Classic songwriting, virtuosic musicianship and dream logic lyrics. The Wave Pictures return with 'Gained/Lost', a record that brings together 60s garage rock, 70s classic rock and 90s American indie with a DIY spirit that has guided the band for nearly three decades.

Across the album, David Tattersall (guitar and lead vocals), Franic Rozycki (bass), and Jonny Helm (drums) capture the joy of playing together-- a chemistry that has cemented their status as one of Britain's most enduring cult bands.

Tattersall's lyrics arrive like postcards from the space where memories fragment and dreams fill the cracks--reflecting the self as a child, as an elder, and as an observer from a neighbour's window. Lyrics float over the guitars and drums like figures in the sky in a Chagall painting. The Wave Pictures always give the mundane its magical due.

The front cover, created by Tattersall, is a tribute to Robert Frank's front cover for 'Exile On Main Street'. Images of childhood combine with recent photos of the band and many other figures, from old horror movie posters to former footballers. Everything in their world gets funneled into The Wave Pictures music.

The album opens with the Burroughs- inspired dreamscape of 'Alice'. 'Sure and Steady' is like Lou Reed if he'd grown up in the East Midlands. 'Past The House Painted Blue' is like a painting by Matisse. 'You're My Patient Now', a mixture of Raymond Chandler and Link Wray. The songs themselves--full of poetry and joy--are the album's defining strength.

Like its predecessor, 'Gained/Lost' was recorded by Jim Riley at Rochester's Ranscombe Studios over seven days in early 2024. Riley, who has worked with the band on multiple projects including 'Great Big Flamingo Burning Moon' and 'Bamboo Diner in the Rain', captures the Wave Pictures live and unfiltered--the way they prefer to record. Throughout the album, David Tattersall's guitar playing is inventive, melodic, emotional and virtuosic. His playing at times is as lyrical as Jerry Garcia, at others spikey and spindley like Tom Verlaine, but always emotional and on point for the song. No wonder Marc Riley describes David Tattersall as ''The greatest guitarist of his
generation.''

'Gained/Lost' sets a new standard: a distillation of spirit, craft, and joy.

TRACK LISTING

1. Alice
2. Sure And Steady
3. The House Painted Blue
4. You're My Patient Now
5. Sparklers
6. Gained Lost
7. Faded Wave Pictures T-Shirt
8. Samuel
9. The Past Comes Back To Haunt Me
10. Orange Fire
11. Worry Anymore

After the success of their debut album 'Terrapath', which cemented their status as the stewards of the UK's prog-rock scene, Plantoid have returned with their sophomore release: the enigmatic, arresting, and at times downright catchy 'Flare'.

Staying true to the band's math-rock roots, the album is awash in heavy, reverberated guitar licks, tempo changes, and mind- altering chord progressions - all while expanding Plantoid's signature sound towards new horizons, like wall- of- sound shoegaze and vocal-forward rock-pop. It does what all second albums do best; retain the core DNA that set its predecessor apart from the fray, yet evolve enough to excite old fans and new listeners alike.

If you're here for the time changes, long track durations, and jazzy mid-song freakouts, don't you worry, you'll still find plenty across the album's nine sprawling tracks. It's just that Plantoid have been able to tap into something deeper, more lived-in.

TRACK LISTING

1. Parasite
2. Ultivatum Cultivation
3. The Weaver
4. Dozer
5. Good For You
6. Worn
7. Splatter
8. Slow Moving
9. Daisy Chains

With her new album, 'Spira' (Sprout), Olof Arnalds has found her joy in writing
songs rekindled. In many ways it harkens back to her debut: it is exclusively in Icelandic, the arrangements are markedly stripped back compared to her last two records, and it is mostly recorded in single takes in the control room of Sundlaugin, much like 'Vio og vio'.

Although a classically trained singer and violinist, Olof has been an active practitioner of popular music for thirty years, the watershed moment was the 2007 release of her debut solo album 'Vio og vio' (Now and Again , wider international release in 2009), produced by Sigur Ros' Kjartan Sveinsson in the band's converted swimming-pool studio Sundlaugin. It seemed to appear fully formed out of the ether, and became a local classic almost overnight, winning accolades such as 'Best Alternative Album' at the Iceland Music Awards, named 'Record of the Year' by Iceland's principal daily newspaper and recognised as one of the decade's 100 best albums by eMusic.

'Spira' is produced by Skuli Sverrisson, who also contributes bass and guitar. His mindmelting resume includes musical direction for Laurie Anderson, recordings with Blonde Redhead and work with artists such as David Sylvian, Jon Hassell, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Bill Frisell and Arto Lindsay. Davio por Jonsson contributes piano and guitar to the record- much as he did during Olof's busiest touring schedule nearly fifteen years ago when the two of them toured the world for months on end. There is hardly a jazz musician in Iceland he hasn't played with but lately he is perhaps best known for his close collaboration with Ragnar Kjartansson, one of this century's most celebrated visual artists.

TRACK LISTING

1. Heimurinn Nuna
2. Von Um Mildi
3. Stein Fyrir Stein
4. Spira
5. Vorkoma
6. Tar I Morgunsario
7. Ufinn Sjor
8. Afl Pitt Og Hus
9. Lifandi

Beloved for their cinematic songwriting and atmospheric blend of folk, rock, and psychedelia, Midlake returns with their sixth studio album, 'A Bridge To Far' - a sweeping, soul-stirring meditation on resilience and hope.

Lead singer Eric Pulido describes the record as a reminder that, regardless of
circumstance, there is a place -- "not made of stone" -- where one can find solace and strength. It's a call to persevere, to "go bravely arm in arm and climb upon," inviting listeners to transcend the darkness through connection and belief. This is Midlake at their most inspired and intentional, weaving together mythic storytelling and emotional clarity with the signature textures that have made them a touchstone in modern independent music.

Recorded in the band's hometown of Denton, TX at The Echo Lab with acclaimed producer and mixer Sam Evian, 'A Bridge To Far' captures the warmth and wildness of the band's earliest recordings while pushing into luminous new territory. The first single, 'The Ghouls', arrives as a haunting and propulsive introduction to the record's themes--equal parts spectral and cathartic.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: An album that's brimming with the sort of bucolic majesty Midlake have become known for, pushing the boundaries of their already well-established folk-rock sound. There are moments of grand, psychedelic majesty and soaring progressive rock, but it is all grounded in their recognisable, folky roots. A constantly evolving sonic whirlwind.

TRACK LISTING

1. Days Gone By
2. A Bridge To Far
3. The Ghouls
4. Guardians
5. Make Haste
6. Eyes Full Of Animal
7. The Calling
8. Lion's Den
9. Within/Without
10. The Valley Of Roseless Thorns

Jack Wolter is an English musician and producer based in Brighton, UK, who makes music and visuals under the moniker Cubzoa. Jack is also one half of the band Penelope Isles and plays guitar for CMAT. His music and visuals evoke intimacy and delicacy, often touching on personal and melancholic themes. Described as a blend of folk, electronica, and sun-damaged bedroom pop, Cubzoa's upcoming body of work showcases a fusion of textured guitar, glistening electronics and live visuals that immerse the audience in a captivating sonic landscape.

TRACK LISTING

1. In 2 Worlds
2. Choke
3. Buckle Up
4. MidAirCollider
5. Lost In You
6. I Dreamed A Beach
7. Turtle
8. Barcelona
9. Chewin On My Lips
10. Dance With Me
11. Unfold In The Sky

Three track 12" EP from Spiritualized with new art from Mark Farrow with two alternate mixes from the most recent album 'Everything Was Beautiful' and a cover of Junior Kimbrough 'Sad Days Lonely Nights'.

TRACK LISTING

1. I'm Coming Home Again (Spaceman Demo Mix)
2. Crazy (Spaceman Demo Mix)
3. Sad Days, Lonely Nights (Junior Kimbrough Cover)

We've all had those nights out. You know the ones: phone dead (or even worse, lost), friends nowhere to be found, and you've spilled a drink on the person you've been eyeing all night from the other side of the club. Head home, ears still ringing and brain still spinning, to text your ex a maudlin message and wait breathlessly for their reply--which of course never comes. You swear this is the last time, but let's be honest, being a bit messy is just too much fun, regardless of the consequences.

At its core, 'Whirlwind of Malevolence', the second album by London-based producer, DJ, and songwriter SONNIKU chronicles one of these epic nights, where everythingthe music, the vibes, the people-come together in the just right ways. From the in-yourface busy-signal bounce of album opener 'Enter the Chat' to the Eurotrance heartache of 'Lipstick Stain', 'Whirlwind of Malevolence' takes the listener on a journey through a gamut of emotions, all of are masterfully illustrated by intricate beats, high octane melodies, and a true bevy of stellar guest appearances...

TRACK LISTING

1. Enter The Chat
2. Unhinged
3. Debaucherous
4. Twisted
5. Wonky
6. Nail Shop 
7. Runaway
8. Lipstick Stain
9. Lipstick Stain Club Mix

When Modern Nature toured their last album, 2023’s No Fixed Point In Space, it became apparent to Jack Cooper – the band’s main creative force – that they were already pulling away from the free, open-ended approach they had spent five years working towards; almost as if the music had become so abstract and elasticated, it now had to snap back towards something more structured. As they found themselves naturally locking into more fixed grooves, he realised a new direction had been set. Their new album – The Heat Warps – is the triumphant manifestation of where that new direction took them.

In the aftermath, Cooper’s songwriting, which had become increasingly impressionistic, found a new focus and the idea of making an album that followed a similar path to the last two increasingly seemed obtuse. The purpose was to forge a radical change. The core trio of him, Jim Wallis (drums) and Jeff Tobias (bass guitar) were augmented by a new guitarist – Tara Cunningham.

Modern Nature’s recent records have reflected an insular life. Cooper had moved out to the countryside in 2021 and had, in his words, been “hibernating” while he started a family. He felt this new band was a symbol for his reawakening and the perfect vessel for him to continue to explore themes that he’s sung about with Modern Nature – collectivism, our relationship with the natural world, the weight of consciousness – but with more directness and purpose. The key was the new dual guitar sound.

“I’ve always been drawn to bands where two guitarists work as a unit to move around and colour the rhythm section,” explains Cooper. “I’d been listening to the demos Television did with Brian Eno in the day and then that night I played with Tara for the first time at an improvised music show. We have a very similar approach to the guitar and that extends to the way we sing, so it gives the music an interesting balance.

“What we do is mirrored; a symmetry on either side of what Jim and Jeff are doing in the rhythm section. We’ve played with lots of amazing musicians who continue to orbit around what we do, but Tara joining the band felt like finding the other side to the square. Previous records have been performed by upwards of fifteen people but it was apparent the four of us could achieve something more powerful and more direct.”

In the time Modern Nature has been a band, the world has undoubtedly changed. The words Cooper had been writing previously were somewhat ambiguous but it had started to feel like he was sitting on the fence and that was something he needed to address. “Every day we’re confronted with a confusing and scary world,” he says. “Making music and creating things can feel flippant or unnecessary, but my own world view was defined and influenced by art and artists who weren’t afraid to highlight and offer solutions: Public Enemy, The Smiths or a wider American counterculture.”

“The community we’ve built our life around – artists, musicians and the people who gravitate to these things as way of communicating – are struggling to reconcile how they fit into an increasingly cruel world. This album, the themes and the lyrics are directed towards them because I think there are still seasons to be optimistic. There are amazing things happening all around us and it’s up to communities like ours to double down on the things we believe in. It feels as if being part of a group like Modern Nature and making an album that’s open, optimistic and ambitious is in itself part of the solution.”

As the new band started to play together more, the energy, excitement and telepathy between them gained momentum and it became clear they needed to make a record that captured that. They locked into a process where they booked a couple of shows, directly followed by four days in the studio (the all-analogue Gizzard Recording in east London). They’d spend two weeks living in each other’s pockets – a very condensed rush of creativity.

“It’s rare to hear a recording of a band playing in a room together,” adds Cooper. “And that interaction, the discrepancies in timing, synergy, in pitch, that’s where the magic really is, I think, and that’s what we wanted to capture.”

One additional (and slightly unlikely) influence on the record was Andrew Weatherall. Before he passed away, he’d played Modern Nature on his NTS show and Cooper was thrilled that he liked them. He made it an aim to make a record Weatherall might have played to his friends late at night. His motto “Fail we may, sail we must” is what the Can-esque track Pharaoh is about.

“It’s difficult to stay aware of the world around you without becoming despondent,” says Cooper. “Pharoah makes the case for finding a personal philosophy and trying to live a life that might inspire others or at the very least not hurt them.”

Elsewhere, Radio touches on the contempt capitalism has for the natural world. The line “there’s a fire all around” offers a kind of gallows humour. Cooper adds that recently they played the songs on a day that the news was showing footage of the Los Angeles fires. It occurred to him that it was perhaps an insensitive subject to be singing about but there again – in his words – he feels it’s “important not to turn away from these things.

” The same desire not to shy away might also be attributed to Source, which touches on the recent riots in the UK directed towards asylum seekers, inspired by misinformation spread online.

For all this wrestling with the grimmer realities of 2025, The Heat Warps is ultimately not a record entirely consumed by anxieties. Its frequently beautiful sounds offer consolation and a wide-eyed optimism amid all the upheaval. Nowhere is that more apparent than on the transcendent album closer, Totality. As Cooper explains: “It was fascinating spending time in America as the country geared up for the 2024 solar eclipse. The news stations covered the event in the same way they’d cover a big football game or the Oscars. Everywhere I went, people were talking about the eclipse and for a few days it really seemed to capture the public’s imagination.“My friend’s dad had organised a huge party and had obviously done his homework. When he was running us through his preparation and how the day was going to go down, he said, ‘We’re hoping for totality, ’ and it blew my mind.

“The day of the eclipse I was driving through New Mexico and we stopped by the side of the road with hundreds of other people gazing up to the heavens. It felt exciting to be part of something that clearly resonated with people on such a profound level. It’s a fitting album closer and somewhere in there is a philosophy; a romantic nihilism”. And at its heart, right there is the core of Modern Nature’s appeal. Never more so than on this new record.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: I've always been a fan of everything Jack's done, since his time (and mine) and Trof all those years ago, through various monikers, but for me this is the highpoint. Gloriously textured, impeccably pitched harmonies, *perfect* textural changes and stunningly written songs. A real masterclass.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Pharaoh
Radio
Glance
Source

Side B
Jetty
Alpenglow
Zoology
Takeover
Totality

Following a thread from 'A Private Road', the 'Yes' EP is a flmic journey into, through and out of a period of lockdown, unearthing previously buried fragments and fashes of memory, set against a backdrop of night-time London streets, radio towers, northern inner-city streets, TV screen static, basement dance foors and moorland roads.

Self-produced, written and recorded in London, with the addition of bassist Ben Reed, mixer TJ Allen and artists Joviale and Fabiana Palladino and mastering engineer Noel Summerville, the EP draws on jewelled 80s pop songwriting, R&B, sampling, dance, electronic music, composition for radio and TV and soul music as memory fragments, pieced together through a characteristic use of soft and hazy modulation, reverbs, delays and EQ to create a whole picture. 'Yes' is a de-constructed and re-constructed pop record as a form of remembering and recording a thread of ever-present love.

TRACK LISTING

1. Yes
2. Deep Blue
3. Be There
4. Heavy Entertainment

Marissa Nadler has spent the past two decades crafting a singular body of work defined by spectral beauty, haunting lyricism, and a voice that feels both ancient and intimate.

Since her 2004 debut Ballads of Living and Dying, the Boston-born singer-songwriter has become a revered figure in the worlds of dream- folk, gothic Americana, and atmospheric rock. Across acclaimed releases like Little Hells, July, and For My Crimes, Nadler has seamlessly woven tales of longing, mystery, and memory with ethereal instrumentation and poetic depth. With New Radiations, Nadler pares back to a more minimal, drumless sound--letting her voice and fingerpicked guitar take center stage. The album feels intimate and clear- eyed, offering a quiet yet resonant collection of songs that reflect an artist ever attuned to the power of subtle transformation.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It's a folky week this week isn't it! While Marissa Nadler's sound can fall anywhere within the hilariously broad remit of 'Singer-Songwriter', in this instance we get the deeply moving sound of beautifully produced guitar and Nadler's famously evocative vocals, but draped atop a core of haunting goth-country and ambient drone. Mixed by Randall Dunn (Earth / SUNN O))) ), which might not surprise you all that much when you hear it. Brill.

TRACK LISTING

It Hits Harder
Bad Dreams Summertime
You Called Her Camellia 
Smoke Screen Selene 
New Radiations 
If It's An Illusion
Hatchet Man
Light Years
Weightless Above The Water
To Be The Moon King
Sad Satellite

Every BC Camplight album has a backstory every bit as compelling as its music.

A Sober Conversation is no different, as virtuoso songwriter and pianist Brian Christinzio documents the last two years of his life, finally confronting a shocking childhood trauma while embracing sobriety, to create his bravest and most revealing record. It's an enthralling, sometimes haunting quasi- concept record marked by ruthless tragic- comedic purging and sublime, intricate melody, knitting lyrical screenplays to dazzling arrangements.

It is BC Camplight at the height of his remarkable powers.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A superb, cinematic journey that's as instantly alluring as any album in his brilliant back-catalogue, but who's myriad sonic non-sequiturs make more sense every time you hear them. A beautifully warm, endlessly enchanting journey from one of the most capable and talented figures in the game. Brilliant.

TRACK LISTING

The Tent
Two Legged Dog
A Sober Conversation
When I Make My First Million
Where You Taking My Baby?
Bubbles In The Gasoline
Rock Gently In Disorder
Drunk Talk
Leaving Camp Four Oaks

Every BC Camplight album has a backstory every bit as compelling as its music.

A Sober Conversation is no different, as virtuoso songwriter and pianist Brian Christinzio documents the last two years of his life, finally confronting a shocking childhood trauma while embracing sobriety, to create his bravest and most revealing record. It's an enthralling, sometimes haunting quasi- concept record marked by ruthless tragic- comedic purging and sublime, intricate melody, knitting lyrical screenplays to dazzling arrangements.

It is BC Camplight at the height of his remarkable powers.

TRACK LISTING

The Tent
Two Legged Dog
A Sober Conversation
When I Make My First Million
Where You Taking My Baby?
Bubbles In The Gasoline
Rock Gently In Disorder
Drunk Talk
Leaving Camp Four Oaks

Goddess is a project of producer and drummer, Fay Milton bringing together female and gender-expansive creativity and collaboration.

Working with an impressive host of guest vocalists and instrumentalists, Goddess blurs genre boundaries with its mix of melodic and industrial sounds.

"With this project, I have come out from behind the drums and stepped into the producer role, allowing the feminine energy to run strong through the start to finish of the creative process." - Fay Milton

Fay Milton's previous work includes being the drummer for twice Mercury-nominated UK post punk band, Savages and Co-Founding Music Declares Emergency and the NO MUSIC ON A DEAD PLANET campaign.

TRACK LISTING

1. Little Dark (feat. Shingai)
2. Shadows (feat. Ex:Re)
3. Animal (feat. Delilah Holiday)
4. Fuckboy (feat. Salvia)
5. Golden (feat. Shadow Stevie)
6. Bad Child (feat. Isabel Muñoz-Newsome)
7. Darling Boulevard (feat. Bess Atwell)
8. Diamond Dust (feat. Izzy Bee Phillips)
9. Bounce (feat. Grove)
10. 22nd Century (feat. Harriet Rock)

'Goodbye Small Head' is Furman's tenth album and the follow-up to 'All Of Us Flames' which was released to universal acclaim in August 2022. Written during a maelstrom of overwhelm, the album title is a nuanced homage to the 1999 Sleater-Kinney single 'Get Up'.

