Astraba - Sink The Moon
Apart from this being a London band's debut there doesn't seem to be a lot of background to Astraba, which can feel suspicious for ones so fully formed, but they're a band who seem to have much in front of them, routed in layered psychedelia that shifts from Mazzy Star-adjacent wistfulness to spiralling surges, all still ethereal at heart and all that.
Augustin Bousfield - Baildon Space Station
Bradford's Bousfield is one of those musical polymaths who's been around in the firmament with hands in all sorts of genre's pies but has one big thing that could get him handshakes in most of Britain's pubs, namely that he wrote the theme to Deal Or No Deal. Much more recently he co-wrote and produced Saint Etienne's last LP I've Been Trying To Tell You and has just released his debut album Anymoor, a suburban synthpop cascade primarily involving keytars and off-beat moves liable to trip the unwary up as the melodies stutter, the kind of DIY small scale warped disco-not-disco-pop as exhibited by a single described as "Lovers walk the moor under a beautiful burnt sky as the ISS waves from above" and accordingly sounds more retro-futuristic than practically anything else around right now.
CIAO MALZ - Two Feel Tall
CIAO MALZ is Brooklynite Malia Delacruz and her debut EP Safe Then Sorry is out on distributors of high quality materials Audio Antihero on December 6th. The lead track is the kind of song that tries to skip sunnily along its guitar-pop way while covered by the visible dark cloud of confusion, introspection and self-worth, a kind of audio metaphor for how everything else wants to go at a much faster rate. Soccer Mommy would be the obvious touchstone, but it's unsurprising to find Elliott Smith is Delacruz's big influence.
Divorce - Antarctica
The Nottingham outfit's embrace of a countrified Americana that still finds an accessible enough hole for them to have toured with your favourite still extant corporate indie band of the late 00s. Yes, it's another summery track being released out here in late November, breezy guitar and crossing dual harmonies belying the dark, questioning heart of the lyrics that wouldn't disgrace The National, offset by metronomic drums, weeping violin and subtle pedal steel.
Emma-Jean Thackray feat. Reggie Watts - Black Hole
If there was anything more surprising this week than the repeat of the recently thought out of commission modernist jazz-funk polymath, it's that the only thing she's not responsible for bar the mastering on her first release in three years is a not entirely necessary interjection from the US comedian/beatboxer/general musical bandleader into the cosmic shuffling psych-jazz that nods equally at Roy Ayers and Parliament.
The Pill - Woman Driver
Getting ready for every new band tent next summer, Lily and Lottie's (and Rufus)' third two minute stop-start rager of high quality outlines, with no small amount of sarcasm, the titular related gender fender bender.
Sacred Paws - Another Day
Banjo! This is a new turn from Ray Aggs, and Ray Aggs has not been short of new turns across their thousand other projects, although it's actually their dad that plays it. Otherwise the first track from Aggs and Eilidh Rodgers' Scottish Album of the Year winning duo in five years retains their jerky post-punk special sauce, skipping, staccatoing and driving just as they always have whatever stringed instrument is at the forefront, just with a C&W tint emphasised when Aggs gets their reliable fiddle out in the outro.
The Wind-Up Birds - Guards
Leeds' highly experienced sardonic political post-punk firebrands, the group that taught Yard Act everything and James Smith will gladly tell you that, have a new single, searing guitars over Kroyd proselyting on moral panics and people in positions of privilege, all the usual good stuff.
Monday, November 25, 2024
Thursday, November 14, 2024
New sounds: 15/11/24
Autocamper - Summertime
Manchester by spiritual way of Dunedin, the janglepop revivalists (if it ever needs reviving, or indeed counts as one) have their calendar all wrong but their spirit absolutely in the right place, scratchy and jolting while borrowing The Clean's organ melodies.
HONESTY - TORMENTOR
Formed from the ashes of Eagulls, HONESTY really clicked for us seeing their front-projections and elusiveness heavy live set at Swn festival last month. Florence Shaw contributes to U R HERE, their debut album out February 7th, but there's nothing but the rocky undercurrent of post-punk about their sound, indebted much more to dark trip-hop, eddying synth waves that almost resurrect chillwave, glitchy IDM pulses and deep bass churn that gradually overwhelm in semi-restrained intensity.
John Glacier - Found
The London MC and producer has been doing interesting things for a couple of years now, culminating for the first phase in Like A Ribbon, out February 14th. The electronics fall over each other in stuttering beats and arpeggiated loops whilst Glacier's voice has the best female British rappers' sense of poetic misleading understatement.
Laundromat Chicks - Sunburn
Another summery song released just as the weather changes from autumn to winter? What's going on? Our favourite Viennese return with what might qualify as a countrified shuffle that flirts with the dreamiest of acoustic indiepop, occasionally sticks the fuzz pedals on just to remind you what they can do, then lapses into a quick anthemic coda just because. Third album Sometimes Possessed is out on 24th January... and they're coming over to the UK at last! Only confirmed gig so far is The Great Escape, which presumably means one tiny show full of VIP wristband holders, something in London and nothing else ever because nobody outside the south-east is allowed to enjoy any good things any more.
