After previous singles ‘Je Nes Sais Pas’ (a track of bright energy and fading dreams, not to mention a trademark wit and humour”) and ‘Dark Out’ (“has all the idiosyncratic style which has won the New York outfit such a following, managing to maintain a toe-tapping brightness despite the desperation and soul bubbling beneath the surface”), Frog have now shared latest single ‘Best Buy’ to mark the release of Frog For Sale via Audio Antihero. The song is typical of the release, pairing a sound that’s sunny and playful with lyrics that possess a darker edge, spiralling into the male psyche and its attempts to appear not bothered by things which clearly bother it.

The result is a languid calm that strains against something more desperate, Bateman’s vocals sounding as though they’re fighting to maintain their wry humour and cool attitude. It’s unclear whether the protagonist is pathetic, creepy, dangerous or none of those things, merely following a normal daydream in his head. “Well I thought about you on the way to work and it occurred to me I want you to know,” as he sings in the opening. “I know it always hurts when I’m a jerk when I’m at work what am I doing it for / I’ve resolved to try and find a way inside of your vagina and to that end I’m sorta tryna get you alone.”

Why don’t you just get married to the next guy impressed by your spit-shiney hair
I run into you in Bed Stuy at Best Buy and there’s no hiding there, though I did try
1234567, all good children go to heaven
All good singers purchase Zyns at the 711 in the tins

Photo by Jarod A. Walker

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The album was written in Mirzadegan’s childhood bedroom in the wake of a break-up, a collection of finger-picked folk songs which paints a series of memories, longings and confessions in the palette of the titular hue. But though the present loss hangs heavy, Mirzadegan also digs towards a deeper seam of sadness. One ingrained at her centre, accumulated not only across one life but an entire family history. Here, old wounds are not so much sources of pain as shafts leading towards something older and more fundamental, and Ava Mirzadegan follows these passageways as deep as they might allow her in the hope that allowing light into these dark spaces is to begin to process and heal.

But before Dark Dark Blue was another album. One which Mirzadegan could never quite finish to her satisfaction, and thus never saw the light of day. That is, until now. Because driven by the dehumanising experience of watching the country of your heritage being invaded illegally, as well as desire to do something tangible for the people suffering on the ground in Iran, she has decided to release that album, For the Light, via new imprint Vital Records, with all proceeds going to the Red Crescent.

“I want it to be known that For the Light is an unfinished record,” Mirzadegan says, though the fact it is being released speaks to the urgency of the moment and depth of feeling which accompanies it. The album is something of a time capsule of a specific period, one in which a personal bereavement came to reconfigure an entire understanding of death. Grief hurts beyond all expectation, and it hurts this way for everyone. If Dark Dark Blue was a passage towards healing, For the Light is the standstill before such a process might start. Those weeks and months where loss is nothing more than pain, and every link to the past seems to shine with a precious ephemerality.

Released into a present context, this effect is further magnified, and For the Light takes on an even more striking resonance. In a world where entire civilisations can be threatened and genocide is enacted freely, the album plays as an attempt to preserve the human in the face of almost unimaginable horror. Or at least remind some small section of the world that Iranians exist and feel and suffer like anyone else. “I uploaded a song about losing my mother while fearing the loss of the country in which my mother, and her mother before her, were born,” she continues. “It felt like the only thing I could do to keep from drowning in hopelessness and to remind myself that no matter whatever darkness came at nightfall, I will always carry their life light within me.”

That song, opener and lead single ‘Pavement’, is the first available ahead of the release on 10th May, Mother’s Day. “In this empty room / I can feel you,” Mirzadegan sings in the opening lines, before the track moves to its plaintive refrain: “She is gone.” But within the sorrow lies something else. A fondness, yes, but more than that. A strange kind of defiance. Which is all any bereaved person truly has left in the wake of their loss. The promise to remember, persevere, endure. As Walter Benjamin famously wrote: “The only historian capable of fanning the spark of hope in the past is the one who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he is victorious.” We must take every available shot at this enemy, no matter how hopeless the action might feel.

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As this description suggests, Bloom Again sees runo plum chart something of an arc, following the Minnesota artist from the dark, despondent days after a heartbreak through to the sprouting of new love. With the release now only weeks away, plum has unveiled the EP’s final single, ‘pink moon’, and the song is indicative of the tenderness with which she approaches this topic. Written in the hours after a successful first date, the track is warm and sensual, bathed in the tentative fondness such new beginnings tend to bring. As such there’s an unapologetic romance to both the tone and lyrics, something which asserts itself through a kind of hyperawareness. Sugar on lips, freckles on shoulders, dimples in cheeks, no small observation slips past the eye. The novelty of a new person announcing itself as a beauty worthy of any natural wonder.