Ezra Furman is a boundary- breaking artist whose fearless creativity and emotional honesty have made her one of the most compelling voices in modern music. Blending punk energy, heartfelt lyricism and genre-defying innovation, Furman's work is both deeply personal and universally resonant. The albums she's released over the past decade demonstrate both her extraordinary talent and artistic evolution. 'Perpetual Motion People' (2015) is a vibrant, genre-hopping explosion of wit and melody, while 'Transangelic Exodus' (2018) pushed boundaries with its dystopian storytelling and atmospheric soundscapes, exploring themes of love, defance, and identity.

'Twelve Nudes' (2019) delivered raw, punk-fueled catharsis, channeling anger and resilience into fery anthems, whilst her last album, 'All of Us Flames' (2022), is a cinematic and deeply moving exploration of queer liberation, weaving intimate storytelling with grand, sweeping arrangements. She also found time to record the soundtrack for the Netfix smash hit TV series Sex Education.

Ezra Furman's music is a testament to the power of individuality and authenticity, marking her as a truly unique voice in modern music.

TRACK LISTING

1. Grand Mal
2. Sudden Storm
3. Jump Out
4. Power Of The Moon
5. You Mustn't Show Weakness
6. Submission
7. Veil Song
8. Slow Burn
9. You Hurt Me I Hate You
10. Strange Girl
11. A World Of Love And Care
12. I Need The Ange

Director Sally Potter is set to release her new album, Anatomy, later this year,
marking an exciting chapter in her multifaceted career

Known for her groundbreaking work in both flm and music, Potter has long been
celebrated for her innovative approach to storytelling, as seen in flms like Orlando (1992), a visually stunning adaptation of Virginia Woolf's novel, and The Tango Lesson (1997) where her passion for music and dance seamlessly blends with her cinematic style.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: An eclectic selection of highly theatrical pieces (which makes sense given her background) that are both intensely emotive and beautifully evocative. There are jazzy flourishes and widescreen washes of classical piano and strings, as well as Potter's nigh-spoken vocals but in the end 'Anatomy' is a unique prospect from a true multi-disciplinary artist.

TRACK LISTING

1. Anatomy
2. Coming Home
3. Words
4. My Earth
5. Carmageddon
6. Walk Away
7. Time To Go
8. Come Back
9. Honey
10. Oh Daughter
11. Elegy
12. The Fall

From early on in her artistic journey, composer, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Rebekka Karijord, has been fascinated by the human voice.

Known for her sweeping film scores (like for the Hulu Greta Thunberg documentary I Am Greta) as well as her work with artist Jessica Dessner and The National's Bryce and Aaron Dessner in the group Complete Mountain Almanac, she brings a unique musical perspective and skillset to every one of her projects. The Bell Tower, her seventh solo album, is one of her most ambitious records to date.

The Bell Tower is many things at once: it's an ode to our planet in peril; it's a missive from a mother to her children; it's a meditation on humanity and our place within the natural world. On top of that, it's also an experiment, something that evolved from a tiny idea into an all- encompassing work that touches upon 19th- century poetry, environmental activism, and the cross-section of digital and organic instrumentation. There's admittedly a lot to unpack, which becomes even more impressive when you actually give the album a spin and realize that Rebekka has managed to stack all of these ideas and moods into something that is balanced, harmonious, and at times, even calming. One reason for this is the way she has produced the album- which features voice only-in a way that is as engaging as it is innovative.

It takes a great deal of technical knowledge to successfully create experimental or ambient-leaning music, and The Bell Tower's many complex layers are solidly built by Rebekka's expertise.

TRACK LISTING

Lacrimosa 
Sanctuary 
Fugue
Serenade
You, Mountain 
City By The Sea
Megafaun
9th Duino Elegy 
Earth
Let This Darkness Be A Bell Tower
Vespera

The title for Divide and Dissolve's new album, 'Insatiable', came to Takiaya Reed in a dream.

The multi-instrumentalist and composer had a vision of a better world, one that gelled seamlessly with the optimism of her take on doom metal: "I saw people committing great acts of harm never being happy, and people committing great acts of love, always being happy," she says. "People are constantly feeding into this genocidal energy, depleting all of these resources in the name of so-called power, just to end up powerless. Whereas people feeding into pathways of love and decolonial energy, honouring loving and benevolent ancestors, experience such a deep sense of fulfilment."

For Takiaya, this is what it means to be "insatiable"; it's the way we choose either a path of destruction or one of compassion, and experience it to its fullest. "The album's title hits on so many levels," she continues. "It's an album about love, and it feels important to tap into that, now more than ever."

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: I LOVE Divide And Dissolve. Drone-doom-ambient monoliths forged through distorted guitars and pummelling percussion, and 'Insatiable' is certainly the pinnacle of this juxtaposition. A superbly evocative, intensely heavy journey.

TRACK LISTING

1. Hegemonic
2. Monolithic
3. Withholding
4. Loneliness
5. Dichotomy
6. Provenance
7. Disintegrate
8. Grief
9. Holding Pattern
10. Death Cult

Posthumous record releases are always charged with emotion but when the
release comes from a 17 year-old artist that was just getting started it is
heartbreaking,

'Anxious' is a mesmerizing selection of songs that explore the highs, lows and
uncertainty of teenage life through the eyes of Nell and is the follow-up to 'Where The Viaduct Looms', her debut collaboration with The Flaming Lips that explored the works of Nick Cave.

Guided by the talented Jack and Lily Wolter of Penelope Isles, who helped shape Nell's songs, some of which had been in the works since she was twelve years old, the result is an album brimming with emotion, playful melodies and a depth that hints at what Nell's future may have held. Nell's record includes three songs which were written in partnership with Canadian folk band Shred Kelly with whom she spent winter evenings writing in her hometown of Fernie, British Columbia, huddled round the fre in 2022. Jack and Lily Wolter subsequently completed these songs and the rest of the works in Brighton in 2023.

Nell's frst and only studio recording session at Bella Union's studio in Brighton at the tender age of 15 was an intense mix of long days with Jack and Lily expertly teasing out what was really going on in Smith's mind with the help of Doritos, Fizzy sweets, Coca Cola and inspiration gained by sneaking her into venues to see local bands play.

A lot of Nell's creative drive was rooted in raw teenage emotions; apprehension; love; travel; gratefulness; ambition; and grief. These moods are visited throughout the tracks on the album with an instrumental approach that brings joy into even the darkest of songs.

TRACK LISTING

1. Anxious
2. Daisy Fields
3. Bubba
4. The Worst Best Drug
5. Service Song
6. Boy In A Bubble
7. Splash
8. I Know Nothing
9. Billions Of People
10. Split In The Sky

A new chapter, a new-line-up, a newly minted sound; Miki Berenyi Trio's debut album 'Tripla' is a landmark record for its three creators: Miki Berenyi, KJ 'Moose' McKillop and Oliver Cherer.

The album's richly layered, imaginative and uniquely slanted strain of dream pop is an often euphoric and sometimes melancholic mix of guitars and electronica, fronted by Miki's instantly recognisable vocal, overlaid with an often profound and sometimes abrasive or yearning view of the world.

Miki Berenyi Trio, or MB3 for short, is named after its lead singer - a direct way to convey the presence of the former singer/co-guitarist of Lush, and one of the most instantly recognisable faces of the '90s - but the songwriting is entirely a three-way collaboration, as the album title describes: acknowledging the mother tongue of Miki's father, 'Tripla' is Hungarian for 'triple'.

Miki and Moose, who came of age during the era of shoegaze and Britpop in Lush and the equally beloved Moose respectively, arrived here from Piroshka, which the couple formed in 2017 with drummer Justin Welch (ex-Elastica) and bassist Mick Conroy (Modern English). When Mick broke his arm during the tour that followed Piroshka's second album 'Love Drips And Gathers', in stepped Oliver, Justin's bandmate in Aircooled and an eclectic, roving solo artist, under aliases such as Dollboy and Gilroy Mere.

With Mick moving to America, and Justin swamped by session work and live duties for The Jesus & Mary Chain and The Pretenders, Piroshka was put on ice, before the Miki-Moose-Oliver trio came together to play a handful of Lush songs whilst promoting her hugely acclaimed memoir Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me From Success.A bout of songwriting sessions followed. "Nothing was planned," Oliver recalls. "It was more of an organic process."

Likewise, the gleaming, gliding MB3 sound. Minus a drummer, the trio incorporated drum machines behind Moose and Miki's guitars and Oliver's bass, which led to the addition of more electronic components. Freed too from the logistics of touring with a drumkit, MB3 have seized the chance to regularly play live, including support tours to Gang Of Four and Wedding Present (twice) plus regular headline shows, including summer 2024's US dates, supported by post-punk legends Lol Tolhurst x Budgie

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A beautifully psychedelic take on Berenyi's sound with the addition of the hugely talented Oliver Cherer and Moose McKillop. Where things previously were a little more muted, it feels like with the addition of a pair of likeminded collaborators and a raft of skill, the trio has opened Berenyi's sound right up. Expansive, beguiling psychedelic electronic music.

TRACK LISTING

1. 8th Deadly Sin
2. Kinch
3. Vertigo
4. Gango
5. Big I Am
6. Hurricane
7. Manu
8. Ubique
9. A Different Girl

Earthstar Mountain is an ode to curiosity.

It asks what it means to live a life: how do we decide which direction to take? How do we stay there? And what happens when the rug is pulled from under our feet? Once again working with her partner and collaborator Sam Evian at their home studio Flying Cloud, Hannah Cohen's fourth full-length album Earthstar Mountain, is a keepsake of Cohen's time in the Catskills, built over the course of 2020-2024, as blurred, shimmering memories come into focus to produce a collage of echoes and sonic souvenirs.

Featuring contributions from Sufjan Stevens, Clairo, Sean Mullins, Liam Kazar, Oliver Hill and more, Earthstar Mountain is a love letter to the Catskills and in the interconnectedness of all things: in her past, present, future and alternative selves, in her friends--here and gone--and in the mountain that peers through her windows.

TRACK LISTING

Dusty 
Draggin'
Mountain
Earthstar
Rag
Una Spiaggia
Summer Sweat
Shoe
Baby You're Lying 
Dog Years

Produced by Graham Sutton (These New Puritans, Bark Psychosis), 'Birthmarks' is New York band Bambara's ffth, and best, studio album.

A wild, musically adventurous suite of songs that follows a host of lost characters caught in a multi-generational cycle of love, violence and rebirth.

TRACK LISTING

1. Hiss
2. Letters From Sing Sing
3. Face Of Love
4. Pray To Me
5. Holy Bones
6. Elena's Dream
7. Because You Asked
8. Dive Shrine
9. Smoke
10. Loretta

His previous two albums, 2021's The Changing Wilderness and 2017's Rosewood Almanac attracted positive recognition from the likes of Elton John, Alexis Petridis at The Guardian, Tom Doyle at Mojo, and Saby Reyes-Kulkarni at Pitchfork. Will was born in Woodland, California in 1987, spent his formative years all over the greater Pacific Northwest and mid- Atlantic United States, and has lived and worked in the Hudson Valley town of Beacon, New York for the better part of the last decade.

At first, longtime followers of Will's music may miss the hummingbird flutter of his fingerpicking-- though there is some undeniably marvelous guitar playing both by Will and his session killers, he's put the dazzling pull- offs on the back- burner, instead relying on more delicate piano and string ensemble overdubs that fade in and out, like catching the edge of a classical station just out of range as you drive up the Pacific Coast Highway. Will's undeniable gift as a studio tinkerer is at an impressive peak here. At times the album sounds like the kind of otherworldly country music you only ever hear at a distance. "Temple Bar" notably does an amazing impression of Paul McCartney fronting the Band in their mode as historical reenactors.

Many eras are evoked at once-- weeping slide and steel guitar, 60s pop vocal harmonies, Richard Thompson at his most ascetic, Jerry Jeff Walker at his most nostalgic, Nick Drake at his most orchestrated, ghostly digital specters swooping in during the chorus of "Centinela," even one moment of stately Thin Lizzy-esque dueling. At the end of the dissociative "Bardo or Heaven?", layers of saxophone and overdriven guitar sublimely roil and rage, a column of approaching flame.

Occasionally Will's writing on this album seems to echo a more ancient oral tradition, as if the DNA of some 16th century ballads were somehow spliced with the lonesome stories of Denis Johnson, giving these songs a hypnotic lullaby quality-- one could imagine these songs still being interpreted 500 years in the future, when glaciers are only remembered in verse.

TRACK LISTING

In the summer of 2021, Brighton-based, Scottish-Thai songwriter Helen Ganya's grandmother passed away.

The grief hit the artist hard, not only because it marked the loss of her last remaining grandparent, but also because it felt like her links to being half-Thai were disintegrating, roots quaking and shifting in uncharted territories. Ganya grew up in Singapore, but spent her summers in the northeast of Thailand where her mum's side of the family is from, visiting her grandmother. Where would all those memories go now that the person at the centre of them was gone? What was her relationship to this place without that glue? And so, in an attempt to process it all, Ganya began to write.

"I got my diary and wrote every single memory of my time as a child in Thailand, spending time with her, my grandad, my aunts and cousins and everything," she explains, "I had these snapshots of memories that I just wrote down because I just suddenly panicked: it was like, who am I, then?"

It was for this reason that, while Helen Ganya was waiting for her acclaimed 2022 album, polish the machine,to come out, she was already working on what would become her arresting new record, 'Share Your Care'. Ganya has been releasing music since 2015 (formerly under the moniker Dog in the Snow). In the records she's put out over the years, she's shown a proclivity towards dark and artful rock and off-kilter sounds, garnering praise from the likes of the Sunday Times, Uncut, Clash, Loud & Quiet and more. But Share Your Caremarks a new era, building on Ganya's past sonic worlds and interspersing them with traditional Thai instrumentation, resulting in a plush, luminous, psych-tinged affair that is full of feeling.

The result is a triumphant, abundant record, teeming with heart and cinematic warmth.

TRACK LISTING

1. Weera
2. Share Your Care
3. Mekong
4. Interlude 1 - Sam Law
5. Fortune
6. Horizon
7. Morlam Plearn (Luk Khrueng Surprise)
8. Interlude 2 - Look That Way!
9. Barn Nork
10. Hell Money
11. Chaiyo!
12. Interlude 3 - Conversations At The Catfish Lake
13. Myna

"I love the idea of something being so romantic that it almost hurts," says C (for Chris) Duncan of the music he adores.

Glasgow's classically trained multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter honours that idea with tremendous reserves of panache and feeling on his fifth album, It's Only a Love Song, released through Bella Union on 24th January 2025. Flushed with swooning strings, enraptured images, classicist melodies and dreamy harmonies, it's a record of orchestral pop romanticism at its most sublime: one from the heart, warmed by a deep ache of constant yearning.

An expansive beauty of an album, the record is made all the more extraordinary by its homegrown gestation. Duncan wrote and played most of it himself at his home studio (he also did the artwork) in Helensburgh, an experience suited to his sense of care and craft. "If you want to spend ages working on one tiny sound and then do a broad sweep of something else, it doesn't matter because the time is yours. I'm not paying for studios, which works for me because I go from having intense periods of working to spending ages making a snare drum sound a bit nicer. It'll take days to do, but it's good."

The result is Duncan's most lush release, and a fresh peak in a dazzling creative arc. Born in Glasgow, he played in school bands before studying music composition at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. His haunting debut album, Architect (2015), banked a Mercury Music Prize nomination; its follow-up, the Twilight Zone-inspired The Midnight Sun (2016), reached the shortlist for the Scottish Album of the Year. A tour with Elbow then beckoned, after which Duncan recorded the richly melodic Health (2019) at Elbow's Salford studio with Craig Potter. Another entry on the shortlist for Scottish Album of the Year came accompanied by effusive reviews: throughout his career, Duncan has banked raves from The Guardian, NME, MOJO, Uncut and others, alongside much love from BBC Radio 6 Music.

Besides support slots with Belle & Sebastian and Elbow, Chris went on to fill sizable venues in his own name, including London's Union Chapel and Scala. Another career development beckoned in 2020 via a collaboration with Bella Union's Simon Raymonde for the Lost Horizons project on the song 'Circle', prefiguring the effortless-seeming breeziness of Alluvium. It's Only a Love Song is his next great leap forward, a heartfelt valentine to romance with its head in the heavens and its sweep in the cinema stalls. Alongside The Carpenters and Scott Walker, declared influences range from Michel Legrand to Bernstein's West Side Story and the films of Jacques Demy, whose The Umbrellas of Cherbourg boasts music to make hearts sing. "It's almost hyper-romantic, which I love," explains Chris: "That way in music where you get to a point where your heart can't actually take anymore." Radiant and rapturous, It's Only a Love Song takes you right there.

TRACK LISTING

It's Only A Love Song
Lucky Today
Triste Clair De Lune
Worry
The Space Between Us
Think About It
Delirium
Sadness
Surface Of A Fantasy
Reprise
Time And Again

Co-produced by Guy Massey (Spiritualised, The Divine Comedy, Kylie) and Sophie Jamieson, 'I Still Want To Share' is an album exploring the push and pull, merry-go-round nature of anxious attachment and how it weaves, cuts and steals through familial and romantic relationships.

Throughout the record is a perpetual longing to belong, a yearning to learn how to love and let go, and a continual missing of the mark. Each song clings tightly to the possibility of home, but never arrives there. The album was recorded in North London between Guy's studio and Konk Studios, with string arrangements from Josephine Stephenson (Daughter, Ex:Re, Lisa Hannigan) and drums from Ed Riman (Hilang Child).

TRACK LISTING

1. Camera
2. Vista
3. I Don't Know What To Save
4. Baby
5. Welcome
6. Highway
7. I Still Want To Share
8. How Do You Want To Be Loved?
9. Your Love Is A Mirror
10. I'd Take You
11. Time Pulls You Over Backwards

White Denim, one of the very best rock bands to emerge this millennium, have gone through rapid changes in the 2020s, and now open an exciting new chapter with the wondrous album, '12', which arrives rich in hot tunes and fresh invention.

It's always been hard to keep pace with James Petralli's group, ever since they first exploded out of Austin, Texas in '08 with hyper-kinetic post-punk bangers like Shake Shake Shake and I Start To Run. There was delicious romance in the original trio's MO, as they hatched intrepid sounds together via lengthy jams in a 1940s Spartan trailer parked up in woodland outside the city. James duly raced on through shifting line-ups and kaleidoscopic shades of soul, jazz and Southern rock, always with a feel of in-the-moment authenticity.

As for so many musicians, the pandemic forced Petralli into a radical rethink in both life and creative process. Going into White Denim's twelfth long- player, he relocated his family to Los Angeles, and, barred from the usual workouts "on the floor" with his latest group members under COVID, he plunged deep into the science of assembling tracks digitally, with contributions from players he'd sometimes never even meet.

The results on '12' are intricate, hi-tech and forward-facing, yet also somehow still of a piece with the questing ambition, rootsy swing and uplifting way with melody we've come to adore about Petralli's music. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: This incredible band has been slowly morphing from garage/psych/boogie rockers into soul/funk/jazzy(still heady and bizarre though) groovers but always with melody as the key. This is their deepest, most beautiful, sophisticated record yet. A grower, but it's absolutely worth it!

TRACK LISTING

Light On
Econolining
Flash Bare Ass
Cat City #2
Look Good
Second Dimension
I Still Exist
Your Future As God
Swinging Door
We Can Move Along
Hand Out Giving
Precious Child

The first studio album from the innocence mission in four years, Midwinter Swimmers sounds immediately like an old friend.