Man/Woman/Chainsaw - EZPZ
The sort of title track from their debut EP Eazy Peazy is as good a place as any to get into M/W/C's command of lift-and-separate dramatics (although if you blanche at Brixton Windmill bands exhibiting strings-laden melodrama indebted to Isaac-era Black Country New Road, you're going to hate what's coming soon), uplifted by Lola Cherry's shifting martial drumming.
Mary In The Junkyard - This is My California
Another Swn highlight, the trio's new single is more straightforwardly ethereal and sepia-toned nostalgic than the 'Big Thief at the Windmill'-style recent This Old House EP, but straightforward is its own concept when songs shift and express unease like theirs do.
Minor Conflict - Glue
Newly signed to the rarely less than fascinating PRAH Recordings, Bristolians Minor Conflict have that classic synth/bass/harp power trio line-up, vocalists Natalie Whiteland and Josh Smyth swapping lines before launching into a fascinating tapestry of abstract poetics, occasional sprechgesang, wordless chorale, angular bursts reminiscent of labelmates Pozi, jazzy percussion and delicate, well, harp. Who knows what it will all mean when Parallels EP is released on January 24th.
The Orchestra (For Now) - Wake Robin
So, as we were saying, Brixton Windmill bands exhibiting strings-laden melodrama indebted to Isaac-era Black Country New Road. Spectacular opening the Mountain stage as Green Man Rising winners and subject to the traditional whispered hype based on that one bloke who puts full sets on YouTube, there's seven of them, their debut single crosses the eight minute threshold and is a tumbling riot of dramatically intricate violin and piano flourishes and polyrhythmic drumming outbreaks in multiple movements, even, from languid to impassioned.
Manchester by spiritual way of Dunedin, the janglepop revivalists (if it ever needs reviving, or indeed counts as one) have their calendar all wrong but their spirit absolutely in the right place, scratchy and jolting while borrowing The Clean's organ melodies.
HONESTY - TORMENTOR
Formed from the ashes of Eagulls, HONESTY really clicked for us seeing their front-projections and elusiveness heavy live set at Swn festival last month. Florence Shaw contributes to U R HERE, their debut album out February 7th, but there's nothing but the rocky undercurrent of post-punk about their sound, indebted much more to dark trip-hop, eddying synth waves that almost resurrect chillwave, glitchy IDM pulses and deep bass churn that gradually overwhelm in semi-restrained intensity.
John Glacier - Found
The London MC and producer has been doing interesting things for a couple of years now, culminating for the first phase in Like A Ribbon, out February 14th. The electronics fall over each other in stuttering beats and arpeggiated loops whilst Glacier's voice has the best female British rappers' sense of poetic misleading understatement.
Laundromat Chicks - Sunburn
Another summery song released just as the weather changes from autumn to winter? What's going on? Our favourite Viennese return with what might qualify as a countrified shuffle that flirts with the dreamiest of acoustic indiepop, occasionally sticks the fuzz pedals on just to remind you what they can do, then lapses into a quick anthemic coda just because. Third album Sometimes Possessed is out on 24th January... and they're coming over to the UK at last! Only confirmed gig so far is The Great Escape, which presumably means one tiny show full of VIP wristband holders, something in London and nothing else ever because nobody outside the south-east is allowed to enjoy any good things any more.
Man/Woman/Chainsaw - EZPZ
The sort of title track from their debut EP Eazy Peazy is as good a place as any to get into M/W/C's command of lift-and-separate dramatics (although if you blanche at Brixton Windmill bands exhibiting strings-laden melodrama indebted to Isaac-era Black Country New Road, you're going to hate what's coming soon), uplifted by Lola Cherry's shifting martial drumming.
Mary In The Junkyard - This is My California
Another Swn highlight, the trio's new single is more straightforwardly ethereal and sepia-toned nostalgic than the 'Big Thief at the Windmill'-style recent This Old House EP, but straightforward is its own concept when songs shift and express unease like theirs do.
Minor Conflict - Glue
Newly signed to the rarely less than fascinating PRAH Recordings, Bristolians Minor Conflict have that classic synth/bass/harp power trio line-up, vocalists Natalie Whiteland and Josh Smyth swapping lines before launching into a fascinating tapestry of abstract poetics, occasional sprechgesang, wordless chorale, angular bursts reminiscent of labelmates Pozi, jazzy percussion and delicate, well, harp. Who knows what it will all mean when Parallels EP is released on January 24th.
The Orchestra (For Now) - Wake Robin
So, as we were saying, Brixton Windmill bands exhibiting strings-laden melodrama indebted to Isaac-era Black Country New Road. Spectacular opening the Mountain stage as Green Man Rising winners and subject to the traditional whispered hype based on that one bloke who puts full sets on YouTube, there's seven of them, their debut single crosses the eight minute threshold and is a tumbling riot of dramatically intricate violin and piano flourishes and polyrhythmic drumming outbreaks in multiple movements, even, from languid to impassioned.
Tuesday, November 05, 2024
New sounds: 5/11/24
Chemtrails - Miss Anthropocene
A straggler of a track, soon to get a 7" release, following The Joy Of Sects and ahead of a tour is another bugged-out glam stomp that expresses a desire to turn into a whale to escape TERFs and maybe uniquely for pop namechecks the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Fruit - Racehorse Deathwatch
The north-east sextet have been called "a morose and angry John Cooper Clarke fronting Mogwai". Well, that's as maybe, but it's far more in tune with your favourite modern dark sprechgesang intense post-punks. What stands the track out from the vats of modern dark sprechgesang intense post-punks is their post-Slint capture and release shifts, explosions of compressed noise dallying with sudden time signature changes and divebombing down to minimalism.
