With new EP Learning To Love Again on the horizon via Nettwerk, Aisha Badru has unveiled new track ‘Lazy River’. A meditation on the process of healing and the various twists and bends which accompany it, and moreover learning to be kind to oneself while adrift on slack currents. The track’s essence is brought to life by hushed, almost whispered vocals, moving away from the style in which Badru has made her name to explore new sounds and moods. “It’s this freeing of myself and allowing myself to try things that people would not expect of me,” as Badru reveals. “I feel more comfortable not meeting those expectations.”

Time moves like a river, winding and slow
Holding on to you is helping me float
I drift in the breeze as your memory washes over me
I will let you go, eventually

Getting over you is like a lazy river ride
I’ve been taking my time

Watch the video directed by Laura-Lynn Petrick below:

Learning To Love Again is out on the 2nd June via Nettwerk.

Color TV – Planchette

Based in Ypsilanti, Michigan, Color TV is a project led Mark Teachout. Having been self-releasing music since 1993, Teachout teamed up with Animal Tapes for Witching a Well, a full-length released late last year. Opener and single ‘Planchette’ serves as the perfect introduction to the experimental, lo-fi sound. It slowly coalesces into life with a palpable assurance, channelling the likes of Guided By Voices, Sebadoh and Califone in its reflective and enveloping textures.

His His – People, Places, Changes

“A small daydream where one’s wishes are allowed to drift to the surface, and longing is permitted to express its true form.” That’s how we described ‘West Coast‘, the previous track from Toronto’s His His. New single ‘People, Places, Changes’ is an altogether more morose affair, confronting grief in all of its lingering influence. Written after the loss of a loved one, the song plays with a bittersweet warmth, both pining for what has now gone and determined to capture the fondness which persists all the same.

‘People, Places, Changes’ is out now.

Kalila Badali – Panacea

Based in Toronto, Kalila Badali is a singer-songwriter whose musical style combines witchy folk and moody art pop and helps her make sense of the world and its mysteries as a neurodivergent person. She is also a psychotherapist, running a private practice that works with neurodivergent people, LGBTQ2SIA+ people, and arts workers. This other avenue of her life informs her music, something that is sure to be apparent on her forthcoming EP, Panacea. The latest single and title track is a wonderful introduction to the record, an ethereal and melodic folk song that Badali wrote when helping a friend through mental illness. It’s a rare example of a song that explores such struggles from the perspective of a therapist, expressing a deep desire to help a loved one whilst trying (seemingly in vain) the dangers of growing too close in the process.

Unconsciously, I’ve attached myself to you.
Rhizomal, with roots instead of a body.

Noele Flowers – Wait for Me

Describing herself as “a relentlessly optimistic, anxiety-ridden, and friendship-obsessed songwriter,” Massachusetts-raised, Brooklyn-based Noele Flowers is preparing to release a new EP titled Wait For Me. Perhaps the most folk-adjacent song on the record, the latest single and title track is a ballad that pairs acoustic guitar with three-part vocal harmonies and includes piano from Aviv Gilad and strong quartet arrangement played by Tiger Darrow and Chase Potter. It’s a song about falling in love while still recovering from the end of a previous relationship. As Flowers explains: “This song is about the anxiety that comes with feeling like your healing process is going to get in the way of something good—asking someone to wait for you.” But it’s deeper than that too, its message of patience applicable to pretty much all aspects of life.

Pacing – Aliens

“Things are getting kinda weird over here.” So sings Katie McTigue on the new Pacing single, ‘Aliens’. Part of WAVE, a forthcoming compilation by Very Jazzed, the song sees McTigue push further than the playful self-deprecation of recent album hatemail into an altogether darker space. A slow burning folk number which starts out placid but gradually escalates into something disorderly, a lonely nighttime drive suddenly interrupted by something bright and loud. Whether this sudden company is extraterrestrial or something more metaphorical is up to you, but either way, the force imposes itself on the sound and abducts McTigue, forcing her to view the world from above regardless of her opinions of such a vantage.

‘Aliens’ is out now and available on streaming services.