At the same time, it's a new kind of adventure for the beloved Pennsylvania band of high school friends Karen Peris, Don Peris, and Mike Bitts, having both an expansive, cinematic quality and the strange, lo- fi beauty of a newly discovered vintage folk album.

"It's like it was recorded at Western Electric in the 60's, and makes me think of Vashti Bunyan or Sibylle Baier, but also has these emotional bursts of orchestration and drums and harmony coming in - the sound of the innocence mission never stops getting richer", writes one early listener and friend.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Gorgeous intimate guitar lines and echoic vocals, staggered percussion bursts and unhurried blooms of melody, recalling classic lo-fi indie and jangling folk.

TRACK LISTING

This Thread Is A Green Street
Midwinter Swimmers
The Camera Divides The Coast Of Maine
John Williams
We Would Meet In Center City
Your Saturday Picture
Cloud To Cloud
A Hundred Flowers
Orange Of The Westering Sun
Sisters And Brothers
A Different Day

After a decade being born, Josh Tillman is finally busy dying.

'Mahashmashana' is the sixth album by Father John Misty. It was produced by Josh Tillman and Drew Erickson. It was engineered and additionally produced by Michael Harris. It was arranged by Drew Erickson. It was performed by Josh Tillman, Drew Erickson, Jonathan Wilson, Dan Bailey, Eli Thomson, David Vandervelde, Chris Dixie Darley, Jon Titterington, and Kyle Flynn. It was executive produced by Jonathan Wilson.It was recorded and mixed at Five Star and East/West , United and Drew's House

'Mahasmasana' -- great cremation ground, all things going thither.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: This feels like a distillation of the serious side of Father John Misty, partially eschewing the humoured twists and surprising musical frivolity of his earlier works. For me, this really shows the skill of a musician and in this instance, a great look at the other side of Josh Tillman.

TRACK LISTING

1. Mahashmashana
2. She Cleans Up
3. Josh Tillman And The Accidental Dose
4. Mental Health
5. Screamland
6. Being You
7. I Guess Time Just Makes Fools Of Us All
8. Summer's Gone

The expression of hard-fought optimism encapsulates The Good Kind, an album exploring themes of sexuality, relationships, community, and illness. Our Girl’s trademark dynamics permeate the record, from heavy guitars and soaring lead lines to ear worm choruses and intimate vocal moments. Filled with warmth and honesty, The Good Kind is a celebration of determination – of choosing to recommit to what matters, against all opposition. “A lot of the songs are about taking setbacks and turning them into superpowers” says drummer Lauren Wilson.

“I only realised then, when I thought it out loud,” begins singer/guitarist Soph Nathan on ‘Relief’, the first single released from the album, “And I feel better now”. This song is aptly named, invoking a long-awaited exhale – the feeling of finally emerging from a long and lonely period of uncertainty and self-doubt. Beginning with a single airy strum, Nathan’s reverb-drenched guitar attaches itself to Joshua Tyler’s grounding bass chords, as Wilson’s quietly insistent drum beat throws its weight behind Nathan’s words of reassurance: “You’ve gotta see it to believe it/ Well, I see it in you already.”

This song speaks honestly to the life-giving importance of queer community. From the warmth and immediacy of her delivery, Nathan could be comforting a friend. But as ‘Relief’ builds from that cautious opening to a determinedly, driving force, it becomes clear: these aren’t empty platitudes. Nathan believes in you, because she’s learned to believe in herself.

This sentiment is at the heart of The Good Kind, recorded at Rockfield Studios and produced by alt-rock legend John Parish (PJ Harvey, Sparklehorse), Fern Ford (The Big Moon, Prima Queen) and Soph Nathan herself. For Our Girl, it mirrors the long and winding road to their sophomore release, and the lasting rewards of trusting in the process.

All three members recall moments of magic in the studio with Parish and engineer Joe Jones, who embraced the band’s spirit of experimentation and helped them to channel their electrifying live character onto tape. But despite these propelling creative moments, Our Girl struggled to fully realise the album exactly the way they wanted. “The way we work best is so based on feeling, and an instinct when we’re together,” says Wilson. “We see ourselves as a live band: that’s how we began, and where we feel fully realised,” says Nathan. Having not had an opportunity to play the songs live yet, the trio poured hours into making demos and rehearsing the songs, eventually arriving at Rockfield Studios almost “over-prepared”, says Josh. However, having recorded it under time pressure, all three members concluded the two-week session feeling as though some essential component had escaped them.

After hearing the recordings back, “It was the first time that we’ve all been on such different pages,” Nathan says, admitting that she even entertained painful thoughts of abandoning the project. Instead, Our Girl dug deep to reconnect with what had kept them together. It was a conscious decision to recommit to making the music they knew themselves to be capable of. “We all had to rediscover our connection – to the album, and to each other,” Wilson says.

Newly determined, the band spent six weeks with Fern Ford of The Big Moon at her home studio, pulling apart the Rockfield takes and recording more. Nathan recalls her bodily feeling of relief as they reopened and recommitted to the project “I couldn’t quite believe it” says Nathan “I felt a freedom I hadn’t experienced before. Fern really made that space for us and it was a real relief to be able to take the reins together”. With Ford’s help, Nathan took to the production, striving after the warm, comforting sound she’d envisaged. It was new territory for Nathan – but the attempt felt true to Our Girl’s shared ambition and commitment to breaking new ground.

This collaborative process speaks to a wider theme - when choosing to carve out their own creative path, the band leant more on each other, and on friends and other musicians: Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa helped bring the title track ‘The Good Kind’ to life in its early stages, whilst Nathan’s partner and friends including Marika Hackman and Art School Girlfriend joined the rallying cry at the end of Relief. There’s evidently real joy to be found in taking ownership of your own creative vision, and also trusting friends to share that vision with you.

Using songwriting as a processing tool, many of the songs reflect Nathan’s own experiences, expressed with her trademark precision and lyricism. ‘Absences’ is about the frightening “absence seizures” she suffered through childhood, culminating in an epileptic fit at age 17. Such private, often lonely struggles with chronic health issues are a theme of The Good Kind, as well as the moments of solace within them; ‘What You Told Me’ evokes the relief of feeling that weight lift, however briefly.

Through the process of making The Good Kind, Our Girl learned to trust themselves, persevere with the harder path and recognise it as the only one worth travelling. Deciding to chase after the sound they wanted ended up being the most empowering moment of their career thus far, and it paid off: The Good Kind is their most confident, moving and fully realised work yet.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Gorgeously intertwined guitar and bass lines, perfectly measured, grounding percussion and those athletic vocals. While there are moments of relative calm and melodic stasis, the noisy ambient breaks soon make way for unforgettable riffs and stunningly effective melodic progressions.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1. It’ll Be Fine
A2. What You Told Me
A3. Who Do You Love
A4. The Good Kind
A5. Something About Me Being A Woman

Side B
B1. Relief
B2. Unlike Anything
B3. Something Exciting
B4. I Don’t Mind
B5. Sister
B6. Absences

In upstate New York, deep in the seam between the Catskill Mountains and the Hudson Valley, a richly swelling, spellbound sound emerges, eddying and flowing like the local Esopus Creek, or in the slipstream of the grander Hudson river, carrying the flotsam and jetsam of our hopes, dreams, fears. A sound composed of organic and electronic; guitars, keys, brass, strings, woodwind, drums - and a voice of incantations, tapping streams of consciousness that similarly eddy and flow.

Spiritually, literally, psycho-geographically: where else does Mercury Rev’s ninth album ’Born Horses’ spring from? This cascade of gleaming, glistening psych-jazz-folk-baroque-ambient quest that searches its soul but can never truly know the answer? A sound and vision begun with skeletal chords and surges of self-reflection, alive to the notions and motions of time and reality somehow both linked to their exalted past whilst quite unlike anything they have created before?’’

Grasshopper:
“When Jonathan and I first met, one thing we bonded over was Blade Runner, both Ridley Scott’s film and Vangelis’ soundtrack: that feel of the past and the future, the haunting noir mood and the romance of the future…Born Horses taps into some of that. Looking back to childhood, to Broadway tunes, to lonesome blues, Chet Baker, Miles Davis’ Sketches Of Spain, records that our parents listened to, but we put a twist into the future. From the beginning, Mercury Rev were on a cusp, between analogue and digital, hi-fi and lo-fi at the same time. It was like Brecht or Weill, the words suggesting visuals, and the visuals suggesting moods. We also thought a lot about the desert on this record, and the urban desert.”

The album title, named after the majestically rippling sixth track ‘Born Horses’, was chosen because its words resonate through the entire record, encompassing the idea of flight (“I dreamed we were born horses waiting for wings”) and the phrase “You and I” that appears at different junctures on the album. This is not the concept of two separate people, but two parts of one self.

Jonathan:
“When I opened my voice to sing on this record, this was the bird that sang: a lower, whiskery voice, which surprised me as much as it may others. I don’t know where the bird came from, but it’s there now, and I don’t question it. It’s just the bird that wants to sing.”

‘Born Horses’ opens with ‘Mood Swings’. A Trumpet, evoking bohemian mariachi and the windswept terrain of the desert prairie, opens up to a dynamic panorama of sound, wandering through and enveloping Jonathan’s intimate recitation, conflating memories and confessions of feelings trapped and unwrapped: “My mood swings come and go as they like / rebellious fickle teenagers, unable to decide.” It establishes ’Born Horses’’ tone of vulnerability and awe, and a little frisson of fear, testifying to the frailty of human experience, buffeted by the currents all around us. The flightiness of feelings is further explored by the metaphor of a bird, most clearly in ‘Bird Of No Address’ and the album’s pulsating finale ‘There Has Always Been A Bird In Me’.

More inspiration was provided by the spirits of the art minimalist Tony Conrad and beat poet Robert Creeley, acolytes of progressive thought and action who both taught at the University at Buffalo, the city where the band was formed.. Amongst other credentials, Conrad was a member of LaMonte Young’s Dream Syndicate along with John Cale and a close friend to The Velvet Underground. Creeley was one of the most important and influential American poets of the 20th century as well as an associate of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and the Black Mountain poets.

Grasshopper:
“Tony was a trickster, who loved to shake things up. He knew how to put things together that might not inherently fit but then became something completely new. Robert- the beauty of his sparseness with words, but playful too, and a sense of romanticism. For me, there is also some subconscious echo in ‘Born Horses’ of Patti Smith’s Horses, the nomadic recitations that incorporate poetry into music…. it’s like a tip of the hat.”

Jonathan:
“There are a few unquestionable watermarks of Grasshopper’s studying with Tony Conrad and my own time spent with Robert Creeley. Distilling down lyric and song. Heating up during intense bursts of recording followed closely by long periods of cooling down/ listening to the work and then… un-listening to it. Leaning in to the uncertainty of what is being created. Not by us, but for us. Psychological ‘letting go of the balloon’ distance as perspective. Something we both inherited from Tony and Robert… Stepping in and stepping out of frame.”

“Since our beginning in the mid 1980’s with David Baker through the recording of Born Horses with new permanent members, Woodstock native (pianist) Jesse Chandler and Austrian born (keyboardist) Marion Genser, we’ve celebrated this unspoken trust in the ‘statue already inside the marble’. We didn’t make ‘Born Horses’ by throwing clay on top of clay; we allowed Time to reveal what was always there.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There is a wealth of musical influence that Mercury Rev seem to soak into their general being, and 'Born Horses' is an album that is full of those, from grand progressive rock and symphonic classical suites to shimmering jazzy vignettes. What sets this outing aside though is Jonathan Donahue's bracing, wonderfully delivered spoken word throughout the whole LP. It's the perfect application for his voice, honestly and for me makes the whole Rev experience much more transcendent.

TRACK LISTING

Mood Swings
Ancient Love
Your Hammer, My Heart
Patterns
A Bird Of No Address
Born Horses
Everything I Thought
There's Always Been A Bird In Me

Formed in Trondheim in 2016, the quartet consists of Ragnhild Fangel, Martin Miguel Tonne, Ola Djupvik, and Jonas Krovel. Since their inception, they've released two critically acclaimed albums and mesmerizing live performances, solidifying their status as one of Norway's most exciting musical exports.

Their third album Champion features their dynamic soundscapes, characterized by energetic rhythms, intricate guitar work, and Fangel's distinctive vocals, which have garnered widespread acclaim. With influences ranging from art-rock to jazz, Pom Poko's music defies genre boundaries, delivering a fresh and innovative sonic experience. Speaking of the record, the band said... "This record is a kind of experiment to see what happens when the four of us in Pom Poko make music without any input from the world around us, from the first idea of a song until the last note is recorded. This time, we've recorded and produced absolutely everything ourselves, a process that has been surprisingly comfortable. With this album, we landed, almost unconsciously, on the fact that the songs needed more space and less fussiness in the production than what we've been drawn to before.

The songs also feel slightly more concise and focused on this album, perhaps, in addition to the lyrics telling more or less understandable stories - about connection, relationships, weird situations, hopes, and dreams. We were generally drawn to trying out some new things on this record, so this is the first time we've sent music to be mixed abroad, specifically to mixer and producer Ali Chant in Bristol. His clear and straightforward style suits the music very well and really brings out the songs as they are, without unnecessary frills. All in all, this feels like our most mature album so far, but hopefully not completely devoid of childlike joy and energy nonetheless."

TRACK LISTING

1. Growing Story
2. My Family
3. Champion
4. You're Not Helping
5. Pile Of Wood
6. Bell
7. Go
8. Never Saw It Coming
9. Druid, Fox And Dragon
10. Big Life 
11. Fumble

If you like pop music to keep you on your toes, Amsterdam’s Personal Trainer provide that service fulsomely on their second album. Essentially the project of Willem Smit (working with co-producer/collaborator Casper van der Lans) on record and a band live, Personal Trainer showed a facility for DIY indie-pop exuberance and experiment in sync with 2022’s debut, Big Love Blanket. Now signed to Bella Union, Willem returns re-energised with Still Willing, a multi-faceted album of shining contrasts and spry melodies, bursting arrangements and subliminal sounds, playful lyrics and self-reflection: in short, a pop album executed with dynamism, vim and charm.

As Willem says, this is a record fuelled by its extremes: sometimes energetic and loud, sometimes quiet and thoughtful, always full of hidden pleasures. “When I listen to the records I make, the main thing I hope is that every time something happens on them, you’re like, ‘Wow.’ I like to be taken by surprise like that on a record, to kind of be thrown around.”

Those surprises start at the beginning, where ‘Upper Ferntree Gully’ shows a dreamy side to Personal Trainer before choppy, chunky riffs and electronics take over. Meanwhile, Willem’s anchoring imprint is ever-present: he prefers not to dissect his lyrics, but the title nod to his mother’s birthplace in Australia and opening recording of her voice seed a spirit of warmth and intimacy in the record – the personal in Personal Trainer, perhaps.

In a sharp left-turn, ‘I Can be Your Personal Trainer’ follows with a buoyant swing. The album proceeds with that duality in mind, always Smit’s work yet always fresh, always seeking. In Willem’s description, ‘Cyan’ is “a weird, happy pop track”, chivvied onwards by contributor Nick Bolland’s sax and leavened by vocal contributions from Dutch alt-pop singer Lena Hessels. “With most of this one I was trying to make myself laugh or at least smile,” says Willem. “And then I started to really like it. Somewhere along the process I found something like honesty or something beautiful in it.”

Elsewhere, there’s strutting rock in ‘Round’ and vulnerability in ‘New Bad Feeling’. ‘Intangible’ issues another gearshift, erupting from a rising synth line into spry indie-funk pop, where Willem’s innate melodic instincts light the way into uncharted territory for Personal Trainer. As Willem explains, “I tried to make a song that is something I wouldn’t normally do and experiment with that. I like how it turned out because it’s also probably one of the first instances where I had the chorus first and the other parts later, which rarely happens.”

The plangent sensitivity of ‘Testing the Alarm’ adds playful wordplay (“lallygag in shrubbery”) before live favourite ‘You Better Start Scrubbing’ arrives on album in a joyously abrasive blast of no-wave vigour, its glorious shout-along chorus aided by guest vocals from three members of Dutch alt-rock quintet The Klittens. Finally, ‘What Am I Supposed to Say about the People and their Ways’ signs the album off on a wryly humble note, Willem upholding an inquisitive mindset over the modern bleat of “bleeping know-it-alls”.

Witty, welcoming and winningly melodic, Still Willing is the sound of an instinctive DIY-pop musician favouring think-on-your-feet exploration and intuition over know-it-all premeditation. Willem’s initial intent was to record the album as if live, but he realised that his chemistry with Casper would not be denied. “I felt that we had grown and built a language together. We don’t have to say a lot, but we understand each other well. There was a lot less like trying out stuff and taking stuff away compared to the last one, because it felt like we were on the same wavelength.”

As for how they work together, says Willem, the songs and sounds are assembled in detailed increments. “I write the songs and record most of the stuff, like kind of the skeleton, and then we record drums together. That’s the first step, most of the time. From there, we build. I don’t know much about compressors or weird effects. But Casper knows a lot about that and is really enthusiastic. If I want some part to work better, he’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, I have an idea for that.’ And there were times when I would say, ‘Do you feel like playing this part?’ And he just plays it.”

Recorded between home and – says Willem – “places that don’t cost much to record at”, the result is a DIY pop album brimming with ideas and colour. Whereas Big Love Blanket’s experimental sounds included a celery stick snapping, Still Willing features floorboards, doors closing and “no-input mixing”. Alongside Hessels and The Klittens, contributors include drummer Kick Kluiving and (for half of the songs) bassist Ruben van Weegberg, also Willem’s bandmate in the band Canshaker Pi, who numbered Stephen Malkmus among their producers. Most of the percussion comes from Kilian Kayser, and discreet sounds are served by Abel Tuinstra and Otto de Jong.

Willem is the epicentre of the band, which originated from impromptu and exhilarating live shows featuring ever-shifting members of different local bands sharing a bustling stage. The live line-up has solidified somewhat but Willem still welcomes the contrast with his recorded work: “When I make the record, it’s me calling the shots. But I can’t tell everyone exactly what to do every second when we’re on stage. There’s, like, shakers flying around or instruments being thrown all over the place, so I don’t have the capacity to control that. And that’s really exciting to me.”

Big Love Blanket harnessed that energy in 10 excitable pop songs, bright and bracing. Acclaim from Steve Lamacq, Marc Riley, Mojo, Clash, DIY Mag and others followed. Support slots with BC Camplight in 2023 were joyfully received, as was a tour for Independent Venues Week with The Klittens and Real Farmer. Personal Trainer have notched up many festival visits, too, including stop-offs at the End of the Road, Wilderness and The Great Escape. In December 2023, an EP featuring the tracks ‘The Feeling’ (all nine minutes of it) and ‘Babyolifantjes’ (translated: baby elephants) also emerged, recorded with a view to capturing the band’s live form. Soon, Smit and his bandmates will showcase that form with summer festivals including Green Man, Deershed, Truck Festival and Lowlands.

Meanwhile, Still Willing arrives as a fervid expression of Willem’s home-recording and studio methods, tethered to inviting pop instincts and rich with the fertile promise of more to come. Willem doesn’t want to tell you what or how to think about the album but, he says, “It would be awesome if people like it and buy the record, so that I can make another one.” On the strength of Still Willing, he’s fit for the long distance.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Jagged art-rock guitars and sycopated percussion with off-kilter melodies and blippy arps, all working beneath the athletic, expressive vocals. Part way between the electronica, funk and indie-pop, Personal Trainer are a wild, incredibly European pop band. Great stuff.

TRACK LISTING

Side A:
1. Upper Ferntree Gully
2. I Can Be Your Personal Trainer
3. Cyan
4. Round
5. New Bad Feeling

Side B:
1. Intangible
2. Testing The Alarm
3. Still Willing
4. You Better Start Scrubbing
5. What Am I Supposed To Say And Their Ways

The album features an array of guests including Depeche Mode's Dave Gahan, Midlake's Tim Smith, Isobel Campbell, and Ed Harcourt, amongst others.