M(h)aol - Snare
Losing a charismatic frontperson would kill most bands, but M(h)aol have adapted since Róisín Nic Ghearailt left just over a year ago - they've also shed their bass player since then - with drummer Constance Keane taking over as vocalist. In fact the new single ties in with the change in that way, being about the gendering of instrument learning coupled to nervy, awkward Krautrock-adjacent off-beats and hypnotic noise.
Snõõper - Relay
Snõõper couldn't help but be one of our highlights of this year's End Of The Road Festival (a lot of fun, thanks), what with the prop-adorned, crowdsurfing, all-hyperenergy speed-punk assault like a vaguely more approachable Melt-Banana or Polysics. Ahead of a new tour they've dropped what for them counts as a ballad, merely quite fast for most of the time while still all razorblade bass and stabbing riffs.
Tunde Adebimpe - Magnetic
No sooner have TV On The Radio reformed for live dates next year - we note they're in the UK over Green Man weekend - than Adebimpe announces an as yet release date-free solo album on Sub Pop. Ironically the first single reaches back to imperial phase TVOTR in their Dancing Choose/New Health Rock/oh alright then Wolf Like Me in its buzzing, digitised insistent beat and Tunde's full commitment preacher's voice.
A straggler of a track, soon to get a 7" release, following The Joy Of Sects and ahead of a tour is another bugged-out glam stomp that expresses a desire to turn into a whale to escape TERFs and maybe uniquely for pop namechecks the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Fruit - Racehorse Deathwatch
The north-east sextet have been called "a morose and angry John Cooper Clarke fronting Mogwai". Well, that's as maybe, but it's far more in tune with your favourite modern dark sprechgesang intense post-punks. What stands the track out from the vats of modern dark sprechgesang intense post-punks is their post-Slint capture and release shifts, explosions of compressed noise dallying with sudden time signature changes and divebombing down to minimalism.
M(h)aol - Snare
Losing a charismatic frontperson would kill most bands, but M(h)aol have adapted since Róisín Nic Ghearailt left just over a year ago - they've also shed their bass player since then - with drummer Constance Keane taking over as vocalist. In fact the new single ties in with the change in that way, being about the gendering of instrument learning coupled to nervy, awkward Krautrock-adjacent off-beats and hypnotic noise.
Snõõper - Relay
Snõõper couldn't help but be one of our highlights of this year's End Of The Road Festival (a lot of fun, thanks), what with the prop-adorned, crowdsurfing, all-hyperenergy speed-punk assault like a vaguely more approachable Melt-Banana or Polysics. Ahead of a new tour they've dropped what for them counts as a ballad, merely quite fast for most of the time while still all razorblade bass and stabbing riffs.
Tunde Adebimpe - Magnetic
No sooner have TV On The Radio reformed for live dates next year - we note they're in the UK over Green Man weekend - than Adebimpe announces an as yet release date-free solo album on Sub Pop. Ironically the first single reaches back to imperial phase TVOTR in their Dancing Choose/New Health Rock/oh alright then Wolf Like Me in its buzzing, digitised insistent beat and Tunde's full commitment preacher's voice.
Monday, October 28, 2024
New sounds: 28/10/24 (deluxe version)
Yeah, this is what happens when you're picking up after a couple of weeks - so many new tracks pile up and so little time to go into detail about them all.
Anna B Savage - Agnes
From third album You & i are Earth, out 24th January, a track featuring Irish folkie Anna Mieke on an album partially about Savage's move to Ireland and as spectral as ever even as the surroundings blossom outwards.
Beckon - Hands
Second single from next week's debut album Between The Bridge And Tree.
Bon Iver - THINGS BEHIND THINGS BEHIND THINGS
The most early trad Bon Iver track from his new EP SABLE,
Clarissa Connelly - Give It Back
Already a new track after the underrated album from earlier this year World Of Work, unspooling art-folk delicacy.
Fightmilk - Yearning And Pining
Last single from No Souvenirs, out 15th November. Did we mention they're not only playing next March's Leicesterval but the Sunday for which tickets, unlike the Saturday/full weekend, are still available?
Heartworms - Warplane
Finally an album coming, Glutton For Punishment on 7th February.
Laurence-Anne - Melancolia
La Sécurité - Detour
Pulling double duty in signpost new singles, firstly a dreamy, lovelorn song in Spanish (!), then the post-B-52s/Le Tigre art-punk collective she belongs to are newly signed to Bella Union and heading to the sprung dancefloor.
lobby - folding out
Goat Girl's Lottie Pendlebury is half of a duo that initially locate themselves amid the popular slowcore lot but meander and develop, with we detect a little Delgados influence, through string motifs and another bloody saxophone into a slow burn crescendo that peaks somewhere near Sonic Youth.
Man Lee - Best One
Brooklyn-based duo present their awkward groove as collage, managing to work "transubstantiation" into the lyric.
Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory - Afterlife
Yeah, that's how she's presenting herself on the eponymous we-suppose-technically-debut album on February 7th.