Tinge – Armed to the Teeth

Led by Veronica Blackhawk, an Anishinaabe multi-hyphenate from Lake of the Woods, Ontario and now based in Winnipeg, Tinge follows the likes of Camp Cope in heartfelt yet fierce music unafraid to dig through the most personal depths. Having recently signed with House of Wonders Records, the outfit are preparing the release their debut EP Big Deep Sigh next month and have unveiled single ‘Armed to the Teeth’ by way of introduction. A slow burning confessional which finds cathartic release in its forthright style. “This EP means I am finally ready to take up space and open it up for others going through similar phases in their growth,” Blackhawk explains of the release. “To finally exhale those deep breaths I’ve been drawing in over the past few years.”

TV Room – Stacey

Following on from previous single pretend, which we described as “A song about being close to someone, almost too close to say what needs to be said,” TV Room has returned with Sad Club Records with new track, ‘Stacey’. Another example of Lucy Rushton’s ability to write songs at once understated and charged with feeling, the song confronts the decidedly disheartening prospect of negotiating a friend who might not be that much of a friend after all. “It’s about being around people who have main character syndrome and romanticise all the damage they are causing around them instead of taking responsibility for it,” as Rushton explains. “About giving up hope on trying to understand someone and keep up a connection with a person who is trying to hurt and compete with you instead of appreciating the relationship you have and in turn destroying it.” TV Club might describe bad experiences in relationships, but they find room to say what needs to be said.

‘Stacey’ is out now and available from Sad Club Records.

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After the release of single ‘Had To’ last year, Richmond‘s Blush Face have returned with a new EP, Mirage Island. ‘Had To’ offered a maximalist sound to “confront the gap between expectation and reality, [looking] to find solace in the action,” and the new EP’s first single ‘Libby’ suggests the rich style continues into the new release. With the guitar, bass and percussion of four core members accentuated by violin, cello, trumpet and saxophone from a variety of guests, the song presents a lush and layered sound. One rooted in dream pop but grounded by a tangible physicality, blurring the line between reality and dreams. Fitting for a track about trying to manifest something dearly desired but never experienced through nothing but the imagination.

Bo Milli – FOMO

“Think Soccer Mommy meets The Beths, telling tales of hungover bus rides, dancing to The Strokes and a lingering unease that persists despite.” That’s how we previously described the work of Bergen‘s Bo Mili. Latest track ‘FOMO’ again taps into the zeitgeist to explore the pitfalls of love in the digital age, where everything is recorded and curated for your viewing no matter how uncomfortable it might be. “You make me feel dumb / sitting at home,” Bo Milli sings, “wondering if you’re out with someone / staring at my phone.” There’s genuine feeling to the song as it gathers momentum, but no small amount of wry humour too. This is the strange world we inhabit now, and blissful ignorance is a thing of the past.

Bobbie Lovesong – Inner Sea

Bobbie Lovesong is the recording project of Madelyn Strutz, whose debut album On the Wind is set to be released early next year via Woodsist. Written and recorded in an unfinished Earthship in Taos, New Mexico where a small group of musician rode out the lockdown, the album promises to be a surreal kaleidoscopic ode to the region, bringing together sixties pop, oddball psych and LSD-warped Americana. Lead single ‘Inner Sea’ is a great introduction, a strange warbling pop song that feels conjured from Taos’ desert landscape, the melody and ethereal vocals refracted into dreamlike unreality. Check out the video by Michael Stasiak below:

On the Wind will be released on 20^th January via Woodsist. Preorder it now from the Bobbie Lovesong Bandcamp page.

Greyon Greene – Sunken Meadow Causeway

After the release of the crepuscular creeper Belong To It on Lily Tapes & Discs in 2019, Grayon Greene turned to their Low Pressure System catalogue with the release of LPS001. A series of compositions described as “Weather Channel music” which combines ambient textures and beats to conjure something at once nostalgic and unreal. The third in the catalogue, Transactional Memories furthers this style, slowly weaving a world based on our own but somehow separate too. Soundscapes drawn from charts and maps but made dreamlike with computerised graphics, digital textures and neon overlay.

Hack-Poets Guild – Daring Highwayman

A collaboration between Marry Waterson, Lisa Knapp and Nathaniel Mann, Hack-Poets Guild is a project with a forward-looking attitude to traditional folk styles. Their debut Blackletter Garland will be released next year via One Little Independent Records, a high-concept album which draws on history and folklore to dig into meaty themes of life and death with a decidedly idiosyncratic style. Lead single ‘Daring Highway’ is the introduction to this world, a breathless tale of the titular rover which crackles with danger and volatility, the rhythm conjuring a sense of lawless freedom sliding toward some climax, be it glorious or calamitous or some fickle combination of the two.

