W H Lung - Inspiration!/Nothing Is
Here is the sum total of what we can pass on about W H Lung - they're a trio based in Manchester, they release both these songs on a double A side on May 12th via Melodic, and despite no real proof of having played live yet they're already booked to play End Of The Road, Blue Dot Festival at Jodrell Bank, Sea Change and Liverpool International Festival Of Psychedelia. So there's clearly something going on here - we have our suspicions - and while we await further instruction we have the music to go on, two tracks that together reach just short of sixteen minutes, and luckily it's great in all the right psychedelic/motorik ways, replete with lack-of-air-in-lungs yelp, using that length to shapeshift and evolve through cosmic instrumental breakdown/build-up sections and intense climaxes without falling into shoegaze territory. On Nothing Is some darting, pulsing synths come into play, shifting from Philip Glass repetition into a driving, malleable shape for purpose.
Sam Airey - Lacuna
Finally after what certainly seems like far too long, the darkly intricate craft of Leeds-based Airey has been formed into album shape, In Darkened Rooms out 26th May. Inspired by Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, here his cracked, emotionally spent falsetto is close miked amid a spaciously minimalist setting recalling a less wintry For Emma, Forever Ago.
Sneaks - Hair Slick Back
Slicks is Washington DC's Eva Moolchan, signed to Merge who release It’s a Myth the end of this week. She's/it's an intriguing proposition - taut bass and drum-machine led, delivery based on repetition and how language sounds, like ESG having first heard Le Tigre, with the recording of Mary Timony and her Ex Hex bandmate Jonah Takagi drawing strength from minimalism, which is what you can draw strength from if your album is ten tracks in eighteen minutes.
Alimony Hustle - Miss GB
It's been a little while since we've heard something new from the self-examining to a fault duo, who re-emerge with spacious, smartly vaulting guitar pop without succumbing to the usual bluesy/overdriven faults duos land in. Plus it's about Zara Holland, the titular beauty queen winner who was stripped of her title after going on Love Island. More particularly, "sexism, regret, the death of dreams and, ultimately, doing what you want in the face of all of that".
Gorillaz - Andromeda
The best, we reckon, of the four 80s revival bandwagon-flirting tracks revealed at the end of last week from fourth album Humanz, released 28th April, which seems to be a (quite uneven) club record for a darkened world. Indeed this is virtually old-skool house with its spaciousness, synth flashes and twinkles plus basic insistent beat, Damon in soulful, contemplative mood with rapper D.R.A.M. content to fill in the gaps.
BABY! - Home Sweet Home
BABY! is the nom du jangle of Orlando's Kaley Honeycutt, whose offering from forthcoming EP Pick Me is a sub-two minute joyous coast of surf guitar hooks and energetic warmth, invoking personal catharsis through sunny positivity like a lost Crutchfield sister.
Fazerdaze - Lucky Girl
A track that's been around for a few weeks but we only caught up with this week, and another typically swooning eternal summer kind of offering from the revived Flying Nun Records, New Zealander Amelia Murray similarly deals in bedroom-spawned hazy sunlight-dappled pop of breathy, reverbed for extra nostalgic quality vocal and contrasting emotions, the kind that sees joy and melancholy as part of the same package deal. Her album Morninside is due in May.
Caroline Lazar – Trigger
The young Atlantan was originally parsed as one of the latest country singer-songwriter wave, but this from her new Nevermine EP is a lot more, raw and brooding in minimalism even before it starts to slowly bloom, Lazar's huge voice pushing increasingly forward, before bursting into a emotively cathartic, intense coda involving seemingly all the electric instruments available.
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