Snazzback feat. Grove - Equinox
Our longtime favourite basement rabble-rouser collaborates with fellow Bristolian "new wave dancefloor instrumentalists", come out with a spiralling jazzy groove.
Swansea Sound - Toxic Energy
An imagined duet between Elon Musk and Terry Hall. "The strange noise at the end is a recording of a Tesla Cybertruck accelerating, losing control and exploding as it hits a wall." Hey, we're bringing them back to Leicester on 29th November!
The Tubs - Freak Mode
Dead Meat in its Sugar-if-formed-by-Richard-Thompson glory was one of our favourite British albums of last year; next year's Cotton Crown, out 7th March and reflecting on Owen Williams' reaction to the death of his folk singer and journalist mother Charlotte Greig, seems set to be much the same.
Anna B Savage - Agnes
From third album You & i are Earth, out 24th January, a track featuring Irish folkie Anna Mieke on an album partially about Savage's move to Ireland and as spectral as ever even as the surroundings blossom outwards.
Beckon - Hands
Second single from next week's debut album Between The Bridge And Tree.
Bon Iver - THINGS BEHIND THINGS BEHIND THINGS
The most early trad Bon Iver track from his new EP SABLE,
Clarissa Connelly - Give It Back
Already a new track after the underrated album from earlier this year World Of Work, unspooling art-folk delicacy.
Fightmilk - Yearning And Pining
Last single from No Souvenirs, out 15th November. Did we mention they're not only playing next March's Leicesterval but the Sunday for which tickets, unlike the Saturday/full weekend, are still available?
Heartworms - Warplane
Finally an album coming, Glutton For Punishment on 7th February.
Laurence-Anne - Melancolia
La Sécurité - Detour
Pulling double duty in signpost new singles, firstly a dreamy, lovelorn song in Spanish (!), then the post-B-52s/Le Tigre art-punk collective she belongs to are newly signed to Bella Union and heading to the sprung dancefloor.
lobby - folding out
Goat Girl's Lottie Pendlebury is half of a duo that initially locate themselves amid the popular slowcore lot but meander and develop, with we detect a little Delgados influence, through string motifs and another bloody saxophone into a slow burn crescendo that peaks somewhere near Sonic Youth.
Man Lee - Best One
Brooklyn-based duo present their awkward groove as collage, managing to work "transubstantiation" into the lyric.
Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory - Afterlife
Yeah, that's how she's presenting herself on the eponymous we-suppose-technically-debut album on February 7th.
Snazzback feat. Grove - Equinox
Our longtime favourite basement rabble-rouser collaborates with fellow Bristolian "new wave dancefloor instrumentalists", come out with a spiralling jazzy groove.
Swansea Sound - Toxic Energy
An imagined duet between Elon Musk and Terry Hall. "The strange noise at the end is a recording of a Tesla Cybertruck accelerating, losing control and exploding as it hits a wall." Hey, we're bringing them back to Leicester on 29th November!
The Tubs - Freak Mode
Dead Meat in its Sugar-if-formed-by-Richard-Thompson glory was one of our favourite British albums of last year; next year's Cotton Crown, out 7th March and reflecting on Owen Williams' reaction to the death of his folk singer and journalist mother Charlotte Greig, seems set to be much the same.
Thursday, October 10, 2024
New sounds: 10/10/24
Dancer - Man Of Distinction/R.AGGS - Uncertainty
Bloody hell, Dancer, they've only just on Friday released their split LP with Whisper Hiss and now here comes another split, this time a limited 7" with Ray Aggs of so, so many great things that's included in the price of their 30th November gig at Glasgow's The Old Hairdressers, though there will we're assured be a limited number otherwise available. Dancer's half is jittery and hosts one of those repeated riffs that feels like it's always been around; Aggs for their part plays with gradually enveloping electro beats before the trademark hi-life spidery guitar makes a connective appearance.
Laundromat Chicks - Cameron
Our Viennese favourite return with a rattling uneven jangle of sexual confusion reminiscent to us of mid-00s Swedish contenders Cats On Fire. Third album next year!
The Pill - Scaffolding Man
Like A Certain Other Band, The Pill are two women from the Isle Of Wight who formed a band together in 2019 and deal in a forthright playful scrappy urgency and sexually sardonic lyrics. Bale Of Hay was possibly the year's most weirdly addictive debut single, and now they're dealing with being seen in the bath by the titular workman delivered in a way that makes it seem like they're not sure how to react. It seems like they'll be doing a lot of festivals over the next year; cult status, and potentially more, awaits.
Stuart Pearce - Fuck No, I Jangle
Well, that's your description right there. The band Stuart Pearce - from, yes, Nottingham - have been a lot more forceful, accelerating jerky and socio-politically driven over previous releases. Now they retreat to a vaguely stompy, psych-drenched shimmer that seems like it could have been released either immediate side of Madchester.
Winter Gardens - U/U
Brighton's Winter Gardens have been on the periphery of something big for quite a few years now and might be at least on the way to finding it with this not quite electro, not quite shoegaze, not quite post-punk meeting point of tension and uncomfortability where guitars alternately dart and swell, synths aim for the skies as if they got lost from an actual anthem and drums aim for the industrial, on top of which Ananda Howard delivers sung/spoken counterpoints.