Commenting on the album, Marshall says... "During a time when the world seemed to teeter off its axis, and I grappled with personal illness and losses, music became my lifeline once more. Like a soothing medication, each note and lyric offered a glimmer of hope in the midst of darkness. Collaborating on the tracks felt like a shared journey through the universal language of music, allowing me to find my voice amidst the chaos. The title, On The Edge Of A Lost And Lonely World, felt deeply fitting then and continues to resonate now, embodying the essence of this profound musical exploration. I truly believe this album represents my finest work yet, a testament to resilience and the power of art to illuminate even the darkest of times."

TRACK LISTING

1. The Beginning Ft Carl Hancock Rux
2. Too Many Rivals Ft Tim Smith 
3. The Immortal Ft Ed Harcourt
4. This Holding Pattern Ft James Cox
5. Brother Ft Dave Gahan
6. Born To Be Ft Peter Hayes
7. Keep Me Safe Ft Rachel Fannan
8. Dark Side Of Your Window Ft James Allan
9. Love You More Ft Isobel Campbell
10. The End Ft Madman Butterfly

Emerging once again from the unending waves crashing upon our fragile time-craft (adrift on the eternal ocean, and taking on water), Dirty Three are (a) back, (b) tangled in seaweed, rank with saltwater and possessed of three rather ominous thousand-mile stares (at least!), and (c) not wasting another minute – as nothing is guaranteed.

For their first album in over a decade – yep, it’s been since 2012’s ‘Toward the Low Sun’ – they flew in, got together and started playing. End of story. What else is there to say or do but that? Music’s their language, their true love; they never stop listening to that. And like the label says, ‘Love Changes Everything’.

The Dirty Three – Warren Ellis, Mick Turner and Jim White – formed up in Melbourne in 1992, to play with guitar drums and violin or viola, and within a couple years, they’d broken out – out of Australia, out of anything else they might have been inside of, to boot – and got worldwide. Over the next ten years, they toured over and over the planet, ceaseless like, and cut seven albums out along the way. After this, their unique style of play, fitted together like puzzle pieces, was decoupled, more often than not, and pieced together in many other, fruitful collaborations with many other esteemed talents. Over the past 20 years, they’ve gotten together a few times, renewed the vow, revved the engines and played some shows, or made an album. Like now –

These are the sounds of Dirty Three getting up to speed again:
- the original fury of their drums/guitar/violin-or-viola power trio, cutting three unique paths through the wild into sudden convergence –
- piano-plucked melodies ringing sweetly out over an undulating landscape flowing with guitar, drums, violin or viola, and synths! And broken hills, forests, lakes and deserts. And mountains rising in the distance...
- mercurial shifts in mood; sudden descent from tumult of flights and heights into deep canyons of heart-struck adagio.

Equally sudden second-winds, feisty activity in their extremities never really ceasing. Opening depths. Wariness and patience allowing them to get caught up in loops, become ambient, transcend, and then fight their way back in again. Their wild and wandering heart not simply a spry derivative of collective sea legs; a telepathy already old as time evidenced way back in the beginning of their thirty-years-and-some run.
- such mood! Once desolate fields pouring full of emotion, wandered into, come upon as if by happenstance (but actually sourced by the divining rods in their hands).

- all of it – everything changed by love and bubbling up with the clarity of just-struck spring water; translucence giving way to muddy gushes of distortion – dirty guitar, smears of violin, drums at times pounded upon beyond the microphones’ ability to receive...

And when received, and committed to “tape”, or whatever they used – the master could well be carved in plates of amphibole – this music has been untethered from its streams of consciousness and reconsidered as a recording; brought to bear through edits, overdubs and mixes, re-sequenced and made suite-like. Made into this album. These lot were born to be as weathered as they are today. Time doesn’t matter. They make their gathered wisdom of the ages sing like something new every time. It renews. And Love Changes Everything. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: I've long been a fan of Dirty Three's unique brand of cataclysmic, free-wheeling post-rock / experimental chamber music, and their latest is a brilliant summary of their sound in one grand statement. Sweeping waves of guitar and soaring violin arpeggios break upon the shore into brittle streams of flickering pizzicato and droplets of tentative piano. Stunner.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Love Changes Everything I
Love Changes Everything II
Love Changes Everything III
Side B
Love Changes Everything IV
Love Changes Everything V
Love Changes Everything VI

Following the runaway success of his last LP, Boy From Michigan, which crashed the UK Top 10 back in July 2021, legendary singer-songwriter John Grant returns with his hugely-anticipated sixth album, The Art Of The Lie.

Released 14th June via longtime label Bella Union, The Art Of The Lie is Grant’s most opulent, cinematic, luxurious album yet and confirms Grant’s status as a modern electronic auteur. Grant likens the musical flavours of The Art of the Lie to the sumptuous Vangelis soundtrack for Bladerunner or the Carpenters if John Carpenter were also a member. While undeniably a John Grant record, nestling humour into tragedy, bleeding anger into compassion, there is a musical ambition and nerve to ‘The Art of the Lie’ which offsets its most political and personal moments.

The Art of The Lie was produced by Grant and Grammy-nominated producer Ivor Guest who is perhaps best known for his work with Grace Jones & Brigitte Fontaine. The album features an array of celebrated musicians including Dave Okumu, Seb Rochford and Robin Mullarkey.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Aaaah, finally! It's always a good day when shop favourite disco synthlord and all-round sleaze-pop genius John Grant puts out a new LP, and this is a doozie. Gradually eschewing the straight-laced (but obviously thoroughly brilliant) moody synth chug of Pale Green Ghosts or Queen Of Denmark for an increasingly diverse and ever-blooming sound palette, 'The Art Of The Lie' is a wildly inventive and brilliantly produced new chapter in JG's storied musical legacy.

TRACK LISTING

1. All That School For Nothing
2. Marbles
3. Father
4. Mother And Son
5. Twistin Scriptures
6. Meek AF
7. It's A Bitch
8. Daddy
9. The Child Catcher
10. Laura Lou
11. Zeitgeist

Madala Kunene (better known to his friends as Bafo) blends Zulu folk with township blues to produce a unique hybrid and contemporary music he calls "Madala-line"

Apart from his own colourful life- experiences Madala often uses traditional songs, nursery rhymes and lullabies as the basis for his material. His highly spiritual music is guided by the mood, moment and the experience he brings to his playing. Most compositions are inspired by dreams and messages from the ancestral realm as well as the teachings of Zulu culture and folklore.

Madala's music has been researched and taught by musicologists as a course material in music studies. In May 2023 Madala was awarded an honorary Doctor of Music degree by the University of KwaZulu- Natal for his contribution to the development of indigenous music and his contribution to the music of Africa and that of the world. Madala Kunene was born in 1951 in Cato Manor, a vibrant mixed community in the harbor city of Durban, South Africa.

The son of a carpenter, Kunene was raised by his grandmother - a staunch academic who wanted him to be something of a bookworm. He started busking on Durban's beachfront at the age of 7 making his first guitar out of a cooking oil tin and fish gut for the strings. It was friends such as the late guitarist Sandile Shange who encouraged him to take guitar playing much more seriously. At the age of eight, in the year 1959, Kunene and some members of his extended family were trucked off by the Apartheid government to go live in the then relatively new township of KwaMashu. In very little time he had become the hottest guitar player and was discovered by the late Sakhile leader and bassist Sipho Gumede. Madala started to share the stage with such luminaries as Doc Mthalane, Mankunku Ngozi and Busi Mhlongo.

Madala Kunene's debut album was produced in 1990 by Sipho Gumede for David Marks label 3rd Ear Music and released on Vinyl and Cassettes. 30 years later the album was re-released digitally and now you are holding the first Vinyl re-release in your hands.

TRACK LISTING

U- Gongo Amayeni Wemama
Vumela Abaphani (Song Of Happiness) 
Ku-Khon Othwele
U-Ncede
Abangoma
Sanibonani
U-Mata-Gota-Fri 123

“I'd always been on the side of making up scenarios rather than being really honest about my life within my music,” says Jack Kenworthy of Colouring about his second album Love To You, Mate. “This is the first time I've been able to be more honest and direct. I've not been scared of it because it's not my story. It’s a shared one.”

The Nottingham-based songwriter and producer’s life was upended in February 2021, months before release of his debut album Wake, when his brother-in-law Greg Baker was diagnosed with Stage 4 bowel cancer. What followed was the most “unbelievable” year of togetherness when life seemed set on fracturing the life of a young man.

Colouring has been a solo project since Wake, an album influenced by the 00s post-Britpop greats (early Coldplay, Elbow, Keane) but taking electronic and rhythmic cues from Radiohead and James Blake. Kenworthy’s debut marked a renaissance. “Truthfully, there were a lot of times when I didn't feel completely at home in the music I was making before then,” the Leicestershire native says.

The EPs Symmetry (2016), Heathen (2017) and Bn (2018) were released via Interscope Records while Colouring was a poppier affair backed by three other musicians. The records led to tour support with The 1975, mainstream radio airplay, an extensive headline tour of North America, and Bn’s lead single ‘Time’ featuring on the 13 Reasons Why soundtrack.

Despite being called Love To You, Mate the album isn’t concerned about Kenworthy’s relationship with Greg. “Obviously he's the heart of it and certainly those last two songs are definitely to him, but it would've been disingenuous to make a record just about my relationship with him.”

“My goal and intention with it was a message of love to [the family] and for what they did,” Kenworthy continues. “We were this tight-knit, inseparable group of friends for a whole year… a year that was both horrible and great, in a weird way. I really feel we've made this music together. Our favourite conversation is talking about Greg and this album.”Kenworthy determines: “I've just taken the photograph.”

TRACK LISTING

1. For You
2. I Don't Want To See You Like That
3. How'd It Get So Real
4. Lune
5. A Wish
6. The Light
7. Love To You, Mate
8. Coda
9. 'small Miracles'
10. For Life
11. Big Boots

“I like surreal settings, but with tangible messages,” says Conchúr White. A singer-songwriter from County Armagh, White navigates the dreamlike and the grounded with blissful fluency on his beautifully lambent debut album. Released through Bella Union in January 2024, Swirling Violets is allusive and intimate, unearthly yet instantly accessible: touching on fully felt themes with grace and lightness, it’s a richly imagined album of multitudes from an instinctive talent.

As White explains it, “There wasn’t a conscious theme, though the songs operate in the same sort of space, that sense of surrealism. There’s ghosts, there's other worlds. There's a cosmic feeling, questions about the beginning and the end and dreams. And then there’s simpler songs, love songs about the feelings of infatuation you have when you’re young…”

A music graduate who has also worked alongside young people with mental health issues, White’s story began in bands. He played in atmospheric indie-rockers Silences before their split allowed Conchúr – pronounced Conor – to develop his solo voice at his own pace. That sense of freedom colours Conchúr’s music. On the Bikini Crops and Dreamers EPs, he filtered the influences of acts such as Arctic Monkeys (recent vintage) and Father John Misty into songs at once playful, referential and experiential.

With praise from SPIN, The Line of Best Fit, Under the Radar, Steve Lamacq, Radio 6 and others under his belt, he has also notched up touring slots with Villagers, Billie Marten and John Grant, who complemented White’s work warmly. (“It felt genuine,” marvels White. “I mean, he didn’t need to say it…”) Meanwhile, a recent invitation to support the mighty John Cale in concert lead to more complements from Cale’s storied bandmembers.

Collaborators on Swirling Violets include Matt Wiggins, who mixed the album; producers Kris Platt and Danny Morgan Ball; and co-writer/producer Iain Archer (‘Swirling Violets’). Finally, Brendan Jenkinson produced the closer, ‘Deadwood’, a serene drift through the “mystic night” under the “summer’s moonlight”. An irresistible invitation to float along with White, Swirling Violets is a magic-realist wonder from a new name to reckon with, bathed in a radiant glow.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Holy Death
2. Righteous (Why Did I Feel Like That?)
3. 501s
4. Rivers
5. I Did Good Today
6. Swirling Violets
7. Red House Parlour
8. Before Ten

Sometimes, even amidst the most chaotic moments of our lives, things have a way of coming together. Raze Regal, prolific electric guitarist and James Petralli, founding member and vocalist of Austin, TX indie rock legends White Denim, met during a West Coast tour in 2019, and quickly formed a deep friendship bound by their mutual love of ‘60s and ‘70s rock, the Jazz saxophone innovations and compositions of Eddie Harris, Joe Henderson and Wayne Shorter, ‘80s R & B production techniques and New Wave energy. In another world, perhaps their rapport would have remained casual; two music fans meeting occasionally in loud music venues to share a drink and catch up on their respective projects. However, and luckily for music fans everywhere, that’s not what happened. What followed for both men was a period of intense personal change, growth, and transformation—a period that is reflected in the creation of Raze Regal & White Denim Inc., a profoundly collaborative album that saw both musicians pour years of blood, sweat, and tears into some of the most soul-affirming music of their careers.

“It was a very hard time for both of us,” explains Raze matter-of-factly, from his home in Austin. He relocated there in 2020, smack dab in the middle of the pandemic, after ending a long-term relationship and the dissolution of his previous band back in Oakland, CA. “This record was born out of the friendship and the closeness that James and I share, as well as pure creativity.” With Raze in serious need of a change of scenery, Austin and James provided just the right atmosphere to let his creative juices flow a little more freely. “James and I were talking and he was like, ‘Come up to Austin!’ and I was like, ‘Maybe I should.’ We would just kind of hang out in those early days, and then I started kind of writing these tunes, and I started presenting them to James. They were just sketches of ideas I had, and he was like, ‘You know these are really good. What if we worked on these together?’ And I was like, ‘Absolutely.’

It wasn’t long before the duo realized they had something special on their hands. It was more than just the fact that they were good at writing songs together—there was something deeply complementary in the way Raze and James thought about music and songwriting that made them better than the sum of their parts. The work took place at Radio Milk, James’ studio, curious to see what would come out of it; although, the process proved to be slightly more intense that either of them had imagined. “The week Raze arrived in Austin he joined my family/creative bubble, and we began writing and cutting music together,” explains James. “Through these initial sessions I learned that Raze possesses a unique gift as a lyricist and songwriter as well as a striking and colorful chord vocabulary. He naturally led these writing sessions and I supported him as an editor, instrumentalist, and engineer. We quickly developed an easy flow together in the studio. Which was refreshing for both of us. These were particularly hard times: Raze and I became close friends and helped each other get to the other side.”

The result of these summertime sessions, Raze Regal & White Denim Inc. bursts at the seams with jazz chords, rock hooks, soul vocals, pop melodies, and everything that made the latter half of the 20th century some of the most cardinal music in human history. Completely eschewing the trappings of “retro” or “throwback” sentiments, the record could have only come from artists with such a deep knowledge of popular music, that they are able to transcend references and homages, presenting something comfortably familiar yet totally fresh. Raze and James’ creative union took form before their very eyes, with James at first wanting to take more of a backseat role—but luckily, fate had other plans.

“Raze was bursting with musical ideas during a time when I was focused on learning how to capture and represent them,” James says, clearly holding his bandmate in the utmost respect. “He wrote the changes for the songs and we cut demos together and he'd sit with a note pad and sketch lyrical ideas once the framework was down. I did my best not to impose too much as a writer, rather mostly offering perspective as a singer and sometimes pulling a few books off of the shelf for consideration and reference. Raze was writing about our lives. We knew well where we were coming from.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: This absolutely sings with the hazy melodic groove of White Denim, but it's accentuated with a rich seam of airy funk, psychedelic soul and twisting melodicism from Raze Regals considerable talent pool. What a lovely thing.

TRACK LISTING

1. Ashley Goudeau
2. Blood
3. Tivoli
4. Complaining In Heaven
5. Don’t Laff
6. The Hustle In You
7. Before The Fact
8. Idle Later
9. Dislocation
10. Ugly Man Suit

No Fixed Point In Space, the third full-length album by Jack Cooper’s Modern Nature, takes the palette of sound and themes that were honed on 2021’s Island Of Noise and launches them into an expansive world of openness and vivid technicolour. It’s a music that hasn’t been heard before; as melodic as anything Cooper has produced but framed by rhythms and instrumentation that reflect the chaos, unpredictability and colour of the natural world.

Certain moorings - woodwind, percussion, strings and Cooper’s lambent voice - are still present and recognisable from No Fixed Point In Space’s predecessor, Island Of Noise but the new record marks a shift to utilising musical notation as a point of departure, from which the group explore the space around suggested notes and rhythms to create a semi-improvised, semi-composed ensemble performance. These explorations of partly organised chance were recorded live and directly to tape.

This approach gives the music a remarkably fresh feel; songs pulse and evolve. The changes between movements, verse and choruses are almost all ambiguous. During the album’s opener Tonic, a verse of hushed brevity washes away into a passage of overwhelmingly vibrant orchestration.

TRACK LISTING

1. Tonic
2. Murmuration
3. Orange
4. Cascade
5. Sun
6. Tapestry
7. Ensō

Epitomising triumph over adversity, the first Our Broken Garden album since 2010 not only embarks on a newly minted sound – a gloriously warm and nuanced brand of slowburning Scandinavian soul - but Danish singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Anna Brønsted has dug deep to provide an emotional tour de force that shines as a beacon of resilience, resistance and perseverance. Welcome to Blind.

Blind’s musical DNA is warmer, more inviting and even poppier than previous album, The Golden Sea: Brønsted suggests that it’s down to Blind’s backing tracks being recorded live (as opposed to Golden Sea’s layered production), but also that she was particularly taken with ‘70s singer-songwriters (she namechecks Neil Young, Nick Drake and Joni Mitchell) and contemporary R&B, especially FKA Twigs. And it’s that intimacy, and candour, which also makes Blind sound that much warmer and inviting. Brønsted’s life was on the line, and her creative response has thrown her a lifeline. As she prepares to play the first Our Broken Garden shows in ten years, the darkness of her recent past recedes further, but she is sanguine about the present.

“With deep feelings of loss but also deep feelings of love,” Brønsted concludes, “the good thing is that I am not caught in the numbness of my ‘safe’ everyday life anymore. Every day is new - which is not necessarily pleasant and without challenges. But I feel free - and one of the gifts is that I have found places that I didn’t know existed in myself. And that I have found peace here – until the next crisis comes around, I guess!”

TRACK LISTING

1 Prelude
2 Lost
3 Rain
4 Fallen
5 Shameless
6 Prayer
7 Waltz
8 Words
9 Sirens
10 Storm
11 Crown
12 Found
13 Lies

A fresh chapter takes soft, sure shape for Cape Town-based singer-songwriter Wren Hinds on his new album. Released through Bella Union, Don’t Die in the Bundu follows Bella Union Pressings’ vinyl releases of Wren’s first three Bandcamp LPs. A gleaming set of gently dappled and poetic songs about fatherhood and fortitude, the album roots its restrained strength in an innate understanding of what matters most to us.

Wren’s own life began on the South-east coast of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa. His father was a musician, his mother a landscape painter. While his dad inspired Wren to record whenever and wherever he could, his mother’s artform coloured his approach to songwriting: “painting with sound” is Wren’s description, a methodology illustrated by his use of light, shade and space to communicate powerful impressions and feelings.

Recorded at a timber cabin in the South Peninsula mountainside, about 40km outside of Cape Town, Don’t Die in the Bundu is at once a natural evolution from his earlier work…, a fresh start and a statement of commitment, embedded in its title. Drawn from “a few personal experiences,” says Wren, the inspiration for the title helps pinpoint its purpose. “It was inspired by a very old survival book distributed in South Africa and Zimbabwe. I had a few title options I was playing with, and around July 2022 a friend and I were held up at gunpoint in Cape Town. Fortunately we weren’t harmed or anything, but the whole ordeal helped me to settle on the title.”

