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.
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