Young Knives - Dissolution
Yep, he's still calling himself the House Of Lords. The brotherly duo's last two albums took a deliberate turn away from the associations of their hitmaking era to embrace dark electronics and industrial noise. Now, maybe due to reissuing those first two records last year, they've gone back to embracing something akin to it, not least in titling January's seventh album Landfill. So, stop-start riffs and rhythms and sardonic semi-spoken vocals meet the awkwardness - think early XTC or Pere Ubu at their most approachable - and the lyrical consideration of ego death.
Bloody hell, Dancer, they've only just on Friday released their split LP with Whisper Hiss and now here comes another split, this time a limited 7" with Ray Aggs of so, so many great things that's included in the price of their 30th November gig at Glasgow's The Old Hairdressers, though there will we're assured be a limited number otherwise available. Dancer's half is jittery and hosts one of those repeated riffs that feels like it's always been around; Aggs for their part plays with gradually enveloping electro beats before the trademark hi-life spidery guitar makes a connective appearance.
Laundromat Chicks - Cameron
Our Viennese favourite return with a rattling uneven jangle of sexual confusion reminiscent to us of mid-00s Swedish contenders Cats On Fire. Third album next year!
The Pill - Scaffolding Man
Like A Certain Other Band, The Pill are two women from the Isle Of Wight who formed a band together in 2019 and deal in a forthright playful scrappy urgency and sexually sardonic lyrics. Bale Of Hay was possibly the year's most weirdly addictive debut single, and now they're dealing with being seen in the bath by the titular workman delivered in a way that makes it seem like they're not sure how to react. It seems like they'll be doing a lot of festivals over the next year; cult status, and potentially more, awaits.
Stuart Pearce - Fuck No, I Jangle
Well, that's your description right there. The band Stuart Pearce - from, yes, Nottingham - have been a lot more forceful, accelerating jerky and socio-politically driven over previous releases. Now they retreat to a vaguely stompy, psych-drenched shimmer that seems like it could have been released either immediate side of Madchester.
Winter Gardens - U/U
Brighton's Winter Gardens have been on the periphery of something big for quite a few years now and might be at least on the way to finding it with this not quite electro, not quite shoegaze, not quite post-punk meeting point of tension and uncomfortability where guitars alternately dart and swell, synths aim for the skies as if they got lost from an actual anthem and drums aim for the industrial, on top of which Ananda Howard delivers sung/spoken counterpoints.
Young Knives - Dissolution
Yep, he's still calling himself the House Of Lords. The brotherly duo's last two albums took a deliberate turn away from the associations of their hitmaking era to embrace dark electronics and industrial noise. Now, maybe due to reissuing those first two records last year, they've gone back to embracing something akin to it, not least in titling January's seventh album Landfill. So, stop-start riffs and rhythms and sardonic semi-spoken vocals meet the awkwardness - think early XTC or Pere Ubu at their most approachable - and the lyrical consideration of ego death.
Thursday, October 03, 2024
New sounds: 3/10/24
Beckon - Festoon
The London six-piece fronted by Faith Taylor, once of Suggested Friends and Chorusgirl, describe themselves as "alternative folk/heartland rock" and, yeah, that's about as good a thumbnail description as we can offer, what with sax, forceful chorus and quasi-heroic solo plus violin, harmonies and shuffling beat. Debut album Between The Bridge And Tree is out at the end of the month.
Cheekface - Flies
America's Local Band return with what if their last couple of albums are any judge will be on an album to be given a surprise Bandcamp-first release one Tuesday in February. It features Jeff Rosenstock on sax. Don't worry in the slightest, you wouldn't automatically notice it.
Dancer - Didn't Mean To/Whisper Hiss - Go Again
The pair's split EP on HHBTM Records is out at the end of the week, our favourite art-post-punks more channel Dry Cleaning's big intricate guitar shapes against the taut groove this time around, though Gemma Fleet is as elusive as ever. On the flip of the 12"/just along the download Portland's Whisper Hiss similarly mine mutant new wave for the smart set dancefloor with the organ sound that all the best American post-punk bands had.
Florist - This Was A Gift
It's rather unfortunate that Florist's best album to date, 2019's Emily Alone which cracked our end of year top 50, is their only one as the title suggests to be recorded entirely by Emily Sprague. A new album, apparently featuring nineteen tracks *gulps very hard*, is on its way, preceded by a delicate, tender meander on the nature and embrace of love and heartbreak that would very much appeal to fans of solo Adrianne Lenker.
Geordie Greep - Blues
No, but what if Donald Fagen got really into Peter Hamill during a mescaline binge?
The Horrors - The Silence That Remains
Interesting in a way that they've returned to a Primary Colours sound of jazzy motorik drumming, gothic vocals, creepy synth and dark shoegaze-adjacent lengthy outro, having toyed with industrial noise in recent years and with a couple of line-up changes since their last album eight years ago. Night Life is out 21st... March?! We might be dead by then!
Lanny - ur an angel im evil
That'll be Lan McArdle, currently also of Ex-Void, an increasing length of time ago of Joanna Gruesome, well in with the 'if it's Owen Williams and your granny on bongos it's a Gob Nation band' collective, making herself at home with a surging cut that splits the difference between slacker power-pop and melodic jangle. What's more the album, bliss!! bliss! bliss, is out on the 29th.