Meanwhile, parenthood helped crystallise Wren’s perspective on the trials of our times. “I try not to be too pessimistic about the future, especially now that I have a kid. It forces me to look at the beauty in humanity and the mysterious nature of this place we call home. I guess, like everyone else, I’m often trying to figure out how it all fits together, and how we fit into this story… Now that I’m a father, I’d rather live in hope than in fear.” Richly subtle, deeply inquisitive, Don’t Die in the Bundu illustrates Wren’s preference beautifully.

TRACK LISTING

1. A Song
2. Wild Eyes
3. Father
4. Chasing The River
5. A Wasted Love
6. Restless Child
7. Dream State
8. The Garden
9. Gilded By The Sun, Silvered By The Moon
10. Razor Wing

Is there a curse that says Brian ‘BC Camplight’ Christinzio cannot move forward without being knocked back? That the greatest material is born out of emotional trauma?

Whilst making his new album The Last Rotation Of Earth, Christinzio’s relationship with his fiancé crumbled after nine inseparable years. The album follows this break-up amid long-term struggles with addiction and declining mental health. The outcome is an extraordinary record, with Christinzio describing it as “more cinematic, sophisticated, and nuanced than anything I’ve done before. And more desperate”.

That Christinzio has bettered his previous album is an achievement, given that Shortly After Takeoff received the best reviews of his life. “A masterpiece,” said The Guardian’s 5 star review, “a half hour or so that roils with anxiety, stuns with beauty and, occasionally, provokes laughter.” Even then, fate intervened when the album was released in April 2020, just as Covid and lockdown kicked in, so he was unable to tour the record until late 2021. The Philadelphian then joked, “I can't wait to make an album that isn’t surrounded by some awful tragedy.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A wonderful return for Brian Christinzio, full of soaring pop songs and perfectly manicured melodies, as you'd expect. What's not so expected however is how BC's self-confessed pains and setbacks have resulted in such a wonderfully jubilant end-result. Heartfelt, grand and full of nuance, 'The Last Rotation..' is by far his most refined and enjoyable outing yet.

TRACK LISTING

Side A:
1. The Last Rotation Of Earth
2. The Movie
3. It Never Rains In Manchester
4. Kicking Up A Fuss
Side B:
1. She's Gone Cold
2. Fear Life In A Dozen Years
3. Going Out On A Low Note
4. I'm Ugly
5. The Mournin

A leap of faith reaps extraordinary rewards on ‘Black Bay’, an album of depth, atmosphere and daring from the collective known as Silver Moth. Recorded under unusual circumstances, ‘Black Bay’ is the sound of seven storied musicians yielding to shared goals, a policy of trust in action. Between hushed incantations and molten guitars, 15-minute noise-rock epics and healing psalms, the record is a testament to connectivity and receptivity: to a union of disparate minds committing to something greater than the sum of its parts.

Stuart Braithwaite of Mogwai, Elisabeth Elektra, Evi Vine, Steven Hill, members of Abrasive Trees, Burning House and Prosthetic Head convened to improvise the album in early 2021, inspired by a Twitter exchange between Abrasive Trees guitarist/songwriter Matthew Rochford, musician Elisabeth Elektra and fellow artist Nick Hudson about the Isle of Lewis. A couple of Zoom meetings would subsequently lead to Rochford, Elektra, Vine, Braithwaite, Hill, drummer Ash Babb and cellist Ben Roberts visiting the dramatic location of Great Bernera’s Black Bay Studios on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, where they tracked the songs in just four days: a testament to the musicians’ focused openness to their shared mission and environment.

This is an album of elemental force and evocative poise, its controlled power focused around the ego-free chemistry between the players. By abandoning all certainties, Silver Moth have found something truly special on ‘Black Bay’.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A stunning debut LP from Silver Moth here displaying every bit of the influence from the myriad heads of the collective, forging brittle ballads and thundering gothic waves from haunting vocals and hypnotic post-rock instrumentals.

TRACK LISTING

1 Henry
2 The Eternal
3 Mother Tongue
4 Gaelic Psalms
5 Hello Doom
6 Sedna

“It felt like I was driving through tunnels,” Emma Tricca says of her fourth album – her first for Bella Union. A phosphorescent panorama of undulating colour, shape and sound.

As with any transformation, it is this sense of movement that underpins Aspirin Sun and its bold new form, ebbing and flowing, continually unfurling. The tunnels led the Italian-born, London-based singer-songwriter towards something expansive and far-reaching: an entirely new and experimental collection of songs.

This new psychedelic horizon could only be fully brought to life by a band she calls her family. The same musicians she collaborated with on her 2018 outing, St. Peter: Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley, Dream Syndicate guitarist Jason Victor, and bass player Pete Galub. All three musicians brought something unique to the record.

TRACK LISTING

1 Devotion
2 Christodora House
3 Autumn's Fiery Tongue
4 Leaves
5 King Blixa
6 Ruben's House
7 Through The Poet's Eyes
8 Space And Time

The artist formerly known as Matt Pond PA returns with the self-titled debut album from The Natural Lines. At once clearly Pond’s work yet a huge leap forward in its measured songcraft, melodic immediacy, collaborative detail and wryly questioning lyrics, the result is a gorgeous album of intimate reflections from a relocated, renamed, revivified talent.

Pond-watchers might wonder why the album took so long to arrive since Matt Pond PA’s last album proper, Still Summer (2017). But The Natural Lines was not a project to be rushed. Recorded with close collaborators and friends over a period that saw Pond make vital adjustments to his life, its stealth emergence reflects his desire to set a fresh pace for himself and come from somewhere new, somewhere more open.

Now based in Kingston, New York, with his partner and wild dog Willa, Matt explains the album’s gestation thus. “It was something different from the start. I wanted to write as purely as I could. Instead of getting stuck in the ‘tour, write an album, release an album, tour’ cycle, which is not a natural way of writing or living, I wanted to write an album and when it was done I wanted to make sure it was done. I didn’t want this feeling of, ‘Oh, we didn’t have time’, or, ‘I don’t know whether I believe in the songs but it’s coming out anyway.’ I used to be always racing to the finish line, but I’m not anymore.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Monotony
2. No More Tragedies
3. Help
4. Alex Bell
5. My Answer
6. Spontaneous Skylights
7. A Scene That Will Never Die
8. Person Of Interest
9. Don't Come Down
10. Artificial Moonlight
11. Mahwah

There’s something almost magical about a great collaboration. When two artists are able to synchronize on an infinitesimal level, where each note and breath and strum aligns to create a perfect whole. The Colorist Orchestra know how to do this — in fact, they’ve made it their speciality. Since 2013, the Belgian duo (comprised of multi-instrumentalists and longtime friends Aarich Jespers and Kobe Proesmans) have made a career out of reimagining the discographies of a wide array of artists, using their background in pop, electronic, and world music to transform the songs.

Recently, they have reconnected with acclaimed Icelandic singer-songwriter Emilina Torrini, with whom they first collaborated in 2018 on the album The Colorist Orchestra & Emiliana Torrini. This time, however, their project exceeded even their own expectations.

In 2023, The Colorist Orchestra and Emiliana will release Racing the Storm, a joint record that takes both artists to towering new heights. An album of all original material, it melds TCO’s classical chamber pop roots with the power and fragility of Emiliana’s understated songwriting.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A thoroughly hypnotic selection of classical-leaning electronic lounge business here from the wonderful Colorist Orchestra, all topped with Emilíana Torrini's beguiling vocal charms. Racing The Storm is clearly an album steeped in influence, but what comes out at the end could only have been made by this pairing. Beautiful.

TRACK LISTING

Mikos
You Left Me In Bloom
Hilton
Dove
Wedding Song
Right Here
Smoke Trails
A Scene From A Movie
The Illusion Curse
Racing The Storm
Lonesome Fears

When Philip Selway approached some of his favourite musicians to play on his third solo record he said he imagined it as a Carole King record if she collaborated with the pioneering electronic composer Daphne Oram and invited him to drum on it. Unsurprisingly they were all sold, and so began the bringing together of an extraordinary number of gifted people, including Hannah Peel, Adrian Utley, Quinta, Marta Salogni, Valentina Magaletti and Laura Moody.

Foregrounding this remarkable union of musical voices was 10 songs written by Selway at home on piano and guitar that show him at the height of his songwriting powers. As Strange Dance unfurls, it takes the listener through different weathers and seasons. Each song carries varied and diverse shades and textures of emotion. Lyrically, it is artful. Selway has a gift at writing heartfelt lyrics which could relate to any number of human experiences.

TRACK LISTING

LP / CD Tracklisting
1 Little Things
2 What Keeps You Awake At Night
3 Check For Signs Of Life
4 Picking Up Pieces
5 The Other Side
6 Strange Dance
7 Make It Go Away
8 The Heart Of It All
9 Salt Air
10 There’ll Be Better Days

Box Set Tracklisting
Side A
1 Little Things
2 What Keeps You Awake At Night
3 Check For Signs Of Life
4 Picking Up Pieces
5 The Other Side

Side B
1 Strange Dance
2 Make It Go Away
3 The Heart Of It All
4 Salt Air
5 There’ll Be Better Days

Side C
1 The Hills
2 Sea Longing
3 Lara
4 Munich
5 Expectant
6 Our Bloods
7 An Tri Numh

Side D
1 Recitation
2 Strange Broken Sleep
3 People Of The Sea
4 Pray Hard
5 Carmilla
6 Coutille
7 Let Me Go (Live For Eid Celebration)

Many serendipitous moments have led to the creation of the musical project known as Complete Mountain Almanac. The first of these temporal alignments came at a chance meeting between two visionaries - Norwegianborn, Sweden-based singer and composer Rebekka Karijord and American-born, Italy-based poet, dancer, and multimedia artist Jessica Dessner.

Jessica and Rebekka began collaborating, with Jessica providing poems and lyrics for Rebekka to compose music to. While Jessica is not a musician per se, as a dancer she naturally has a deep understanding of music as an artform. On top of that, she comes from a musical family: her twin younger brothers, Aaron and Bryce Dessner, are accomplished multi-instrumentalists, most known as part of indie rock stalwarts The National.

The album consists of twelve tracks, each named after a month of the year. Some have a meditative, almost hypnotic quality, using Jessica’s words as healing mantras. Sonically, the album cycles through folk, classical, chamber music and everything in between, creating a cocoon-like atmosphere that draws the listener into a stand-alone universe. It’s a marriage of the inner and outer worlds, illness and rejuvenation, grief and joy.

Therein lies the idea of the almanac: having a guide to see you through each day, some kind of idea of what the future holds in uncertain times. But even as the project came together over the course of years, Rebekka and Jessica were always able to return to the core of their friendship to keep them on course, and the result is what might be one of the most important works of their respective careers.

STAFF COMMENTS

Martin says: An evocative, heartfelt collection of understated folky ballads and ethereal melodies, presented by Rebekka Karijord and Jessica Dessner. It's rich with atmosphere and aided in no small part by the inclusion of Rebecca's brothers Aaron and Bryce of The National. A perfectly balanced trade-off of melody and ambience.

TRACK LISTING

January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December

Simon Raymonde recorded his solo album, ‘Blame Someone Else’, while still in Cocteau Twins. Fellow Twins Elizabeth Fraser and Robin Guthrie appeared on ‘Blame Someone Else’, as did late-period member Mitsuo Tate. But Cocteau Twins were no more by the time it was out. Originally issued in October 1997, it became the first release on Bella Union, a new label run by Robin and Simon. And now by Simon alone. Circumstances change and ‘Blame Someone Else’ unexpectedly arrived in a world where Cocteau Twins were in the past.

Twenty-five years later, ‘Blame Someone Else’ is now being released under the name ‘Solo Works 96-98’, appearing on vinyl for the first time, and with the additionof the three bonus tracks from 1998’s Japan-only edition.

“It was begun in 1996 at a time of turmoil with Cocteau Twins,” says Simon of the album now. “At the time, I was unsure if I should make the album but my bandmates were extremely supportive, their encouragement helped me get the record finished. It took me 25 years to feel comfortable with these songs being available again. We all have hurdles to get over before we can feel ready to let go of certain things. Today, I feel that the first-ever release on Bella Union should once again be an active part of the label’s history, if only to bookmark these first 25 years.”

TRACK LISTING

It’s A Family Thing
Love Undone
The Seventh Day
In My Place
Supernatural
If I Knew Myself
It’s Raining Today
Muscle And Want
Worship Me
A Fault Of Mine
Days
Tired Twilight
Summer's Blue
Left Untouched The Flowers Grow
Let Love In

Released this summer via her new home at Bella Union, Sophie Jamieson’s ‘Choosing’ is a strikingly personal document of a journey from a painful rock bottom of self-destruction to a safer place imbued with the faint light of hope. Focusing on the bare bones of each song and taking inspiration from the direct and melodic work of songwriters such as Elena Tonra, Sharon Van Etten, and Scott Hutchison, it’s an album that sings openly of longing and searching, of trying, failing, and trying again – and always and throughout, the strength of love in so many varying forms.

Following on from the pair of EPs she released in 2020, Choosing finds its own shape by a subtle reforming of Jamieson’s sound. Where those EPs flirted with playful experimentation, here the overriding sound is both organic and simpler – live drums, bass, cello, and piano are used across the album – allowing space for Sophie’s mesmerising voice to take the spotlight, the songs delivered with the most direct and intimate impact.

TRACK LISTING

1 Addition
2 Crystal
3 Downpour
4 Sink
5 Fill
6 Empties
7 Runner
8 Violence
9 Boundary
10 Who Will I Be
11 Long Play

Psychic Markers are a quintet of musical nomads who have their sights set on everywhere and nowhere in particular, directing their focus more to the functions of navigation.

The crew - Alannah Ashworth, Lewis Baker, Steven Dove, Leon Dufficy and Luke Jarvis - all come to Psychic Markers from other bands, which sets the group up as a point of creative confluence rather than a centered force. Hardly Strangers never takes its fingers off the dial as it scans through each station, but the result isn’t a lack of focus, far from it. As the title suggests, theirs is a comfortable chemistry where it seems there must be no wrong ideas, they're just waiting for the right moment to come together.

“Release the anchor / Sail away / The pyramids are here to stay” intones Dove over and over at the end of “Pyramids”, which starts like a dusted “Chariots of Fire” and comes to a squiggling, pulsing finish in just over two minutes. The immovable authority of rock's past is set in stone, so why not venture forth and see what else is out there. Across “Sea Waves” and “Fields of Abstraction” they head, but for all the bright corners and modern psychedelic melange that Psychic Markers see fit to explore, they’re also a jam band that knows how to keep things succinct.

“One day this ship’s gonna sink”, though, Dove later warns on “Dreaming”. “I’m sick of dreaming / About living the dream”, he relates, softened by Ashworth’s distant shooby-doo-wops, adding more cryptically that “I might just give up / And try something with feeling”. The discouraged moment passes like the rest, and, in defiance of terrestrial limitations, Psychic Markers make it home without ever really circling back on themselves.

For Helen Ganya, entering her thirties made her question and pull away from the heteronormative social constructs that surround us. On her new album polish the machine, the Brighton-based songwriter stretches away from the suburban nightmare, seeking a cathartic reprieve that looks beyond the ordinary. “I was looking to the truth of removing any expectations that we’ve acquired along the way,” she says.

Previously performing under the moniker Dog in the Snow, Ganya’s 2017 album Consume Me (Battle Worldwide) introduced a meticulous and elegant voice, while 2019 album Vanishing Lands (Bella Union) - inspired by the striking imagery in a period of vivid dreams - utilised swirling dream-pop and haunting post-punk to present an eerie, unflinching look at the often nightmarish reality of the present world. polish the machine leans further into Ganya’s interiority, but refuses to succumb to despondency, instead pursuing a platform for community and tentative optimism. Here, the constraints of societal roles are loosened to encourage a different route: a wandering, ever-evolving path.

TRACK LISTING

1 I Will Hold That Hand For You
2 Young Girls Never Die
3 Wedding In The Night Time
4 Delicate Graffiti
5 Afterparty
6 The Crowd
7 Deep Sea
8 Devotion
9 Polish The Machine
10 Blue Fruit
11 Birdsong

The British multi-instrumentalist, orchestral arranger and composer Fiona Brice has drawn on her abundant talents to forge her second solo album for Bella Union, And You Know I Care. It's a deep listening experience that raises the post-classical bar, eschewing the genre’s default melancholia for wider and richer dimensions of uplifting and exultant bliss - though the range and contrast ensure this is no new age-style panacea.

Brice has drawn on all the experience gained working with the likes of John Grant, Anna Calvi, Jarvis Cocker, Kanye West, Beyoncé, Katherine Jenkins, Elbow, the BBC Concert and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestras, Royal Northern Sinfonia and the London Mozart Players. She toured with Placebo for ten years, and more recently Elbow, so to say Brice is in-demand is an understatement. But she still has time for her own work. Her debut album Postcards From, a more minimalist, filmic set of instrumentals, was released in 2016. After two purer classical projects (String Quartet No.1 in 2018 and the lockdown-inspired Piano Preludes in 2022) And You Know I Care is a more wide-ranging, ruminating work, and showcases Brice’s voice, lyrics and choral arrangements.

TRACK LISTING

1 Ascending
2 And You Know I Care
3 We Rise We Fall
4 Through Her Eyes
5 Nocturnal
6 Whose God Are You?
7 Today Will Be Different
8 Retreat

Has there been a busier musician over the last two years? A more prolific artist? More creative? More heroic?

Tim Burgess – as self-effacing a band leader, solo star, label runner, repeat memoirist and all-round caffeinated can-do kid as you’ll find – would certainly shrink from the latter accolade. “A hero??” he’d likely mutter with a shake of his boyish mop. “For playing some records?”

Yes, Tim, we would say that. And not just because with the May 2020, mid-lockdown appearance of I Love The New Sky, his fifth solo album, he undauntedly pushed on with releasing an album that brought much-needed sunshine to a world enveloped in gloom.

Over the course of the first year of the pandemic, Tim’s Twitter Listening Parties were a lifeline to many. At a time when the world shut down, we all retreated indoors, alone, and cancelled gigs were the least of our worries, the North Country Boy’s idea of utilising social media to unite us round a digital turntable was inspired.

Meanwhile, Burgess was writing. And writing. And writing. From September 2020 to summer 2021, ideas poured out of Burgess. He’d been encouraged by Simon Raymonde, boss of his record label Bella Union ¬– and, of course, a former Cocteau Twin. He applied a musician’s logic: if you can’t tour your last album, write a new one. Then, when you can tour again, you’ll have two albums’ worth of songs to play.

Well, now, arguably, Burgess has three albums’ worth of songs to perform live. Typical Music is a 22-track double, a blockbuster set of songs that are as expansive and diverse as they are rich. As fun as they are funky. That embrace heartache and love. That run the gamut, from ABBA (in the shape of guest vocalist Pearl Charles, whose own brilliant Magic Mirror album is the sound of the magic Swedes doin' disco) to Zappa (free-form studio experimentation is go!)

