines In The Sand

We last wrote about Casters back in 2023, describing how single ‘Memory’ saw Andrew Strader and a rotating cast of musicians create “a dreamy drift that marbles fondness and regret into sound so rich you could suspend yourself within it.” Latest single ‘Lines in the Sand’, again released via  Like You Mean It Records, sees Casters invoke a trip from Santa Fe to Great Sand Dunes National Park to weave another rich soundscape, this time coupled with a sweeping wistfulness fit for the vast environment in which the first seeds of the track took hold.

‘Lines In The Sand’ is out now via Like You Mean It Records.

 Dinah – Winter Black Lake (Stripped)

Released at the end of last week, Dinah! is the almost self-titled sixth album from Toronto‘s Dinah (FKA Dinah Thorpe). It’s comprised of 17 short sharp jabs of raw emotion, possessing a tactility that you can almost feel sock you around the head. This is thanks in no small part to Dinah’s distinctive voice, full of smoky feeling and tender physicality. Much of the album is made up of restrained electronic pop songs, but my favourite is ‘Winter Black Lake (Stripped)’, a reworking of an early track that comes towards the end. Here, the staccato, mechanical rhythms of the original give way to clear air, allowing the vulnerable side of Dinah’s music to flow in and fill the space.

Dinah! is out now and available from the Dinah Bandcamp page.

Kaycie Satterfield – Jetsam

Following debut EP Sweet Tooth and last year’s single ‘Dog Year’, LA-based songwriter Kaycie Satterfield is back with a new single, ‘Jetsam’. Released via Earth Libraries, the song is at once dreamy and punchy, shifting from bendy elastic guitar and peppy percussion to a soaring, shimmering chorus. Satterfield says it’s a track “for the girls. Specifically, the girls who always stay a little messy, who could never quite get their hair to fall neat.” A duality which shows up in the very sound itself as it shifts from attitude to sweetness and back again, refusing to settle into any tidy box.

I hope somebody on this airplane’s talking to God because
I lost touch, it would be impolite
to show up asking favors after all this time

Minor Moon – Under Beyond

“Well they found us / We were fresh off the bridge / With strange new lives / Oh! and in strangers tongues / They sang a new sound into our minds.” So sings Sam Cantor of Minor Moon on ‘Under Beyond’, the latest single from upcoming album The Light Up Waltz on Ruination Record Co. The title refers to a fictional band who tour the bleak landscape at the end of the world, and the song paints the act in a mythic light as a wider comment on the strange magic of being on tour. “Most of the time, for me at least, traveling around playing music tends to be comically unglamorous and humbling,” Cantor explains, “but within that experience there can be a feeling of intense, private freedom, like you’ve tapped into some collective secret that allows you to transcend the mundane. There’s something endlessly romantic about all of that to me, even if it’s kind of untethered to reality.”

Rose Brokenshire – Habit To Help

Canadian songwriter Rose Brokenshire makes warm and gentle music that is suffused with kindness and patience. Drawing on folk and dream pop, her songs convey powerful messages of healing and self-belief in a whisper rather than a shout. Latest single ‘Habit To Help’ is no different. “This song is about learning to be there for yourself in difficult times,” Brokenshire describes, “the way it is easy to be there for your friends.” The track unfurls with a hushed intimacy, though beneath the hazy croon lies something firmer and fierce. As though under the surface sits an unyielding conviction in the value of empathy, even if we sometimes need to run our hands over it in order to remind ourselves of its presence.

Could you tell me again
what you felt when I said
it would get easier
I know I said it myself
It’s just a habit to help
a friend feel better

Rose Hotel – Not Like That

A Pawn Surrender, the forthcoming album by Rose Hotel (Atlanta songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jordan Reynolds) on Strolling Bones Records, is an album concerned with relationships in all of their guises. Across the ten tracks which combine folk and indie rock with psych sensibilities, Reynolds considers romantic, platonic and even environmental relations, not to mention the relationship one holds with their own internal self. Single ‘Not Like That’ explores the dissolution of a friendship in a way which attempts to make personal opinions clear while acknowledging the other person’s feelings too. “I’m calling them on their bullshit, but also trying to have empathy for how hard it is for them to see it themselves,” Reynolds explains. “Wishing they could be honest with themselves and the people who love them about who they really are, but knowing that they don’t have the capacity to do so.”

 Scott Lippitt X Josaleigh Pollett – Is This a Good Time?

Across a series of albums and EPs, Salt Lake City‘s Scott Lippitt has made a name with a bittersweet brand indie pop, combining bright sincerity with pensive reflection to produce songs which possess tangible feeling. Upcoming album Me, You, and the Avenues sees Lippitt evolve this style with the help of a whole host of other musicians, with each of the twelve songs a collaboration with a Utah-based artist. The likes of Rachael Jenkins, Yuccas and Maren Gayle are involved, but single ‘Is This a Good Time?’ is the turn of Josaleigh Pollett, whose stellar album In the Garden, By The Weeds won our attention last year with what we described as “an excavation of the present which inevitably tends pastward, tracing a presiding cynicism back to its roots in search of a cause.” The combination is a strong one, with Pollett’s talent for nuanced emotion the perfect foil for Lippitt’s own heartfelt style.

Shaina Hayes – Kindergarten Heart

Following advance singles ‘New Favorite’ and ‘Sun and Time’, which we said “combine whimsy and serious emotion,”  Montreal songwriter Shaina Hayes has released her second album, Kindergarten Heart via Bonsound. As its title suggests, the record explores life’s ups and downs with childlike wonder, its fresh and vibrant sound a reminder that one need not grow cynical and world-weary with age. This message is delivered most directly on the title track, a song of soft piano and bubbling acoustic guitar which captures childhood’s fizzy sense of curiosity and excitement. Its message is clear, these feelings and ways of approaching the world can and should be preserved into adulthood, and in fact are one of the few true paths to meaning and joy.

Sparkle. Sunny days. I get older
In every way that won’t matter
Kindergarten heart in me
Magic. Green and blue. I am wilder
In every way that I choose

Kindergarten Heart is out now via Bonsound. Get it from the Shaina Hayes Bandcamp page.

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