The release of As Far As The Eye Can See is fast approaching, and Van Chamberlain are back with brand new track ‘Fantasy TBD’ to keep the momentum going. What might be the band’s most propulsive single to date, the song grapples with the long tail of a break-up, attempting to break free from the spell of a relationship that won’t quite let you go. “We felt like a song about breaking free needed to literally sound like breaking free, so we turned the ’67 Vibrolux up to ten and let the breakup of the amp reflect the breakup in the lyrics,” Chamberlain explains. “This might be the loudest song off the new record, and it also might be the most cathartic.”

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The track was just the first of what promises to be a steady stream throughout the summer, and now Tough Old Bird have returned with its successor, ‘Shape of Our Love’. Continuing to display the newly electrified version of the project, the track sees the Corrigans and co. straddle the traditional and the contemporary, maintaining the narrative and emotional heft of classic folk while always striding forwards. With a central protagonist reflecting on their life, the mood is at once poignant and affirming, seeming to possess the kind of wisdom only earned through a life well lived yet in no way insulated from the raw tenderness such existence brings. “I brought a few things from my real life into this song—the moment I met my wife, the old house we live in and the little traces of everyone who inhabited the space before us,” Nathan Corrigan explains. “I think the character in the song is looking back over their life without judgment. It’s as if you could speak to the people who live in your house after you’re gone and say, ‘this is what I did and didn’t accomplish, here’s what I thought was important at the time.’”

When I occasionally ventured out
I would tend to avoid the crowds
Mostly sat and watched the clouds floating above
The first time her eyes met mine
I was lifted out of space and time
Try as I may, I could not define the shape of our love

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The song, the first new music from Kristina Moore’s project since 2023 full-length Alone with the Sound the Mind Makes, was a fitting first taste of an album written in the aftermath of injury, Moore penning the record on a borrowed Casio Privia weighted keyboard after surgery on a severed tendon in her middle finger left her unable to play guitar. The period was a kind of liminal space between trauma and health, a time in which everything is slightly strange and the future remains uncertain. “‘Zone 2’ is an anatomical term used to describe the area between the distal palmar crease to the middle of the finger in which a flexor tendon injury can occur,” she explains. “Because of the increased risk of complications and generally unpredictable post-op outcome, it is also referred to as ‘No Man’s Land’.”

With the album set for release this September, koleżanka has returned with new single ‘Levers and Pulleys’. Described by the artist on social media as the record’s “flagship track,” the song is rather more threadbare than its predecessor, stripped back to the harsh and tender truths as demanded by the limitations at its point of origin. “The core of the song was written within the first week of my injury,” the post continues. “I wrote and performed the treble and bass cleft piano at the end with just my right hand on the original demo. It was grueling to learn with both later on, and felt like it became an essential full circle part of my recovery.” The result, like ‘Lessons in Textiles’ before it, plays like recovery unfolding in real time. A process not necessarily as joyous nor neatly linear as we might hope, rather something won hour by hour, day by day as the cells replicate and repair themselves, and the body relearns the world according to its new shape.

learning anatomy
levers and pulleys
and articulations between ends and beginnings
beautiful machinery
broken hand a hand is fixing
trim the threads against your seams
a new line in your topography
back to the drawing board again
I thought I’d written it all down
its all rewritten soon

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“‘Bed of Quiet’ is an over-thinker’s anthem.” as Josaleigh Pollett describes. “A song for the sleepless, and the hours spent playing and replaying scenarios on a loop in your brain where there is no right decision, digging for a yes or a no in a mountain of perhaps.” This style means the single is in many ways a microcosm of the album itself, attempting to reach through noise in order to hear better, or else be better heard, and the slightly surreal tone indicates the full difficulty of the endeavour. Because, despite our better efforts, such matters rarely stay within rational boundaries, our thoughts whirling away as though imbued with strange lives of their own. “We wanted the production to feel like it belonged in the middle of the night, when you’re not quite yet dreaming, but suspended above your body like a projected film of the last few week’s events you can’t stop watching, playing too loud for sleeping.”

Photo by P.J. Guinto, album art images by Lonny Starsky, layout design and art by Helvetica Blanc

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It could be tempting to view such efforts with pessimism. This prolific artist, releasing record after record, still covering new ground in search of a solution to the problem. Only to assume such a position would be to a) underestimate the achievements of Calhoun’s work to date, and b) misunderstand the reason the search is perpetual in the first place. It is not that there is no answer out there, more the answer needs to be continual. Rarely are we so lucky as to get a blinding light along the road to Damascus. The path to comfort and contentment is more like a thirst to be sated. We must constantly go to the well.