Man/Woman/Chainsaw - The Boss
The shapeshifting but resolutely Windmillish kids are now on Fat Possum and have turned up the distortion to suit, symphonic violin parts rubbing like sandpaper against a weirdly theatrical thrust with noisy breakdowns. Produced by Daniel Fox of Gilla Band, whose credentials aside from those of his own group are starting to turn up on some very interesting records (Sprints, Lambrini Girls, GENN, Silverbacks)
WILLOW feat. Kamasi Washington - Wanted
Now then. Even if we discount Whip My Hair - she was nine! - Willow Smith has been quite the musical dilletante, playing with alt-R&B, 90s alt-rock singer-songwriters, neo-soul, dreampop, pivoting to pop-punk with Travis fucking Barker, and spiritual jazz on May's empathogen. The deluxe version of that album, ceremonial contrafact - I mean, come on - brings with it a high point, a psych-soul collaboration with the outstanding saxophonist that bridges the gap between the Janelle Monae of ten years ago and the Corinne Bailey Rae of last year.
Windowsill - Lasting
Nine luxuriant, ambitious minutes from the project of LA's Matt Maruskin, shuffling from acoustic lament to something more driven and eventually overdriven with guitar and what sounds like a pump organ. Second album Dwindlesill is out on the 18th.
The London six-piece fronted by Faith Taylor, once of Suggested Friends and Chorusgirl, describe themselves as "alternative folk/heartland rock" and, yeah, that's about as good a thumbnail description as we can offer, what with sax, forceful chorus and quasi-heroic solo plus violin, harmonies and shuffling beat. Debut album Between The Bridge And Tree is out at the end of the month.
Cheekface - Flies
America's Local Band return with what if their last couple of albums are any judge will be on an album to be given a surprise Bandcamp-first release one Tuesday in February. It features Jeff Rosenstock on sax. Don't worry in the slightest, you wouldn't automatically notice it.
Dancer - Didn't Mean To/Whisper Hiss - Go Again
The pair's split EP on HHBTM Records is out at the end of the week, our favourite art-post-punks more channel Dry Cleaning's big intricate guitar shapes against the taut groove this time around, though Gemma Fleet is as elusive as ever. On the flip of the 12"/just along the download Portland's Whisper Hiss similarly mine mutant new wave for the smart set dancefloor with the organ sound that all the best American post-punk bands had.
Florist - This Was A Gift
It's rather unfortunate that Florist's best album to date, 2019's Emily Alone which cracked our end of year top 50, is their only one as the title suggests to be recorded entirely by Emily Sprague. A new album, apparently featuring nineteen tracks *gulps very hard*, is on its way, preceded by a delicate, tender meander on the nature and embrace of love and heartbreak that would very much appeal to fans of solo Adrianne Lenker.
Geordie Greep - Blues
No, but what if Donald Fagen got really into Peter Hamill during a mescaline binge?
The Horrors - The Silence That Remains
Interesting in a way that they've returned to a Primary Colours sound of jazzy motorik drumming, gothic vocals, creepy synth and dark shoegaze-adjacent lengthy outro, having toyed with industrial noise in recent years and with a couple of line-up changes since their last album eight years ago. Night Life is out 21st... March?! We might be dead by then!
Lanny - ur an angel im evil
That'll be Lan McArdle, currently also of Ex-Void, an increasing length of time ago of Joanna Gruesome, well in with the 'if it's Owen Williams and your granny on bongos it's a Gob Nation band' collective, making herself at home with a surging cut that splits the difference between slacker power-pop and melodic jangle. What's more the album, bliss!! bliss! bliss, is out on the 29th.
Man/Woman/Chainsaw - The Boss
The shapeshifting but resolutely Windmillish kids are now on Fat Possum and have turned up the distortion to suit, symphonic violin parts rubbing like sandpaper against a weirdly theatrical thrust with noisy breakdowns. Produced by Daniel Fox of Gilla Band, whose credentials aside from those of his own group are starting to turn up on some very interesting records (Sprints, Lambrini Girls, GENN, Silverbacks)
WILLOW feat. Kamasi Washington - Wanted
Now then. Even if we discount Whip My Hair - she was nine! - Willow Smith has been quite the musical dilletante, playing with alt-R&B, 90s alt-rock singer-songwriters, neo-soul, dreampop, pivoting to pop-punk with Travis fucking Barker, and spiritual jazz on May's empathogen. The deluxe version of that album, ceremonial contrafact - I mean, come on - brings with it a high point, a psych-soul collaboration with the outstanding saxophonist that bridges the gap between the Janelle Monae of ten years ago and the Corinne Bailey Rae of last year.
Windowsill - Lasting
Nine luxuriant, ambitious minutes from the project of LA's Matt Maruskin, shuffling from acoustic lament to something more driven and eventually overdriven with guitar and what sounds like a pump organ. Second album Dwindlesill is out on the 18th.
Monday, September 30, 2024
New sounds: 30/9/24
Black Ends - Pretend 2 Be (Protect Me)
Seattle scene stalwarts, Black Ends describe themselves as "gunk-pop" which does quite well to pigeonhole a sound that pulls the rug out from under post-grunge (hey, Seattle, we were bound to fall into that one) and watches it fall into a menacing, vaguely jointed heap leading into an "anthem for the paranoid and the hopeless".