Watch the video by CallMeRambo below:

Bloom Again will be released by Winspear on 8th May. Grab a copy now from the runo plum Bandcamp page.

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Such a style is typical of Gravity Blanket, the record seeing Stephen Becker dig through the assorted fragments of ordinary life in search of some lesson or sense of higher meaning, even if it requires him to unearth some uncomfortable things in the process. The songs lead from childhood through adolescence and young adult life, featuring everything from Slinkys and Haribo frogs to break-ups and hallucinations, though Becker’s inventive lyricism and arrangements maintain both playfulness and vulnerability across them all.

Sitting at the louder, slightly more disordered end of the spectrum, latest single ‘Careless’ again focuses on a failing relationship, though is more ambiguous than its predecessor. Because while ‘Bad Idea’ existed within the moment an end became clear cut, ‘Careless’ instead focuses on the uncertainty which worms its way the cracks of struggling partnership. “I was stuck on the word ‘careless’, and how adding a space flips its meaning entirely,” Becker expands. “In relationships, it’s hard to know whether someone’s just being careless (silly, impersonal) or if they actually care less (harsh). I tried to capture that ambiguity with a wily post-chorus guitar riff in the vein of Jonny Greenwood and Ed Rodriguez.”

It’s obvious, that you care less
It’s obvious, that you’re careless
It’s obvious but not obvious to me

Watch the video directed by Haoyan of America below:

Gravity Blanket will be released on the 24th April and you can pre-order it now.

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A pair of tracks from Mox bookend the album, an act we’ve described previously as “follow[ing] in the lineage of Alex G, combining boundless creativity with tangible emotion.” Opener ‘Scared’ sets the tone, displaying combination of bruising heft and emotional tenderness, while closer ‘Leaving’ is more restrained and slow building, allowing the warmth of the project more room to shine.

The offerings from Christina’s Trip opt for a more shoegaze-adjacent style, though again the interplay between heaviness and light is an important element. Take ‘F.B.A.T.’ with its mix of shimmer and scuzz and no small amount of energy. Or the squally ‘Sweep Me’, which embraces the chaos of its sound to culminate in a mood almost buoyant.

The songs from Natasha Sandworms are cleaner in style yet just as infectious, be it the retro indie pop bounce of ‘Bird of My Life’ or gradual unfurling of ‘Perfect Feeling’. There’s a wistfulness to both songs, though rather than being stuck looking backwards in self-reflection, they manage to chart a course forward, however uncertain or bittersweet the awaiting future might prove to be.

Lucky Three is out now via Cherub Dream Records and available from Bandcamp.

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The brand new Trails and Ways full-length Open Water will be released soon, and the band have shared two singles to reintroduce themselves after their time away. Described by the band as a song “about making peace, learning Spanish, and swimming open water,” first single ‘Patiently’ immediately re-establishes what made the group so fun back in the day. And its upbeat, positive sound carries a fitting message too. A reminder that life is richer in company, and that social isolation can be overcome, written and performed by a trio who worked through that very process themselves to bring the track to life.

Follow-up ‘Young’ is no less accomplished, though dials down some of its predecessor’s energy to offer something more sleek and dreamy. But despite the decidedly hazy sound, there is still a central rhythm to the song, a sense of forward momentum which speaks to the themes of growth and maturation which inform the track. “When we were young / we didn’t sit, too much to do,” as the opening verse goes, “now we’re settled down / we don’t move over the ground like we used to.”

Both ‘Patiently’ and ‘Young’ can be found on the Trails and Ways Bandcamp page.

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Subsequent track ‘Witness‘ might not have concerned such a well-known urban myth, but was no less striking for it. Longo recounts watching a cat die after being struck by a vehicle, as well as the inexplicable nonchalance of a friend who saw it too. “The incident is still a touchpoint for me,” he explained. “Every time I come upon the same powerless feeling, whether it be through the loss of a loved one or the general anxiety that the veil between this world and the next is quite thin.”

With the album’s release fast approaching via First City Artists, Thin Lear has returned with brand new single ‘A Cherished Man’. Its predecessors might have held a sense of ambition in their themes and narrative, but this song pushes even further. A triptych of character studies which follows three ostensibly eccentric people through their honest attempts to connect with others from the margins of society. There’s Andy, who drinks so much each evening he draws a tourist crowd to see his public scenes of shame. Annie, whose isolated urban life is punctuated, or rather punctured, by her compulsion to poke people with pins, as though looking to prove her ability to leave any mark on the world at all. Then finally Charlie, a man who eats all manner of irregular objects, including corks, stones, birds and snakes, just to earn a drop of recognition. “I see myself in all of them,” Longo explains. “They’re looking for meaningful engagement, they’re just not sure how to broker it.”