With this in mind, Jason Calhoun’s latest album, revelations of divine love, could be read as both a continuation of his ongoing project and a metacommentary on its purpose. Coming next month via Dear Life Records, the album takes its title from the collected works of Julian of Norwich, using the wisdom of the fourteenth-century anchoress as the catalyst for a meditation on what it means to find contentment. “Julian of Norwich says ‘All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well’,” Calhoun explains. “These days, I’ve been having my doubts that this is true. As no solution to the issue at hand, I look for the revelations of divine love in my life, and I find them—in my partner asleep on the floor in our studio, my survival of a social interaction with a stranger, being bad at chess.” None of these things can flip a switch and change a life, few will necessarily count for much a week or month away, but this steady accumulation of ephemeral moments is what sustains a life. Gives it colour and warmth and, ultimately, meaning.

The result is unsurprisingly intimate, if still shot through with the very sense of restlessness that drives its creation, meaning Calhoun’s picture is far more complex than a simple catalogue of sentimental charms. Consider the latest single ‘what we deserve’. An embodiment of the concision and curiosity which marks the record, the song clocks in barely over a minute yet is pulled in every direction by colourful lines of synths and below that a pounding drum which persists undistracted, ensuring the force of these flourishes is limited. As though for all the small delights we find before ourselves, the beat of something larger will always sound behind us. “‘what we deserve’ is perhaps the most simultaneously playful and relentless I get on this record, Calhoun explains. “The title comes from existential thoughts about daily joys against the backdrop of global politics […] Something I’ve been thinking about a lot is whether we deserve the mess we’re in and whether we’re in it due to our own callow joys.”

Watch the track’s accompanying video, courtesy of Calhoun’s dog and a Go Pro camera:

revelations of divine love will be released on the 7th August via Dear Life Records and you can pre-order it now from the Jason Calhoun Bandcamp page.

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Make no mistake, WATERBODIES is far from a solo endeavour. Charlotte Greve enlisted Shahzad Ismaily to produce the record, as well as a vast ensemble of collaborators (including KHORIKOS and the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra) to bring the sound to life. This diversity matches the record’s spirit as outlined above, allowing Greve the space and plasticity to eschew the usual expectations around stylistic consistency in order to accomplish her vision. “With WATERBODIES, I hope to invite the audience to experience the music as if walking through a film,” says Charlotte Greve. “Contrasting scenes unfold one after another, yet remain connected by a common thread.”

With the release set for early this autumn, Greve has shared new single ‘Membranes’. The song considers the multitudes which exist within any one person, and how this array of dimensions is shaped and grown by our immediate surroundings. The bright and curious sound, based around syncopated vocals and drum machine beats, flickers like a disco ball in uneven light, as though with every twist and turn, Greve shows a slightly different face to herself, each just as vivid and shining as the last. “‘Membranes’ is a song about the challenge of carrying several hearts in one breast and wanting to feed them all,” as she continues. “As a kid, I lived like a chameleon, changing my clothing, language and behavior, depending on who I was spending time with and where. The older I grew, the bigger the wish to combine all the different shapes and forms, both in my character as well as in my music. Let them all live alongside each other—the picture of the semi permeable membrane captured this desirable way of living for me.”

Photo by Annika Nagel

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Tether is a fitting name for the release, speaking to both the connection between Hellmuth and her supporting cast—bassists Logan Kane and Miller Wrenn and drummer Justin Brown (Thundercat, Aja Monet)—and how group, and indeed the audience, act something like a leash within the spontaneity of improvisation. The musicians might play themselves out into unexpected territory, but there’s always a line to bring them back into the heart of the group.

After lead track ‘Face The Wall’ introduced the raucous and visionary nature of this sound, subsequent single  ‘Microfictions’ pushed further. The song “wastes no time in pitching the audience into the depths of her adventurous approach,” as we continued, “drawing on Anthony Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music to create a style of improvisation centring on melody. Scurrying percussion adds a sense of urgency, while Hellmuth’s trademark sax skates over the surface with virtuosic personality.”

With the album’s release imminent, Alden Hellmuth has shared one final single, ”Definitely Not Friends’. But despite what the title might suggest, the song is an embodiment of the trust and intuition shared between Hellmuth and her bandmates, as well as their elastic habit of playing out in all directions but always snapping back into the heart of the group. The result, like Tether as a whole, is imaginative, daring and often frantic, driven as though by the compelling force of like-minded musicians encouraging one another forward. The listener is cast as an extra party within the experience, themselves an extra member of the ensemble, pushed and pulled between the various elements so as to become fully immersed within the sound.