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1 Here Comes The Weekend
2 Curiosity
3 Time That We Call Time
4 Flamingo
5 Revenge Through Art
6 Kinectic Connection
Side B
1 Typical Music
2 Take Me With You
3 After This
4 The Centre Of Me (Is A Symphony Of You)
5 When I See You
Side C
1 Magic Rising
2 Tender Hooks
3 L.O.S.T Lost / Will You Take A Look At My Hand Please
4 A Bloody Nose
5 In May
Side D
1 Slacker (Than I've Ever Been)
2 View From Above
3 A Quarter To Eight
4 Sooner Than Yesterday
5 Sure Enough
6 What's Meant For You Won't Pass By You

Blue Luminaire is a new project from British composer Nick Martin, currently based in Copenhagen. Their father was a classical pianist, and Martin found themselves shunning the mainstream pop that filled the airwaves, and instead gravitated towards obscure 19th Century Russian composers and Brian Eno LPs. This early obsession formed much of Martin’s musical language, and soon they started crafting their own original compositions and experimenting with their vocal range. With interrogation came revelation, and Martin began drifting from the confines of traditional classical music to create something entirely their own. Hovering between worlds, and embracing their love of alternative rock, funk, fusion and jazz, Blue Luminaire is the sound of the in-between.

TRACK LISTING

1. Our
2. Let Go
3. Closeness Sighs
4. Tangled
5. Worlds
6. Learn To Trust
7. Your Skin Against Mine
8. Held
9. Falling

Father John Misty returns with 'Chloë and The Next 20th Century', his fifth album and first new material since the release of God’s Favorite Customer in 2018.

'Chloë and the Next 20th Century' was written and recorded August through December 2020 and features arrangements by Drew Erickson. The album sees Tillman and producer/multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Wilson resume their longtime collaboration, as well as Dave Cerminara, returning as engineer and mixer. Basic tracks were recorded at Wilson’s Five Star Studios with strings, brass and woodwinds recorded at United Recordings in a session featuring Dan Higgins and Wayne Bergeron, among others.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Father John Misty has always been one of the most distinctive voices working in the middle ground between modern indie and country music, and his latest is the perfect illustration as to why he's so revered in the field. Beautifully produced and gorgeously evocative throughout, this is classic Misty.

TRACK LISTING

1 Chloë
2 Goodbye, Mr. Blue
3 Kiss Me (I Loved You)
4 (Everything But) Her Love
5 Buddy's Rendevous
6 Q4
7 Olvidado (Otro Momento)
8 Funny Girl
9 Only A Fool
10 We Could Be Strangers
11 The Next 20th Century

Loss and hope, isolation and communion, the cessation and renewal of purpose. Timeless and salient, these themes echo throughout the fifth album from Midlake, their first since Antiphon in 2013. Produced to layered, loving perfection by John Congleton, For the Sake of Bethel Woods is an album of immersive warmth and mystery from a band of ardent seekers, one of our generation’s finest: a band once feared lost themselves by fans, perhaps, but here revivified with freshness and constancy of intent.

From the cover to the title and beyond, a longing to reconnect with that which seems lost and seek purpose in its passing sits at the record’s core. The cover star is keyboardist/flautist Jesse Chandler’s father, who, tragically, passed away in 2018. As singer Eric Pulido explains, “He was a lovely human, and it was really heavy and sad, and he came to Jesse in a dream. I reference it in a song. He said, ‘Hey, Jesse, you need to get the band back together.’ I didn’t take that lightly. We had already had these feelings with everyone in the band of, oh, this could be a cool thing to do. But the dream was a kind of beautiful depiction of a purpose to reconvene and make music together as friends.”

Featuring Chandler’s father during John Sebastian’s set, the cover image was taken from the 1970 documentary Woodstock. In 1969, Jesse’s then-16-year-old dad had joined a friend and hitchhiked from Ridgewood, New Jersey, to the legendary festival. Raised in Woodstock after his father moved there in 1981, Jesse later paid pilgrimage to Bethel Woods with his father; there, the elder Chandler recorded an audio account of his festival experience in the museum’s public database. “So for me, the picture of that kid, my dad, forever frozen in time,” says Chandler, “encapsulates what it means to be in the throes of impressionable and fleeting youth, and all that the magic of music, peace, love and communion bring to it, whether one knows it at the time or not. (I think he knew it).”

A desire to commune with the past and connect with present, lived experience asserts itself from the opening of the album. A song that resonates with Midlake’s return and, perhaps, our lockdown era, ‘Commune’ can also be read in terms of a deeper urge to re-engage with sometimes neglected ideals and beliefs. ‘Bethel Woods’ sustains and develops that reconnection, evoking the steadfast and contemplative urgency of The Trials of Van Occupanther to back a lyric steeped in yearning for a paradisal time and place of hope and optimism. Soaring guitars and atmospheric noise effects extend a sonic scope further developed by ‘Glistening,’ where arpeggios dance like light glancing off a lake. In just three songs, Midlake reintroduce themselves and reach out into fresh territory with a richly intuitive dynamism, honouring their past as a seedbed of possibility.

The psychedelic space-rock and sticky guitars of ‘Exile’ shift the album to another plane, promising rich returns live, before ‘Feast of Carrion’ splices apocalyptic imagery with lustrous harmonies: darkness and light, held in rarefied balance. A deeply personal turn follows on ‘Noble,’ a song of tender innocence named after drummer McKenzie Smith’s infant son, born with a rare brain disorder called Semi-Lobar Holoprosencephaly. Pulido, who has been friends with McKenzie since they were 16 years old, kept McKenzie in mind for the lyrics. “I wrote the song from his perspective in a way, his expression to me of how he had been feeling towards his son. And then among the lament of his condition, it’s also embracing this child who has only joy. Noble doesn’t know that he has a condition, he just loves life. And smiles, and is so innocent, and perfect in so many ways.”

Elsewhere, the prog-enhanced funk-rock of ‘Gone’ seeks to find hope in relationships that seem fragile. The ELO-esque ‘Meanwhile…’ draws inspiration from what happened when Midlake paused after Antiphon, developing universal resonance as a song about the beautiful growths that can emerge from the cracks and gaps between things. ‘Dawning’ draws on 1970s soft-rock stylings for another song searching for hope, its keyboard line reaching out towards an uncertain future while everything seems to collapse around it; ‘The End’ reflects on the difficulties of partings. Finally, ‘Of Desire’ meditates on letting go of what you can’t control and attending to what you can during uncertain times. “It’s about finding peace in that humbling,” says Pulido. “Sometimes it’s hard to have a large effect, so it’s just about shrinking that and saying, these are the things I can do and the rest is to be seen, to be known.”

Midlake began re-attending to their patch in 2019, with the bulk of the album’s work undertaken when the world shut down in 2020. The lockdown turned out to be helpful, in terms of offering an escape from grim reality and focusing the band’s energies – essential for an outfit whose members (Pulido, Chandler, Smith, Eric Nichelson and Joey McClellan) had all pursued alternative ventures following Antiphon. Also on-hand was new collaborator John Congleton, who produced, engineered and mixed the album, marking Midlake’s first record with an outside producer. “I can’t say enough just how much his influence brought our music to another sonic place than we would have,” says Pulido. “I don’t want to record without a producer again. Part of that is the health of the band, because as you get older you get more opinionated and you kind of need that person who says, ‘No, it’s going to be this way!’ It’s hard to do that with your friends.”

The result is a powerful, warming expression of resolve and renewal for Midlake, opening up new futures for the band and honouring their storied history. Formed in the small town of Denton, with roots in the University of North Texas College of Music, Midlake delivered an auspicious debut with 2004’s Bamnan and Slivercork. For the follow-up, they looked further afield and deeper within to deliver 2006’s wondrous The Trials of Van Occupanther, a modern classic pitched between 1871, 1971 and somewhere out of time: between Henry David Thoreau and Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush, between 1970s Laurel Canyon thinking and a longing for something more mysterious.

Confidence bolstered by a growing fanbase and a developed sense of their own far-reaching abilities, Midlake – a band acutely attuned to seasonal shifts – then embraced change. In 2010, they visited darker psych-folk thickets for The Courage of Others and backed John Grant on his lustrously spiky breakthrough album, Queen of Denmark. When singer Tim Smith departed Midlake in 2012, Pulido stepped up to the lead vocal role for 2013’s freshly exploratory Antiphon, teasing out singular routes through vintage electric-folk pastures.

Since then, domestic projects have beckoned as children entered various band-members’ lives. Pulido joined Bob Dylan’s 75th birthday celebrations at Nashville’s prestigious Ryman Auditorium and launched the project BNQT with a cast of all-star guests, backed by Chandler, McClellan and Smith; Pulido and Chandler also recorded solo albums.

In reuniting, the bandmates were adamant that Midlake needed their absolute focus. The result is an album of tremendously engaged thematic and sonic reach with a warm, wise sense of intimacy at its heart: an album to break bread and commune with, honour the past and travel onwards with. In ‘Bethel Woods’, Pulido sings of gathering seeds. On For the Sake of Bethel Woods, those seeds are lovingly nurtured, taking rich and spectacular bloom.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Midlake's new LP is a beautiful, rich tapestry of driven guitars and soaring orchestration, full of their trademark melodic turns. Chantler has had a very prolific patch of late, and though the subject matter here is somewhat mournful, out of it has sprung a no doubt cathartic and swimmingly beautiful tribute.

TRACK LISTING

1 Commune
2 Bethel Woods
3 Glistening
4 Exile
5 Feast Of Carrion
6 Noble
7 Gone
8 Meanwhile…
9 Dawning
10 The End
11 Of Desire

When you’re trying to make it through tough times, you need a little light to find your way. That light blazes brightly on the alchemical second album from Penelope Isles, an album forged amid emotional upheaval and band changes. Setting the uncertainties of twentysomething life to alt-rock and psychedelic songs brimming with life, colour and feeling, Which Way to Happy emerges as a luminous victory for Jack and Lily Wolter, the siblings whose bond holds the band tight at its core.

Produced by Jack and mixed by US alt-rock legend Dave Fridmann, the result is an intoxicating leap forward for the Brighton-based band, following the calling-card DIY smarts of their 2019 debut, Until the Tide Creeps In. Sometimes it swoons, sometimes it soars. Sometimes it says it’s OK to not be OK. And sometimes it says it’s OK to look for the way to happy, too. Pitched between fertile coastal metaphors and winged melodies, intimate confessionals and expansive cosmic pop, deep sorrows and serene soul-pop pick-you-ups, it transforms “difficult second album” clichés into a thing of glorious contrasts: a second-album surge of up-close, heartfelt intimacies and expansive, experimental vision.

These extremes come into sharp focus on ‘Terrified,’ a reflection on anxiety set to a dreamy sunburst of psychedelic jangle-pop. As Jack explains, “I love that juxtaposition. It reminds me of when you’re feeling a bit delicate or not ready to socialise but you have to go out because you need milk for tea. Then you go to the supermarket and you bump into someone you kind of know and you have to pretend that everything’s OK when, really, you’re dying inside.”

With the album’s almost prog-psych ambitions on fulsome display, ‘Rocking at the Bottom’ taps coastal motifs for a call to embrace open possibility, twinkling with hope over a deep space-rock bass line and a phased Hammond. In an album of fluent dynamism, ‘Play It Cool’ offers a swift tonal about-turn, emerging from Lily’s gloriously in-character vocal as a sweet soul-pop message to the troubled self amid rousing drums, lush glockenspiels, creamy harmonies and wonky guitars. Warm and rippling, ‘Iced Gems’ is a sorrowed lament, played out over the gentlest of fluttery keyboards and experimental electronic sounds – plus, samples of carrot crunches. Written over a couple of years, Lily’s ‘Sailing Still’ charts the life of a relationship to a slow-burn and sorrowed soundscape of dulcitones, cello, violin and more: building in increments to a climax of measured grandeur, it sustains a sense of intimacy in a framework of great scope.

The album swerves into Mercury Rev and MGMT’s cosmic slipstream with ‘Miss Moon,’ a galloping centrepiece with an irresistible call to dream: “Hey, kids – look up!” As Jack says, “We wanted it to seem like lift-off.” After its exclamatory explosion, the psychedelic dream-pop of ‘Sudoku’ offers a mellowed invitation to turn off your mind, relax, float downstream. Steering the album through further contrasts, ‘Have You Heard’ is a feelgood flurry of insistent, pulsing space-rock; ‘Pink Lemonade,’ meanwhile, is a song of sweet, sharp beauty, touching on fading childhood memories and lifted by Fiona Brice’s strings. ‘11 11’ hosts Lily’s most tender vocal yet: recorded in one take through tears, it finds Penelope Isles at their most exposed, with Brice’s strings weeping in sympathy. Finally, ‘In a Cage’ cogitates on confinement yet finds solace in field recordings of happy, high times – a judicious note of meditative reflection after a giddy ride.


More field recordings were made during a stay at a small cottage in Cornwall, where Penelope Isles began work on the album. With romantic heartache already in the air, things swiftly got worse: lockdown began, claustrophobia kicked in and emotions ran high. As Jack puts it, “We were there for about two or three months. It was a tiny cottage with four of us in and we all went a bit bonkers, and we drank far too much, and it spiralled a bit out of control. There were a lot of emotional evenings and realisations, which I think reflects in the songs.”

At different point along the way, Jack Sowton and Becky Redford left the Isles. An old friend, multi-instrumentalist Henry Nicholson, stepped in swiftly – “A godsend after a low time,” says Lily. Another friend, Hannah Feenstra, contributed drum parts; now, Joe Taylor is the band’s drummer. After Cornwall, the band redid many of the rhythm tracks, recorded a little in Brighton, then recorded more in Cornwall at their parents’ house. “It was,” says Jack, “a proper rollercoaster ride.”

The ride continued with Fridmann, whose recent credits include Isles’ favourites Mogwai’s No 1 album, As the Love Continues. As Lily puts it, the process of sending Fridmann a mix, receiving it back in the morning and then having five hours to make decisions on it resulted first in stress, then in something sublime. “I love everything he’s touched – MGMT, Mogwai, Mercury Rev. He would turn our mix into this electric, fiery thing. There were some moments that were initially hard, like on ‘Miss Moon,’ where he took out the bass when it gets to the chorus. But now it’s my favourite bit on the record. He made everything so colourful. It’s an intense-sounding record – a hot record. It was so refreshing to have that blast of energy from Dave – it’s like he framed our pictures.”

Away from the confines of the cottage, the Wolters also opened the door to a collaboration with storied composer Fiona Brice, whose credits include John Grant, Lost Horizons and Placebo. A “big bucket-list tick” for Jack and Lily, the team-up results in glorious arrangements across the album: for Lily, ‘11 11’ stood out. “I was in absolute tears when she sent back the strings for ‘11 11’. It was like, oh my goodness, she’s nailed it.”

Flushed with resourceful detail, Which Way to Happy adds extra strands to the Isles’ ever-tightening core DNA. Born in Devon and raised on the Isle of Man, the Wolters’ bonds were already strengthened by separation when Jack (six years Lily’s senior) moved away to university at 19. As Lily grew older, they rediscovered their connection and formed a band called Your Gold Teeth. When both moved to Brighton, Penelope Isles came to being, fuelled by a passion for DIY alt-rock and all who sail its seas.

On its release, Until the Tide Creeps In received rave reviews from Q, DIY, The Line of Best Fit and many others, while finding champions in Steve Lamacq and Shaun Keaveny. It also become part of a lifeline for music fans during the 2020 lockdown when the band participated in Tim Burgess’s Twitter Listening Party. Meanwhile, extensive touring saw the Isles develop into a formidable live force, with ‘Gnarbone’ emerging as a sure-fire show-stopper.

Now, the Isles have 11 more show-stoppers to add to the mix. At the album’s heart, the band’s core traits have never been stronger: the bond between the Wolters, a sensitivity towards complex feelings, a desire to celebrate life in all its facets and an ambitious reach combine to create an album that feels utterly, emphatically present on every front, rich in depth and uplift.

“There’s so much love between me and Jack, we couldn’t do it without each other,” says Lily. “And even in that chaotic, tiny bubble of a cottage that sent us all mad, we had some really funny, stupid, lovely times together. There’s a lot of emotion in the album.” Wherever Penelope Isles go from here, that guiding emotional compass couldn’t be more finely attuned.

TRACK LISTING

1. Terrified
2. Rocking At The Bottom
3. Play It Cool
4. Iced Gems
5. Sailing Still
6. Miss Moon
7. Sudoku
8. Have You Heard
9. Pink Lemonade
10. 11 11
11. In A Cage

“I like that it’s possible to re-travel some of the wide open expanse of childhood imagination and wonder. The thing is, I don’t really feel that far away from those places even now, and I’m sure that’s a universal thought. The moments I’m telling about in the songs, and the wonder and the curiosity - I still feel so much of it, just as anyone does. I didn’t want to be an adult saying to a child, This is how you feel. It’s more like saying, just as a person talking with another person, Isn’t this how we all feel, and isn’t that a mystery of life, too, that we are all so connected? So, most of the songs are written in the first person.”

Singer, instrumentalist, and songwriter Karen Peris is talking about the ten compositions on her new album, A Song Is Way Above the Lawn. Written over a period of seven years, these songs make an especially melodic collection of beautifully rendered moments that will resonate with both children and adults. They offer a joy that is often poignant, thanks in part to Peris’ voice and poetry, and to the emotional, sometimes cinematic nature of the piano, central to the album’s sound. Her other instrumentation, chamber-like, with pump organ, accordion, and melodica, along with occasional nylon string and electric guitars, is spacious, allowing room for the listener’s own imagination. With the help of her husband Don Peris, who plays drum kit and upright bass, and their son and daughter, who contribute violin and viola to three songs, she has made a timeless album that has a rare and particular atmosphere of its own.

Journalists and fellow musicians have long written warmly about the singing and songwriting of Karen Peris with her band The Innocence Mission, which she started in high school with Don Peris. Her lyrics have been called ‘profound’ by Sufjan Stevens, and ‘engaging’ by Natalie Merchant; NPR music critic Lars Gotrich has spoken of the ‘supreme detail’ of her poetry. With A Song Is Way Above the Lawn, she has combined music and words with her own illustration, to make a sort of picture book in record album form. Throughout, there is an enormous tenderness expressed, for children and families, for the natural world, and for the miraculousness of everyday life. “You know how, if we take a tiny moment of a day and really look into it, it can sort of widen out and we can see how much it holds - I like thinking about that,” she explains, “and of how it can even be a moment when we’re waiting for something else to happen, that can end up being the most memorable.” The entirety of “This Is a Song in Wintertime” is devoted to a single moment when the narrator is waiting in line, outside with her family, and it begins to snow. “And all the people in line start remarking about the snow and we realize a connectedness,” Karen relates, “and strangers talk to us and there’s this feeling, like we all arrived there together, in a sense.”

A Song Is Way Above the Lawn also reflects a love of reading and public libraries, of walking in the companionship of trees, and of the sense of possibility felt in listening to the first sounds of the day. The latter is the subject of the album’s title song. Animals - elephants, giraffes, lions, birds, and dogs - walk in and out of the album, occasionally appearing as imaginary friends in times of solitude. About “I Would Sing Along”, Karen relates, “I heard a biologist talking this year about elephants. And she said that elephants do a kind of singing, almost subsonically, but if she listened very closely she could hear it”. Much of the album celebrates an attentiveness to the world and to the lives around us, from the luminous opening track, “Superhero”, in praise of the kindness and open-heartedness of kids and of all the people she most admires, to the closing lullaby, “Flowers”.

TRACK LISTING

1. Superhero
2. To The Library
3. I Would Sing Along
4. For A Giraffe
5. This Is A Song In Wintertime
6. Map For The Orange Daylight
7. Sister Birds
8. George In The Car
9. A Song Is Way Above The Lawn
10. Flowers

Produced by longtime friend Cate Le Bon, ‘Boy from Michigan’ is Grant’s most autobiographical and melodic work to date. Grant stopped being a boy in Michigan aged twelve, when his family moved to Denver, Colorado, shifting rust to bible belt, a further vantage point to watch collective dreams unravel. Across 12 tracks, Grant lays out his past for careful cross-examination. In a decade of making records by himself, he has playfully experimented with mood, texture and sound, all the better for actualizing the seriousness of his thoughts. At one end of his musical rainbow, he is the battle-scarred piano-man, at the other, a robust electronic auteur. ‘Boy from Michigan’ seamlessly marries both.