Watch the video below by Ali Aschman:

Many Disappeared will be released on the 24th April via First City Artists and you can pre-order it now from the Thin Lear Bandcamp page.

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But that is only the beginning of the process. For once the ‘human’ element is complete, Langa and co. take the recordings and pass them through a myriad of digital manipulations, sampling, distorting and re-harmonsing the sounds into strange echoes of themselves. “The sounds arrive somewhere else, neither at the ‘truth’ of its performance nor at the full dissolution of its human hand,” as the album notes continue. “The ship of Theseus sailing the .WAVs—how many plugins can you apply to a human performance before it’s no longer human? Are Derrida’s ghosts sitting in a room different from the room you are sitting in now?”

Latest single ‘Dark’ offers another glimpse at this singular style. A shape-shifting track which shimmers with a beguiling cyclical, or rather spiral, rhythm, constantly circling itself while still moving towards new ground. “For ‘Dark’, we really leaned into the idea of ‘hypnotized’ that shows up in the lyrics,” Langa explains. “There is an obsessive repetition of synth stabs, processed saxophones, and of lyrics. The same words are repeated over and over again, and as you hear them more, their tone shifts from seductive to aggressive and everything in-between […] The track swells to a breaking point, and the closing moments suddenly suspend in the air with bending melodies.”

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The single is a fitting one. What might be the most direct exploration of the ideas underpinning the record, delving into the uncanny experience of identity, both in the ways in which it shifts and persists through all of life’s inevitable challenges. “Vanity paradox: I can’t see me clearly,” Eisenberg sings in a telling verse, “Marked too young / Undeserved / Tell me how it matters.” This uncertainty is central to the song. The realisation too much soul searching might prove counterproductive. The suspicion that outside validation is the only route to clarity. But in wrestling with these feelings across six intricate minutes, the song ultimately looks to transcend such feelings, serving as a reminder that some indeliable self remains through the course of a life. A sense of peace and authenticity within reach if only we allow ourselves to connect with it.

“Kind of an inadvertent epic, these lyrics came out in one wild puzzling chunk I’m still deciphering,” Eisenberg explains. “Mari told me it sounds like how anxiety feels, which shocked me but is ultimately just true. From what I can tell it’s about the ways we cope with existing among others, how it feels to want to be perceived as a good person by your friends, because your curiosity about yourself has, paradoxically, obscured you to yourself. It’s also about healing from trauma, specifically how the healing process brings you so close to yourself that you can’t see anything clearly, and so dazzled by the life surrounding you that you are stunned when you remember that you are the same person who experienced the trauma that got you here.”

Watch the video directed by Ruby Mars below:

Wendy Eisenberg will be released on the 3rd April via Joyful Noise and you can pre-order it now from Bandcamp.

Photo by Eleanor Petry

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“Each begins with a poem, written last spring during a tumultuous period that left me spinning with no center,” Elliott explains. “Through the practice of sonically circling and weaving in each new line, I reached this trance state, constructing a new axis within myself. My aim is to extend that sonic embrace outward now, inviting audiences into a shared space of resonance and presence.” The songs employ a certain minimalism, especially in their beginnings, though as a means rather than an end. As though by stripping down the present into an ascetic simplicity, Old Man of the Woods is able to push through into another world entirely. ‘Don’t Touch, I’m Shedding’ is a good example, its hushed, swirling sound first playing as a kind of clearing, but at some point switches towards the opposite, repopulating the new space so that it might become an ecosystem of its own.

Whether this process is spiritual, ecological or personal is left unclear, or more specifically, Elliott blurs any boundaries between such categories into insignificance. Indeed, this could be said to be the core mission of Cape Perpetua, and even the Old Man of the Woods project as a whole. An attempt to recharge the natural with its ethereal potential, and to reconsider the human interior as its own fertile space. The accompanying videos further ground these ideas, the often surreal footage quite literally superimposing ecological environments with imagery of religious belief. The result, much like the symbols of cathedrals, stained glass and solemn chants which Elliott draws upon, feels like its own contribution to an age old project. The ongoing ritual desire to recreate the sense of wonder which we sense around us, be it pertaining to God or His green world.

Cape Perpetua is out now and available from the Old Man of the Woods Bandcamp page.

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