Dayflower - Florida
Longstanding Leicester dream-pop outfit get washed out in an unexpectedly, almost countrified acoustic-led nostalgic haze with a jangle undertow that takes it into Favourite territory for classic indie earworm potential. Little too late for summer but never mind.
Dogviolet - Violets
"Melodic grunge post-punk from London" says their website, which... well, yeah. Led by the longstanding grunge-folk duo Naz & Ella, their debut single, "a tale of queer awakening and budding young love, drawing on the sapphic symbolism of violets", should appeal to fans of Heartworms' brooding expansionism.
Ex-Vöid - Swansea
With Owen Williams' million other bands it's heartening to find he still has time to rejoin with Lan McArdle and craft more lovelorn jangle-power-pop, cleaner than before but no less crafted to excellence. Second album In Love Again is out January 17th. That's 2025! How did that happen?
Flytrap - Gutted
"The young sound of Penge" says their Insta bio, which doesn't really help. And with the support of the label that released Man/Woman/Chainsaw's debut they're a young band you want to know more about, crackling with the rush of wayward noisy energy led by a vocal and more than likely intensity ringer for Dana Porridge Radio.
Laura Marling - Child Of Mine
If anyone was going to make a good go of a new parent album... Features swirling strings, Buck Meek and meditational profoundness.
Overhead, The Albatross - This Is Like Love
The Dublin post-rock band with a Pink Floyd-derived name released an album in 2016 and have taken until now to follow it up, I Leave You This Out November 15th. Actually we really should also draw your attention to their last single Your Last Breath, an astonishing powerful nine minute string and horn-driven release of personal emotion. This one's great in a different way, built on thrusting, insistent electronic beats, percussion frenzy and cut-up samples.
Perfume Genius - My Place
One of three contemporaneously written new tracks added to the tenth anniversary reissue of Too Bright.
PROPERTY - Lazy Boy
Melbourne trio turn up the discordance on their wiry post-punk in a Pylon/Au Pairs sense.
Sassyhiya - Boat Called Predator
Named after an actual boat called Predator, the South Londoners have a bounce in their step and a way with insistent riffs and spiralling choruses. Their debut album Take You Somewhere is being released on 8th November on Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey's Skep Wax label, so score another one up for them.
Trust Fund - The Mirror
A proper return to the album format for Ellis and whoever else, Has It Been A While? out November 1st, is heralded by a melancholic, reticent duet with Radiant Heart's Celia MacDougall.
Seattle scene stalwarts, Black Ends describe themselves as "gunk-pop" which does quite well to pigeonhole a sound that pulls the rug out from under post-grunge (hey, Seattle, we were bound to fall into that one) and watches it fall into a menacing, vaguely jointed heap leading into an "anthem for the paranoid and the hopeless".
Dayflower - Florida
Longstanding Leicester dream-pop outfit get washed out in an unexpectedly, almost countrified acoustic-led nostalgic haze with a jangle undertow that takes it into Favourite territory for classic indie earworm potential. Little too late for summer but never mind.
Dogviolet - Violets
"Melodic grunge post-punk from London" says their website, which... well, yeah. Led by the longstanding grunge-folk duo Naz & Ella, their debut single, "a tale of queer awakening and budding young love, drawing on the sapphic symbolism of violets", should appeal to fans of Heartworms' brooding expansionism.
Ex-Vöid - Swansea
With Owen Williams' million other bands it's heartening to find he still has time to rejoin with Lan McArdle and craft more lovelorn jangle-power-pop, cleaner than before but no less crafted to excellence. Second album In Love Again is out January 17th. That's 2025! How did that happen?
Flytrap - Gutted
"The young sound of Penge" says their Insta bio, which doesn't really help. And with the support of the label that released Man/Woman/Chainsaw's debut they're a young band you want to know more about, crackling with the rush of wayward noisy energy led by a vocal and more than likely intensity ringer for Dana Porridge Radio.
Laura Marling - Child Of Mine
If anyone was going to make a good go of a new parent album... Features swirling strings, Buck Meek and meditational profoundness.
Overhead, The Albatross - This Is Like Love
The Dublin post-rock band with a Pink Floyd-derived name released an album in 2016 and have taken until now to follow it up, I Leave You This Out November 15th. Actually we really should also draw your attention to their last single Your Last Breath, an astonishing powerful nine minute string and horn-driven release of personal emotion. This one's great in a different way, built on thrusting, insistent electronic beats, percussion frenzy and cut-up samples.
Perfume Genius - My Place
One of three contemporaneously written new tracks added to the tenth anniversary reissue of Too Bright.
PROPERTY - Lazy Boy
Melbourne trio turn up the discordance on their wiry post-punk in a Pylon/Au Pairs sense.
Sassyhiya - Boat Called Predator
Named after an actual boat called Predator, the South Londoners have a bounce in their step and a way with insistent riffs and spiralling choruses. Their debut album Take You Somewhere is being released on 8th November on Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey's Skep Wax label, so score another one up for them.
Trust Fund - The Mirror
A proper return to the album format for Ellis and whoever else, Has It Been A While? out November 1st, is heralded by a melancholic, reticent duet with Radiant Heart's Celia MacDougall.