With Le Bon at the helm, Grant pared back his zingers, maximizing the emotional impact of the melodies. A clarinet forms the bedrock of a song. One pre-chorus feels lifted from vintage Human League. There is a saxophone solo. ‘Boy from Michigan’ ultimately swings between ambient and progressive, calm and livid. The album’s narrative journey opens with Grant at his artistic prettiest, three songs drawn from his pre-Denver life (the Michigan Trilogy, as Grant calls them): the title track, “The Rusty Bull,” and “County Fair.” Each draws the listener in to a specific sense of place, before untangling its significance with a rich cast-list of local characters, often symbolizing the uncultivated faith of childhood.

Elsewhere, tracks like “Mike and Julie” and “The Cruise Room” offer an affecting plunge deep into Grant’s late teenage years in Denver, while the midpoint of the album is highlighted by “Best in Me” and “Rhetorical Figure,” a pair of skittish, scholarly dance tunes that build on the lineage of Grant’s electropop heroes, Devo. Childhood as a horror narrative is the theme of “Dandy Star,” which observes a tiny Grant watching the Mia Farrow horror movie ‘See No Evil’ on an old family TV set, and finally on “The Only Baby” (released this January) Grant removes his razor blade from a pocket to cleanly slit the throat of Trump’s America, authoring a scathing epitaph to an era of acute national exposition.

Though he has lived in Iceland since 2011 – the same year he was also diagnosed HIV-positive – Grant spent his childhood and formative years in the US and maintains US citizenship. Growing up, Grant was subjected to a deeply ingrained hatred of anyone perceived as homosexual at school. Following the demise of his first band The Czars, Grant left music entirely for over five years, only to achieve greater success as a solo artist (his acclaimed 2015 solo LP ‘Grey Tickles, Black Pressure’ went Top Five in the UK). Grant has sold out Royal Albert Hall, performed at Glastonbury, Latitude + more, and his song “Snug Snacks” was featured on Pitchfork's 'Songs That Define LGBTQ Pride'. BBC Radio 6 host Mary Anne Hobbs described Grant’s music: "Most songwriting, even if it's based on a true story ... is embellished in some way. But John's lyrics — they're so true they might as well be written in blood."

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*** NPN - email mail@piccadillyrecords.com before 25 June 21 to be entered in the draw 

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STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Absolutely classic modern day John Grant this, filled with the wry self-deprecation and endlessly witty lyricism of Queen Of Denmark / Pale Green Ghosts era but swimming with the shimmering disco synths and snapping electronic groove of the more recent LP's. It's a PERFECT mix and is quite possibly his strongest outing to date. Another outstanding LP from this Piccadilly favourite.

TRACK LISTING

1. Boy From Michigan
2. County Fair
3. The Rusty Bull
4. The Cruise Room
5. Mike And Julie
6. Best In Me
7. Rhetorical Figure
8. Just So You Know
9. Dandy Star
10. Your Portfolio
11. The Only Baby
12. Billy

Following the release of her album ‘Warnings’ in May 2020 via Bella Union, I Break Horses announces details of a remix 12” featuring The Field and Mythologen.

TRACK LISTING

Death Engine (The Field Remix)
Turn (Mythologen Remix)

“The greatest thing about being a musician is experiencing it with other people,” says Ed Riman, the Brighton-based Eurasian singer, songwriter and sound-scapist who records as Hilang Child. “Whether that’s playing with others, creating together, sharing a vision, whatever, I just think in all aspects it’s a totally elevated experience when you’re not alone.” Proof rings out with force and feeling on Hilang Child’s superlative second album, "Every Mover".

In 2018, Riman delivered a serene, textured debut album in Years, rich in sound and feeling. Lauren Laverne, Q, MOJO and others lavished praise, but the “isolating process” of making the album left Riman hungry to find alternative ways of working. Meanwhile, the “lonely, pressured” aftermath of Years found Riman grappling with “rough self-esteem and anxiety issues”, amplified in part by social media’s ‘fulfilment narratives’. Duly, he set out to navigate and overcome these mindsets, drawing deeply on his own insecurities and those he recognised in others. These themes converge emphatically on Every Mover, an album steeped in everyday emotional states and crafted for cathartic, communal performance. Drawing on a rich spread of collaborators, sounds and themes, Riman uses his frustrations as the impetus to transform the brimming promise of Years into upfront and expansive new shapes.

“I wanted it to sound abit gutsier than the first album,” he says, succinctly, “heavier and closer to the kind of stuff that hits me when I go to shows or blast music in the car. I started out in music as a drummer playing for pop or beat-driven artists and grew up listening to louder stuff, but a lot of the music I’ve made as Hilang Child has been more ethereal. I wanted to bring it back to a place that feels more ‘me’ and make more of a thing of having big hypnotic drums, aggressive bass, ripping distorted instruments and a general energy to it.” “Good to be Young” serves swift notice of this leap, its banked synths and twinkling sound clusters leading to an assertion of fresh force when the main beat lands and a congregation of friends – AK Patterson, Paul Thomas Saunders, Dog in the Snow, Ellen Murphy, members of Penelope Isles – unite for the gang-vocal refrains. “It’s all iridescent colour I’m on,” Riman exults, a claim lived up to on the full-flush folktronica of “Shenley”. A reflection on spiralling insecurity, “Seen the Boreal” ups the ante again with its monk-ish chorales, looping samples, spectral woodwinds (from multi-instrumentalist John ‘Rittipo’ Moore, of Public Service Broadcasting and Bastille previous) and ecstatic chorus, Riman transforming a meditation on hindsight’s limiting effects into a spur to look forwards.

And surge forwards he does with the glittering synths, spacey guitars, and Krautrock propulsion of “King Quail”, developed in jam sessions with dream-pop wonder Zoe Mead (Wyldest) in her basement studio. Riman’s sounds are enriched wherever you turn, from the epic prog-tronica of “The Next Hold” to the vocal release and layered arrangement of “Play ’Til Evening”; a kind of summit meeting between Surrender-era Chemical Brothers and Fleet Foxes in the high church of ecstatic sound. The treated chorales of “Magical Fingertip” and naked lyrics of the festival-sized “Anthropic (Cold Times)” showcase a fertile push-pull of lush arrangements and wide-open emotions in Riman’s sound; on the latter, Rittipo’s horns brim with expressive power. That confidence also extends to the opposite extreme on a stripped-back love song with an illustrative back-story. “I was helping some friends build a music studio in early 2019,” says Riman, “and the days were a long, manual-labour slog on a dimly lit building site in winter.

One dark evening we were fitting insulation and choking on rockwool dust in the freezing cold, when Carole King’s ‘(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman’ came on the radio and pierced through the gloom, bringing this calm over everyone. It was like this weird epiphany moment.” Written in tribute, “Earthborne” channels King’s influence into an ode to the support of loved ones. Brought to a sublime close with “Steppe”, the resulting album projects its own epiphanic force. The birth was not always smooth: due to Covid-19, tours were cancelled and studios closed. Thankfully, most of the main parts were recorded pre-lockdown between East London, Gateshead, Brighton, Wandsworth and elsewhere, before mixing proceeded remotely. Meanwhile, alongside indie-pop trio OUTLYA’s Will Bloomfield (percussion/co-production on ‘Play ’Til Evening’), visual design collective Tough Honey (accompanying videos) and other collaborators, Riman’s bond with co-producer JMAC (Troye Sivan, Haux, Lucy Rose) proved crucial. “It felt freeing to work collaboratively and have that push-and-pull of ideas,” says Riman.

“Even the moments where we didn’t see eye-to-eye made it feel like I wasn’t alone, with someone else working just as passionately on the project.” That sense of passion lights up Every Mover, an album that hymns the redemptive qualities of richly expressive music crafted in simpatico unison with friends. “I get told I’m quite an openly emotional person,” says Riman, “and I suppose the extremes in this album reflect that! But I also wanted the album to roughly follow the mental flow of feeling worthless, then recognising it, then accepting your shortcomings and trying to work on it, then coming out unscathed on the other side. I’m still not fully out of the spiral. The Covid apocalypse, alongside some personal life changes, have definitely caused it to resurface. But I’m glad I made this album as a kind of cathartic primer on trying to deal with it.” Now, time for other people to experience it too.

STAFF COMMENTS

Martin says: At the forefront of emotional synthpop and pristine melodic direction, Hilang Child's newest offering perfectly marries huge anthemic hand-wavers with more introspective, experimental moments.

TRACK LISTING

1. Good To Be Young
2. Shenley
3. Seen The Boreal
4. King Quail
5. Pesawat Aeroplane
6. The Next Hold
7. Play 'Til Evening
8. Magical Fingertip
9. Anthropic (Cold Times)
10. Earthborne
11. Steppe

“This is an examination of madness and loss,” says Brian Christinzio, the inimitable force behind BC Camplight. “I hope it starts a long overdue conversation.”

Fired by his ongoing battle with mental illness, Shortly After Takeoff is the final, and finest, chapter of what Christinzio calls his “Manchester Trilogy”, following 2015’s “How To Die In The North” and 2018’s “Deportation Blues”. All three albums were created after the native Philadelphian had moved to Manchester. Like Deportation Blues, Shortly After Takeoff spans singer-songwriter classicism, gnarly synth-pop and ‘50s rock’n’roll, with Christinzio’s similarly distinctive, flexible vocal carrying a fearless approach to lyrical introspection, but the new album is a major leap forward in songwriting sophistication and lyrical communication.

“It’s important to stress that this isn’t a redemption story,” he says. “I'm a guy who maybe lives a little hard and I’m in the thick of some heavy stuff. But as a result, I think I've made my best record.”

The “heavy stuff” has come thick and fast for Christinzio. Just days before How To Die In The North was released, he was deported and banned from the UK because of visa issues. Estranged from his new home, his girlfriend and his dog, unable to promote his album and back home with his parents, Christinzio sunk deep into the dark. An Italian passport, care of his grandparents, eventually allowed him to re-settle in Manchester, but then just days before Deportation Blues was released, his father Angelo unexpectedly died.

“I went into a spiral that was worse than any time since my twenties,” he recalls. Hence the title Shortly After Takeoff: the feeling of being suddenly thwarted by what life throws at you. Making matters worse was a neurological disorder that returned after years in remission: “I see TV static, and it messes with how my brain interprets everything from sound to my own feelings.”

One way to process tragedy is comedy, which elevates Shortly After Takeoff to a heightened plateau, from grief-stricken vulnerability to armoured bravado, from the black dog of depression to gallows humour. None more so than ‘Ghosthunting’, which opens with an extraordinary (fabricated) passage of Christinzio doing a stand-up routine, centring on the memory of hallucinating his father’s ghost. “I want to drag the listener into this world and hopefully they question why they feel uneasy,” he explains.

“I also wanted to make a record totally free of whimsy and irony, that was just clear and open and honest. I don’t think you really heard the chaos in Deportation Blues, but in Shortly After Takeoff, I can hear I’m finding undiscovered places to go, only because I was so lost. Lyrically, I wanted people to hear and understand me this time. Before, if I would have written about my father dying, I would have made up some weird bullshit, like an analogy about a tree shedding leaves or something. That Brian is gone. I have a direct line to the listener now. I have a direct line to myself too. It’s a benchmark moment for me.”

Shortly After Takeoff ends with the gorgeously tender 93-second ‘Angelo’, “a little fleeting moment for my dad. I wanted his name on the album, and something that sounded like a goodbye. It ends with the drums, like a heartbeat stopping…”

That’s Christinzio and Shortly After Takeoff: his best, most honest, open and frequently heartbreaking record.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Surely this must finally be the record which brings Brian Christinzio the attention he deserves. He is simply an incredible melodicist and creates tracks full of surprising twists and unusual turns. Dark, crazy but funnily inspirational lyrics are offset against the sweetest voice and catchiest songs you’ll hear all year. Just brilliant.

TRACK LISTING

1 I Only Drink When I'm Drunk
2 Ghosthunting
3 Back To Work
4 Cemetery Lifestyle
5 I Want To Be In The Mafia
6 Shortly After Takeoff
7 Arm Around Your Sadness
8 Born To Cruise
9 Angelo

“I love songs that make you want to cry and dance at the same time,” says Tony Donson, the London-based musician who records as SONIKKU. That sense of unfettered release and liberation drives his new album, Joyful Death. A fluent, fertile and full-colour hybrid of vibrant Italo-house, liquid synth-pop, righteous disco and French philosophical asides, it’s an album that signals the emergence proper of SONIKKU – a fully formed dancefloor artist. It’s also a farewell of sorts, perhaps, but with an emphatic rebirth at its heart. “This album feels like a transformation in the sense that I’m creating the music I’ve always wanted to make. A fully realised, coherent pop record that showcases my craft as a song-writer and producer.”

Total control of his craft is swiftly asserted on ‘Let the Light In’, where the influences of lost-in-music disco and the Pet Shop Boys merge under vocals from immersive, exploratory British singer-songwriter Douglas Dare. The pace accelerates as ‘WKND’ gets into a groove pitched somewhere between Madonna, Daft Punk and Indeep, with LA future-pop singer LIZ primed for dancefloor abandon on vocals. Meanwhile, SONIKKU’s independent intent is firmly asserted on the freestyle-inspired ‘Don’t Wanna Dance with You’, where singer Aisha Zoe coolly brushes off unwanted advances in favour of dancefloor pleasures.

LIZ assumes vocal duties again for ‘Sweat’, a song fully equipped to make dancefloor devotees do as its title suggests. Dreamily melodic evidence of SONIKKU’s dynamism (and love of melancholy Swedish electro-pop queen Robyn) beckons on ‘X Hopeless Romantic’, where Little Boots contributes a sweetly loved-up vocal over a sublimely infectious chorus.

Pummelling synths signal a dramatic shift of pace on the almost electro-darkwave dash of ‘Remember to Forget Me’, where actor/singer Chester Lockhart presides over a summit meeting between Depeche Mode and New Order. Performance artist Tyler Matthew Oyer takes the vocals for the Italo-disco-inspired title-track, a vividly imagined album manifesto – of sorts – inspired to varying degrees by an 1892 poem, French thinker Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the “body without organs” and a 1997 anime called The End of Evangelion. Finally, that grand piano takes over as Dare returns, presiding over an achingly stripped-back version of ‘Remember to Forget Me’.

With help from friends and artists he admires on vocals, Joyful Death is a hugely confident and self-contained leap forward for SONIKKU after his time as a feted DJ. Having moved from Derby to London at the age of 18, Donson worked as an intern (at MTV, Dazed & Confused, SHOWstudio and elsewhere) then turned to DJing (from London to Tokyo, Paris and Berlin) after he was signed to London label Lobster Theremin. Though he continues to DJ regularly at Tottenham’s LGBTQ rave-up Adonis, he has extra ambitions in mind: “I love DJing but I’m more looking forward to developing a live show.”

‘Odyssey: The Sound Of Ivor Raymonde Vol II’ is Bella Union’s follow-up to the critically acclaimed ‘Paradise: The Sound Of Ivor Raymonde’.

This new compilation is a further celebration of the great British arranger, musical director, producer and songwriter Ivor Raymonde, who died at age 63 in 1990. Bella Union, the label behind both releases, is run by Ivor’s son Simon Raymonde.

Like ‘Paradise’, ‘Odyssey’ has been compiled by Simon with author, journalist and music historian Kieron Tyler. Simon explains that: “The research Kieron and I did for Paradise showed us that there was still an extremely rich seam of his music to be uncovered. A follow-up volume was increasingly inevitable.”

‘Paradise’ told the story of a British musical great for the first time. Classic Sixties hits like Billy Fury’s ‘Halfway To Paradise’, Dusty Springfield’s ‘I Only Want To Be With You’ (co-written by Ivor) and The Walker Brothers’ ‘Make It Easy On Yourself’ were collected. All were arranged or produced by Ivor and heard alongside just-asfantastic tracks by David Bowie, Sonny Childe, Cindy Cole, Tom Jones, Los Bravos and Helen Shapiro. ‘Odyssey’ is additional confirmation of the seemingly limitless scope of Ivor’s talents. More hits are featured: the Alan Price Set’s irresistible Top Five interpretation of Randy Newman’s ‘Simon Smith And The Amazing Dancing Bear’, Dusty Springfield’s kinetic ‘Little By Little’, Frankie Vaughan’s epic chart topper ‘Tower Of Strength’ and the aural drama of Marty Wilde And His Wildcats’ ‘Endless Sleep’.

There are also lesser-known tracks by best-sellers: Los Bravos’ Raymonde-composed soul stomper ‘Brand New Baby’, Cat Stevens’ moody ‘Blackness Of The Night’ and the extraordinary 1966 Walker Brothers’ album track ‘Where’s The Girl’, which pointed to where the solo Scott Walker would soon be heading.

Although Ivor Raymonde was a back-room figure, he made the Top 30 in early 1963 as the clandestine vocalist with The Chucks – a studio demo had been made with no intention of it ending up in record shops. Then, it was issued and a band name needed. Ivor plumped for The Chucks and ‘Loo-Be-Loo’ began rising up the charts. On Odyssey, it is at last given its context.

Going into the reasons for a follow-up to ‘Paradise’, Simon adds “I knew there was more but even a serial curator, late-night trawler like me, at some point thinks ‘the best stuff must now surely be all discovered.’ But finding tracks like Christopher Colt’s ‘Girl In The Mirror’ is like unearthing a rare Donovan track produced by Ray Davies. Probably my favourite discovery was The Martells’ ‘Time To Say Goodnight’ which Ivor produced when he worked at Decca Records. They only released one seven-inch single which sells for over £200, so it’s quite a rarity and more importantly a banger of a track.”

Instead of Ivor, the cover image of ‘Odyssey’ is of Ivor’s wife Nita.

TRACK LISTING

Dusty Springfield: Little By Little
Alan Price Set Simon: Smith And The Amazing Dancing Bear
Los Bravos: Brand New Baby
The Eyes Of Blue: Don’t Ask Me To Mend Your Broken Heart
The Chants: Wearing A Smile
Susan Maughan: That Other Place
Kathy Kirby: The Way Of Love
Cat Stevens: Blackness Of The Night
Paul Slade: Odyssey
Frankie Vaughan: Tower Of Strength
The Martells: Time To Say Goodnight
The Cryin’ Shames: Please Stay
Roy Orbison: Pretty Paper
The Outlaws: Swingin’ Low
Ronnie Carroll Chain Gang 
Del Shannon: From Me To You
The Chucks: Loo-Be-Loo
Olé Jose & The Golden Leaves: Tequila 68
The Rogues: Memories Of Missy
Marty Wilde And His Wildcats: Endless Sleep
Giles, Giles & Fripp: Thursday Morning
Twinkle: Michael Hannah
Christopher Colt: Girl In The Mirror
The Stylistics: I Feel Lucky Tonight
The Walker Brothers: Where's The Girl

Bella Union introduce Dog In The Snow, the moniker of Brighton-based artist Helen Ganya Brown. Dog In The Snow’s Bella Union debut is ‘Vanishing Lands’; an imposing, haunting and luminous collection of songs in the darker spaces between dream-pop, art-rock and electronica, lifted by euphoric melodies, ravishing vocals and absorbing lyrics.

‘Vanishing Lands’ was initially created at Brown’s home in Brighton before co-producer Rob Flynn helped her add shifting, impressionistic swathes of colour, from the ominous chords that open ‘Light’ to the vocal eddies that close ‘Dark’.