Tether will be released on the 26th June via LEITER and you can pre-order it now from the Alden Hellmuth Bandcamp page.

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This autumn will see the release of Wishy’s second album Nature’s Pill on Winspear, and it seems Pitchkites, Krauter and co. have built upon everything which came before and embraced the madness of the contemporary moment. The label describe the record as a “jubilant remix of the past” which manages to tackle the uncertainty and anxiety of the present within a 90s/00s aesthetic, all while preserving the playful, almost mischievous edge which has so longed marked the Wishy sound. “Being in an indie band feels bizarre when the world is on fire,” as Krauter explains. “What can you do at the end of the day other than carve out some space—at the very least I have my imagination and I can invite others to join me there. At a certain point you need to say fuck it and roll with it.”

Lead single ‘Lovesick’ kicks things off. An unapologetically romantic track which creates the slightly intoxicated state of the title in all of its headspinning glory, refusing to dial down the lyrics in order to fully embrace the headspace. As though to be in love is to experience everything saturated and bright. “Cut the pink out of your hair / For your grandma’s funeral, don’t stare / Go on, get in your car and drive,” as one typical verse goes, “Killin’ time / Cut the shit! / Baby, you’re on fire.” Far from being a temporary high, the vibe looks set to inform the record as a whole. A collection of songs which might not be immune from the age-old problems of loneliness, worry and regret, but choose to ramp up the colour in the world and focus on the possibility inherent within these emotions instead of getting buried by their weight.

Watch the video directed by Trent Wayne below:

Nature’s Pill will be released on the 2nd October via Winspear and you can pre-order it from the Wishy Bandcamp page.

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With these foundations established, Black Duck is now pushing the envelope further. After touring across Spain with acclaimed Basque musician Elena Setién, the trio felt they had discovered someone else clearly attuned to the Black Duck spirit, and have taken this forward to not only invigorate the project, but to reimagine its very boundaries. Again released with Thrill Jockey, Black Duck with Elena Setién sees Black Duck become a quartet in order to bottle the lightning of this live performance. “This record for me, is a prolongation of that tour together in Spain,” Setién explains. “We combined our sets and every night new improvisations evolved. So we took that same freshness to the studio.”

This was achieved by a fleet-footed approach to recording, the foursome only rehearsing for a matter of hours before heading to the Palisade studio with trusted collaborator Nick Broste and unleashing the spontaneous creativity which has so marked the tour. “Working with Nick Broste was easy and natural for us,” Rumback continues. “At this point we have all probably recorded multiple projects with him in different bands, so it was a shared language that let us move fast.” Setién adds, “Nick is the kind of sound engineer who makes music with the band–sound is his instrument.”

Listen to lead single ‘Land of the Many Eyes’ now:

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Or perhaps not despite the clarity of the title, because while the thicket of feelings might be disorientating to experience, Brown maps this complexity with such precision and care that a sense of order starts to emerge. Meaning, as the album progresses, we follow her characters out of this tangle of interpersonal relations towards something enticingly close to lucidity, if not outright epiphany.

To ground this thematic arc, Izzy Oram Brown has shared two singles from the end of the record to hint at just where What I Want ends up. And, more than that, the songs also serve to demonstrate how this mission extends beyond the lyrics to the very sound itself. Multi-instrumentalist Jesse Bielenberg (Altopalo, Jesse in Grey, Dora Jar) and drummer Connor Parks (Cafune, Little Mystery, Tony Vaz) join to elevate the arrangements, and the fittingly layered and complex results align perfectly with the emotional weather through which Brown’s characters move. “Far from sounding like a typical indie-folk songwriter record,” Winston Cook-Wilson writes in the album notes, “What I Want is full of synth comet-streaks and fiery bits of unidentifiable sonic debris that function like musical evocations of both life’s unwelcome surprises and unprecedented wonders.”

First comes penultimate track ‘Love U the Same’, a warm, acoustic pop number which plays as though emerging from the other end of confusion within a relationship, not so much with specific answers for each and every problem but rather a kind of overarching meta-understanding. The hard won knowledge that love will always come loaded with knots and contradictions, and will likely never settle into anything close to perfection, but instead requires constant work. Closer ‘I Believe’ pushes the idea further. A track grander than its predecessor which takes this understanding and paints it in huge letters across the sky. A conclusion that feels almost defiant. “But I believe in the in between / And I believe in the starting clean,” as Brown sings in the song’s closing verse. “Well if that makes me wrong / So let it be.”

What I Want will be released on the 26th June and you can pre-order it now from the Izzy Oram Brown Bandcamp page.

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