Monday, September 23, 2024
New sounds (diet version): 23/9/24
Caroline Says - Roses
Fievel Is Glauque - Love Weapon
Fightmilk - That Thing You Did
Lambrini Girls - Company Culture
Mogwai - God Gets You Back
Sophie Jamieson - I don’t know what to save
Tapir! - Nail In A Wooden Trunk
Virginia's Wolves - Issues
Fievel Is Glauque - Love Weapon
Fightmilk - That Thing You Did
Lambrini Girls - Company Culture
Mogwai - God Gets You Back
Sophie Jamieson - I don’t know what to save
Tapir! - Nail In A Wooden Trunk
Virginia's Wolves - Issues
Monday, September 16, 2024
New sounds: 16/9/24
Former Champ - Sorry
From Glasgow, so as we well know by now there's a bunch of members of other bands in here too, the recent Martha tour support deliver snappy Replacements-leaning power-pop.
Jeremy Warmsley - Dancing On The Moon
Just as we start thinking about next year's STN twentieth anniversary, one of our hype OGs returns with an almost stately - we say "almost" as there's plenty of effects and touches to throw it enough off-centre - piano lament.
Lilith Ai - Serial Killers Prefer Blondes
Precision targetd bubblegrunge/emo from the Alldayer alumni's tremendous, long gestating new album of the same name.
Memory Of Speke - Wife Once
IT'S A BRIXTON WINDMILL BAND, EVERYBODY! So obviously yes, there's six of them, one of them plays sax, they've clearly heard some klezmer, and their songs going by this debut are theatrical and gradually wrap tightly around themselves. They might end up as The Last Dinner Party's evil twins.
Sasha Adrian – Shell
From Copenhagen and despite the lilting, searching nature of the guitars it's not easy going, lyrically dense and smart in its unflinching rawness as she finds herself silent screaming at unwanted sexual attention.
From Glasgow, so as we well know by now there's a bunch of members of other bands in here too, the recent Martha tour support deliver snappy Replacements-leaning power-pop.
Jeremy Warmsley - Dancing On The Moon
Just as we start thinking about next year's STN twentieth anniversary, one of our hype OGs returns with an almost stately - we say "almost" as there's plenty of effects and touches to throw it enough off-centre - piano lament.
Lilith Ai - Serial Killers Prefer Blondes
Precision targetd bubblegrunge/emo from the Alldayer alumni's tremendous, long gestating new album of the same name.
Memory Of Speke - Wife Once
IT'S A BRIXTON WINDMILL BAND, EVERYBODY! So obviously yes, there's six of them, one of them plays sax, they've clearly heard some klezmer, and their songs going by this debut are theatrical and gradually wrap tightly around themselves. They might end up as The Last Dinner Party's evil twins.
Sasha Adrian – Shell
From Copenhagen and despite the lilting, searching nature of the guitars it's not easy going, lyrically dense and smart in its unflinching rawness as she finds herself silent screaming at unwanted sexual attention.
Tuesday, September 10, 2024
New sounds: 10/9/24
bigfatbig - Nothing
Apologies, until the release of second EP Rippin' It last week on Du Blonde's label Daemon T.V. we didn't realise the north eastern straight-talking power-pop-punk powerhouses had spent most of this year releasing singles - this came out in July - and they're not a band who sound keen to be left in the corner.
Caribou - Come Find Me
This is basically the same as Dan Snaith's other identity Daphni now, isn't it. Anyway, an album has been announced, Honey out 4th October.
Field Music - The Waitress of St Louis'
Good Sad Happy Bad - Shaded Tree
Mica Levi and the reconstituted Shapes' new album, which appears to be called All Kinds Of Days, is out November 8th.
Johnny Foreigner - Their Shining Path
Three days to go to the new album!
Melin Melyn - Vitamin D
You'd be surprised how many of their caps were in evidence at the sort of festivals we go to over the summer, which bodes very well for next year's album (and next year's festival bookings, I guess)
MJ Lenderman - Wristwatch
We really hope Jake doesn't think the first two lines are a Quiet Riot borrow.
The WAEVE - Broken Boys
Young Scum - Peach Ice Cream
The powerpoppy, Paisley Underground jangle-adjacent, hooks for days sound of young Richmond, Virginia, from just released second album Lighter Blue.
Apologies, until the release of second EP Rippin' It last week on Du Blonde's label Daemon T.V. we didn't realise the north eastern straight-talking power-pop-punk powerhouses had spent most of this year releasing singles - this came out in July - and they're not a band who sound keen to be left in the corner.
Caribou - Come Find Me
This is basically the same as Dan Snaith's other identity Daphni now, isn't it. Anyway, an album has been announced, Honey out 4th October.
Field Music - The Waitress of St Louis'
Good Sad Happy Bad - Shaded Tree
Mica Levi and the reconstituted Shapes' new album, which appears to be called All Kinds Of Days, is out November 8th.
Johnny Foreigner - Their Shining Path
Three days to go to the new album!
Melin Melyn - Vitamin D
You'd be surprised how many of their caps were in evidence at the sort of festivals we go to over the summer, which bodes very well for next year's album (and next year's festival bookings, I guess)
MJ Lenderman - Wristwatch
We really hope Jake doesn't think the first two lines are a Quiet Riot borrow.
The WAEVE - Broken Boys
Young Scum - Peach Ice Cream
The powerpoppy, Paisley Underground jangle-adjacent, hooks for days sound of young Richmond, Virginia, from just released second album Lighter Blue.
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