Jessica Breanne – Bad Shape

Released earlier this month via Perpetual Doom, Jessica Breanne’s Rosebud Queen is album concerning resilience in the face of difficult conditions, and how the spirit finds ways in which to survive. An attempt to find joy and beauty in the darkest situations, be it through hard perseverance or openness to change. Single ‘Bad Shape’ feels like an encapsulation of the album, a piece which began as a short story and gradually evolved into a song, morphing into what it needed to become to communicate its message most fully. Then director Kevin Doyle came along and took the concept further, adding his own ideas to create a new narrative for the video, and serving to highlight the way in which connection can create new things in unexpected ways.

Rosebud Queen is out now via Perpetual Doom and you can get it from Bandcamp.

The Bird Calls – Auditioning For The Part

The recording project of the prolific New York songwriter Sam Sodomsky, The Bird Calls has released over thirty records across the last decade or so, with the most recent Tarot on Ruination Record Co. his first with a label. Later this week Sodomsky returns to Ruination with My Life in Hollywood, a brand new record which continues the style established on Tarot—an idiosyncratic take on on classic country and folk which utilises and often subverts genre tropes to create something decidedly new. Take latest single ‘Auditioning For The Part’, a song fully aware of its place in a lineage of songwriters, or rather at the convergence of several lineages, be it George Jones and Johnny Paycheck or something more like The Mountain Goats, and thus able to play with the listener’s expectations in a way only the more learned songwriters can.

TV Room – Pretend

Back in December last year, we wrote about ‘Balcony‘, the debut single of Lucy Rushton’s TV Room released via Sad Club Records. Described as a subliminal message to someone they were unable to speak to, the song represented “an earnest if indirect attempt to communicate the nuances of emotion,” as we put it. “A human song in which no feeling is held back.” Rushton has now returned with a brand new single, ‘Pretend’, a track no less emotionally charged but something of an inversion of its predecessor. A song about being close to someone, almost too close to say what needs to be said. A love unrequited, even as the significant other goes through the motions and says all the right things.

‘Pretend’ is out now via Sad Club Records and you can get it from Bandcamp.

Will the Whale – Next to Me

The new solo project of Will Boesl, Will the Whale is gearing up to release debut album Only Things of the Heart Remain early next year, and single ‘Next to Me’ gives an indication as to what to expect. With Bennett Littlejohn (Hovvdy, Katy Kirby) joining on bass, the track is described as a “celebration of commitment and deep love.” A love letter to Boesl’s wife penned amid a myriad of personal and collective challenges, aiming to reassert what is the most important facet of any life. And furthering this compassionate style, all proceeds from the album are going to the Oceanic Preservation Society (OPS), with Boesl hoping to encourage further links between art and social action, using creative means as a positive force. You can find the video for ‘Next to Me’ below:

Only Things of the Heart Remain is out on the 24th February.

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The track, produced by Joseph Futak at Hermitage Works and mastered by Charlie Franics, sees Lucy Rushton joined by Birdie Rushton (bass) and Phoebe Crawford (violin). The sound’s richness is apparent from Rushton’s first words, her slow, lush delivery evoking a warmly intimate mood. This is balanced by a certain wryness, a subtle sardonic appreciation of wider circumstance which evokes a slacker edge. But rather than undermining the song’s emotional resonance, this dimension strengthens it, lending a sense of personality and lived experience that might be lacking from something entirely straight-laced.

The style is understandable given the nature of the single. “I wrote it as a sort of letter to someone who I couldn’t speak to at the time,” Rushton explains. “So in a way I see it as a subliminal message to them.” Far from painting some idealised picture, ‘Balcony’ is an earnest if indirect attempt to communicate the nuances of emotion. One which can hold the stripped back intimacy of the opening and the playful rhythm of the close without any sense of contradiction. A human song in which no feeling is held back. “Songwriting to me is basically like therapy,” Rushton concludes, “in that it’s where I put all of the feelings that I struggle saying out loud.”

‘Balcony’ is out via Sad Club Records and you can get it from the TV Room Bandcamp page.

Photo by Syd Parsons

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