Brown wrote 8 of the 10 songs in a 3-week spell after a period of “strange dreams.” She recalls: “Dreams in black and white. I found myself in a dreamland and discovered it was being destroyed. I chose ‘Vanishing Lands’ as an album title because it sounded suitably desolate, and lent the songs a feeling of cohesion.”

TRACK LISTING

Light
Bloom
Dual Terror
Monochrome
This Only City
Icaria
Gold
Roses
Fall Empire
Dark

In 2017, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig began recording a set of songs about a breakup that had yet to happen. Her partnership had drifted into a comfortable state of indecision, stalling when it came time to make big life moves or chase new horizons. She had the sense that she needed to slip the relationship in order to pursue everything else life might have in store—more music, more adventures, a general sense of the unknown. Those feelings drifted steadily into a set of songs that lamented the inevitable loss but, more important, outlined the promise of the future. Recording the ten tracks that became her stunning solo debut, Dawnbreaker, under the new name Daughter of Swords gave Sauser-Monnig permission to go.

Dawnbreaker began as the first phase of Sauser-Monnig’s return to music after stepping to the sidelines for the better part of a decade. Her college trio, Mountain Man, rose to quick acclaim for their peerless harmonies around 2010, but the friends slowly drifted apart, following their own interests to different coasts and concerns. While working on a flower farm as a farmhand, though, Sauser-Monnig realized that she missed the emotional articulation she found in writing songs and singing them and resolved to start again. She pieced together an album just as Mountain Man—now newly gathered in the fertile Piedmont of North Carolina—began to regroup for its second LP, 2018’s aptly named Magic Ship. Working with Sylvan Esso’s Nick Sanborn, Sauser-Monnig shaped what began as quiet reflections into confident compositions, crackling with country swagger and a sparkling pop warmth. They were, after all, preemptive odes to the next phase of life.

Calling the ten tunes of Dawnbreaker breakup songs is to hamstring them with elegiac expectations, to paint them as sad-eyed surrenders to loss and grief. Sure, there is the gentle opener “Fellows,” a hushed number that explores the turmoil of being unable to reciprocate the feelings of a wild and shy, tall and fine man. And there’s the blossoming country shuffle of “Easy Is Hard,” where Sauser-Monnig stands in the yard and sees her lover leave, his taillights fading into the night sky; she can’t sleep, so she gets up to turn the lights and stereo on, to “feel my soul coming down.”  Even there, amid the throes of a life convulsion, there is a wisp of hope and possibility, framed by the way “the dim light change[s] into dawn, rosy blue, pink  fawn.” The very heart of Dawnbreaker is not the impending breakup that inspired many of its songs but the sense of liberation and breaking out that the breakup inspired.

Buoyed by the insistent patter of a drum machine and rich acoustic guitars,
Sauser-Monnig finds herself in search of new thrills during “Gem,” whether pondering the fleeting nature of existence at a waterfall’s edge or watching the shapes of mountains seemingly dance beneath her headlights. The muted, harmonica-lined boogie of “Sun” begins with a vulnerable confession, a revelation of loneliness; it is, however, a low-key anthem for the open road, about giving oneself over to the infinity of solitude and an endless strip of asphalt. Sauser-Monnig captures these scenes with a painter’s eye and delivers them with a novelist’s heart.

There’s no better testament than “Shining Woman,” where Sauser-Monnig portrays a ropy woman navigating her “steel steed” up and down the bends and passes of California’s fabled Highway 1. She openly marvels at that spirit and strength, wishing that for her own life. With Dawnbreaker, she has found it in some measure—the joy of something new, the excitement of risk. Though Sauser-Monnig nearly recorded these songs as barebones folk ballads, she reimagined them with Sanborn and a top-tier crew of North Carolina friends, like fellow Mountain Man singers Amelia Meath and Molly Sarlé, bandleader Phil Cook, and guitarist Ryan Gustafson. These vivid settings highlight the emotional contours of these songs, revealing the complexity that comes with knowing that, in order to live, you sometimes have to let something as strong as love go.

At the start of “Human,” the undeniable climax of Dawnbreaker, Sauser-Monnig wakes up early and finds her lover in bed. She slips out of the room, watches the sun rise alone, and has herself a long think amid nature’s frozen splendor. What does it mean to leave? What does it mean to stay? Is she wrong, and is he right? As the piano rises and her voice multiplies, coming in now from all sides, she admits something crucial to herself: “You can’t will a love to life/But you can do the loving thing: Make like a bird and fly.” It is a moment of reckoning with one’s own liberation, of realizing that sometimes a profound loss is the only way to gain something else. That is the lesson of Dawnbreaker, an intimate document of what it means to set oneself free.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Gorgeous, softly-sung vocals, tenderly plucked guitar and understated percussive drive (is that a CR-78 I hear?), all working together to make Sauser-Monnig's gorgeous artistic vision a reality. Perfect hazy summer songs.

TRACK LISTING

1 Fellows
2 Gem
3 Fields
4 Shining Woman
5 Grasses
6 Easy
7 Rising Sun
8 Long Leaf Pine
9 Human
10 Dawnbreaker

Even this far into the 21st century, the recent social media furore surrounding US congresswoman and free-style dancer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez illustrated that the spectacle of someone dancing without compunction can still ruffle the right (and alt-right) feathers. In which case, all hail the third album from Toronto’s ardent, art-dance sibling trio Doomsquad. Let Yourself Be Seen is the most assertive, ambitious, groove-sodden declaration of intent yet from Trevor, Jaclyn and Allie Blumas: the sound of dancefloor believers and thinkers firing on all personal and political fronts, at a time when we need it most.

Even if Doomsquad never lacked the courage of their convictions, Let Yourself Be Seen ups the stakes. On 2016’s Total Time, the trio issued invitations to free your mind, body and spirit over dirty bass-lines and hypnotic disco jams. And yet, their reliance on unspoken sibling intuition left them fearing that much of its “message and meaning” had gone unheard. Thus, the trio took a more forthright approach for their third album, aiming to “crystallise what Doomsquad is and what it means to us. What we always knew but put at the forefront of this record is that Doomsquad is a project of protest, catharsis and emotional and spiritual reconnection through music and, especially, through dance-music culture. It’s about activating the body on the most fundamental level, into states of change, release and reunion.”

Richly steeped in the influences of acid house, West African disco, spiritual jazz, NYC no-wave and new-age ambient music, Let Yourself Be Seen hums with a sense of vigorous, invigorating purpose. After the overture of ‘Spandrel’, ‘The General Hum’ sends out a buoyant new-wave rallying cry for maximised engagement just when the world seems intent on stifling it. “Is there a place for spirit anymore?” it asks. Kicking in with a percussive bustle that all but defies you to try and stand still, ‘Aimless’ answers in the affirmative.

Elsewhere on the album, Doomsquad’s own dynamic thematic engagement alights on subjects ranging from formative influences to modern societal struggles and eco-crises. ‘Let It Go’ grapples with the challenges of social change at 140BPM, climaxing with a scalding guitar solo to match the heat of its questioning thrust. The mellifluous ‘Emma’ reflects on early-20th-century anarchist and activist Emma Goldman; ‘Dorian’s Closet’, meanwhile, honours New York drag queen Dorian Corey. “Let Yourself Be Seen was fuelled by the inspiration of outsider artists and thinkers before us,” say the band. “Through these songs, we get to glorify some of our heroes.”

Doomsquad's intent to carry their heroes’ “messages of empowerment, release and spiritual self-determination” to new audiences peaks on the title-track, where the album’s disparate parts build to a disco inferno with a call to “Let yourself be seen!” ‘The Last Two Palm Trees in LA’ offers an empathetic take on a similar theme, based on the acceptance of ageing, before ‘Weather Patterns’ steers a reflection on unity in the face of global crisis to a buffeting crescendo with a thrilling urgency.

The result is an album for fraught political times, charged by the impetus to bring “music back to the body”. Close-to-home influences on that score include Tanya Tagaq and Peaches, both of whom Doomsquad have toured with; further afield, Peter Gabriel, Diamanda Galás, Genesis P-Orridge and Underworld numbered among inspirations. Meanwhile, as the trio’s creative process took them from a lakeside cabin to a studio in Toronto, they benefited from the input of kindred spirits such as Ejji Smith, whose virtuoso guitar-shredding propels ‘Let It Go’. Israeli jazz composer Itamar Erez adds watery synths to ‘Emma’, while a key studio collaborator was producer/artist Sandro Perri, whose credits include Barzin.

TRACK LISTING

1 Spandrel
2 General Hum
3 Aimless
4 Let It Go
5 Emma
6 Spandrel II
7 Dorian's Closet
8 Let Yourself Be Seen
9 The Last Two Palm Trees In L.A.
10 Weather Patterns

“What came before you is why you’re here now,” declares the man born Eric Brandon Pulido. “So embrace both the past and the present.”

The current frontman of Texan legends Midlake embraces both past and present times for his glorious debut solo album, To Each His Own, under his new enigmatic alias E.B. The Younger. It’s a deeply personal record, rooted in Pulido’s love of warm, glowing rock, folk and country hues that came of age in the 1970s woven with contemporary recalibrations: guitars ripple, sigh and sizzle alongside gliding keyboards over crisp, choppy and becalmed rhythms. Pulido’s lyrics equally look back and forth, philosophising about his place in the world, the choices he’s made, and where they have taken him.

Or, as he describes To Each His Own, “an eleven-song journey through the life and times of a wayward Midlaker seeking to find purpose in an uncharted land. Will he find his way? Listen, and ye shall find.”

Pulido’s “wayward” phase began in 2014 with a break from Midlake, “to invest time in kids and musical projects less physically demanding”, he says. His first project was the transatlantic collective BNQT, a self-described ‘poor man’s Travelling Wilburys’ featuring Pulido, Ben Bridwell (Band of Horses), Fran Healy (Travis), Jason Lytle (Granddaddy) and Alex Kapranos (Franz Ferdinand) who recorded the 2017 album BNQT – Volume 1. But To Each His Own is all Pulido – or rather, E.B. The Younger.

“It’s an antiquated way of naming a younger member of a family,” he explains. “I’m expressing, simply, that something greater came before me. It’s countering the idea in today’s culture that everything revolves around ourselves, that we’re the most important thing in the world. I feel that humility is a lost virtue – you only have to look at America’s current leader - which I want this record to represent. Honesty, empathy, love.”

In this case, honesty begins at home. Solo debutantes typically distance themselves from their musical past, but Pulido freely acknowledges Midlake’s presence on To Each His Own, from the three Midlakers in his backing band to an album title that stems from his memories of band discussions.

Says Pulido: “It’s very common in bands to have artistic differences, and we were no exception. Saying ‘To each his own’ was almost a way to collectively acquiesce and move forward when differences would arise. It’s OK that we feel differently, because both opinions are valid. The phrase is also about me doing something on my own, a statement that it’s OK to define who you are outside of what has defined you before.”

With Pulido on lead vocals and acoustic guitar, he drafted in Midlakers (and BNQT contributors) Joey McClellan (electric guitar), McKenzie Smith (drums) and Jesse Chandler (flute), who dovetail with Scott Lee (bass), Daniel Creamer (keyboards) and Beau Bedford (keyboards) from local country-funksters The Texas Gentlemen to form an empathic ‘alt.Wrecking Crew’ of session

players. Bedford is also the album’s principal producer, while studio engineer and Centromatic drummer Matt Pence acted as the overarching producer, alongside Pulido, as well as adding percussion and occasional drums.

As Pulido explains, “Midlake self-produced and recorded everything, but as with BNQT, I wanted to embrace collaboration. I’d present songs with just voice and acoustic guitar and ask the musicians where they heard things going, and so we built the songs up organically.”

Within that organic build, Pulido still had specific ideas in mind. He singles out the late, great Harry Nilsson as a key influence. “Midlake songs were often cerebral and minor-key and I wanted some of mine to be more playful and buoyant and major key, which Harry did so well, while still making deep, thoughtful music.”

Pulido also hears traces of The Eagles, Cat Stevens, Joni Mitchell, Wings and CS&N in To Each His Own, plus an “eighties vibe” to the record’s freewheeling lead single ‘Used To Be’, inspired by The Last Waltz, the film documentary about Pulido’s all-time favourites, The Band. As he recalls, “The guys are sitting backstage playing ‘Old Time Religion’, and Robbie Robertson says, ‘It’s not like it used to be!’, which has always stuck with me. But it’s OK by me that it’s not like it used to be. Embrace where you’re at, and look forward. Be both the old and the young.”

The Old and The Young is a familiar concept to Midlake fans, as a songtitle from the band’s last album Antiphon. In one sense, ‘The Young’ are also represented here by Conrad Lee Pulido, Eric’s three-year-old son, whose uninhibited dancing to calypso rhythms (from Harry Belafonte and Nilsson tracks) inspires the carefree Tropicália of ‘CLP’. A similarly summery vibe energises ‘On An Island’, inspired by an artist retreat (on the island of Nantucket) where Pulido, “focused on, and finished, several of the songs for the album.” But again Pulido finds a double meaning: “To be an island means you don’t live or march to the beat of anyone else’s drum.”

Self-determination also defines the sumptuous, soft-rocking “When The Time Comes” where Pulido gently mocks himself as the so-called ‘artist’ who chose to “follow the dream” but without any guarantee of job security or a pension. Moreover, the exquisite ‘Hope Arrives’ recognises that making art typically involves self-doubt, as Midlake experienced. As Pulido recalls, “I felt that fear controlled the obstacles that existed for the band. But when hope arrives, fear will disappear, and peace will come.”

Midlake also figure in the acoustic, sparse ‘Monterey’, named after the Californian idyll where the band played their last show to date, after which Pulido suggested a break would benefit all: to step off the merry-go-round for a while after riding it together for 15 years. “I said, we’ll pick things back up if and when it makes sense to everyone, trust me,” he recalls. “And I was at peace with our decision.”

The closing title track emanates a palpable sense of peace while crystalising Pulido’s past-present/old-young mindset: “I’ve been about all alone / I’ve never felt so good before… And what we did before / No I do not ignore”. With a new BNQT album in the works and, if all goes to plan, a Midlake album to follow, Pulido is already looking forward. But his present is E.B The Younger, and his effortlessly melodic, gorgeous songs invested with honesty, empathy and love. Listen, and ye shall find.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Half way between poppy Americana and folky Indie, Pulido is more than capable of penning an effective tune, with richly textured acoustic instrumental backdrops forming the perfect base layer for his unmistakeable vocal talents. Warm, rich and beautifully immersive.

TRACK LISTING

1. Used To Be
2. When The Time Comes
3. CLP
4. Down And Out
5. Don't Forget Me
6. Out Of The Woods
7. Monterey
8. Hope Arrives
9. On An Island
10. A Matter Of Time
11. To Each His Own

“I’d always wanted Midlake to experiment more with the arrangements, or to get more into psychedelic textures,” says Paul Alexander, the bassist from Denton’s prog-folk voyagers. Those ambitions are fulfilled on Astropsychosis, Alexander’s debut album as Two Medicine, released via Bella Union in November. Richly ambitious in its sonic colour and conceptual reach, Astropsychosis is an album of luminous space and mindful grace, its depths and details coaxed into orbit with the lightness of an artist in his element.

Alexander began facing his future in January 2016, after a year-long break from music following Midlake’s tour for 2013’s Antiphon. “I wanted to find out if I could write songs and if I could sing them – basically, whether or not I could make an album on my own,” he asks. Over 15 months of writing, arranging and recording (in Midlake’s old studio in Denton), he got his answer. From the early reference points of Pet Sounds, dream-pop and pre–Dark Side of the Moon-era Pink Floyd, Astropsychosis blossomed into a very modern exploration of sound and psychedelia, bright on top and burning with purpose below.

TRACK LISTING

1 SF
2 Oblivion
3 Will Not
4 Voice
5 Gold
6 An Eye For An I
7 Astropsychosis
8 Kuopio
9 tmrw

The eighth album from Marissa Nadler, For My Crimes, is the sound of turmoil giving way to truth. The songs stare down the dark realization that love may not be enough to keep two people together through distance and differing needs. By asking these difficult questions about her relationships, Nadler has found a stronger sense of self and a sharper voice as both a songwriter and a vocalist, culminating in her most evocative entry in an already impressive discography. 

Following the release of 2016’s acclaimed Strangers, Nadler’s relationships were put to the test as she left the Boston area on tour. She wrote throughout 2017 about this tension, and ended up with three times as many songs as she needed. But after reviewing the demos with her co-producers Justin Raisen and Lawrence Rothman, Nadler wrote a flurry of tight but no less intense new songs in the week before arriving at Rothman’s Laurel Canyon studio, House of Lux, in early January. She considered it a challenge to herself, applying new strategies and structures to the craft of “slow music” she’s honed over the last 15 years. From that group of songs came nearly all of the singles on For My Crimes, some of the most indelible of Nadler’s career.

The opening title track is classic Nadler: a sweeping, vaguely Southern drama of voices, strings, and acoustic guitar, that walks the fine line between character song and personal indictment by metaphor. “For My Crimes” spawned out of a songwriting exercise in which Nadler wrote from the perspective of someone on death row, but the song casts a dark shadow over an album that turns marital conflict into inner reflection. Helping Nadler dig down into the song’s remorseful soul is her old friend Angel Olsen, who serves as a distraught echo from beyond in the chorus.

“Blue Vapor” has an intoxicating raw energy luring you in, somewhere between Springsteen and a grunge band playing MTV Unplugged back in the day. It feels at once tight and improvisational, balancing on little more than Nadler’s steady strumming and vulnerable harmonies with Kristin Kontrol (of Dum Dum Girls), until the heavy, purposeful style of Hole drummer Patty Schemel conjures chaos in the second half. This slow burn feeling is all too appropriate for a song centred around repeating patterns and creeping numbness in a relationship. “Blue Vapor” names that strange ambivalence and turns it into a chant that hangs in the air long after the song ends.

Dreaminess and eeriness have often been two sides of the same coin in Marissa Nadler songs. Where “For My Crimes” and “Blue Vapor” come from her dark side, the album has plenty of moments that twinkle in their sadness and sentimentality. “I Can’t Listen to Gene Clark Anymore” is one of those highly specific songs you’ll get if you’ve ever lost a favourite band to your own broken heart. It sways perfectly in its bittersweet-ness, like a slow dance you never want to end. After the strings swell and the bass pedals kick in, Nadler coos, “Cause I remember/The songs you sang/To me when it was you/I was falling for.” Later, closing track “Said Goodbye To That Car” turns a final odometer reading into a rhythm for a catchy, wistful hook: “1-1-9-6-5-7, and the engine blew/“1-1-9-6-5-7, and I thought of you,” Nadler lulls, harmonizing with herself. It’s an ingenious way to capture the end of an era in one small moment, and she moves as delicately as you would handling an old photo with her sweet oohs.

Bolstering the intimacy of these songs is the strong feminine energy that defined their recording. Between Rothman’s fluidity with both gender and genre (as heard on his 2017 album The Book of Law), and Raisen’s track record of successful collaborations with strong women (Olsen, Kim Gordon, Charli XCX), Nadler felt empowered to explore without judgement in the studio. With the exception of a single saxophonist, every player on the album is a woman of notable pedigree and distinct style, many of whom have played with Nadler over the years. In addition to the cameos by Angel Olsen and Kristin Kontrol, Sharon Van Etten sings backup on “I Can’t Listen to Gene Clark Anymore” and “Lover Release Me.” Mary Lattimore joins on harp for “Are You Really Gonna Move to the South,” while the great experimental multi-instrumentalist Janel Leppin plays strings throughout the record.

These women and others helped make For My Crimes as dynamic as it is intimate, but Nadler’s mesmerizing voice—stripped of nearly all reverb—is what sits at the center of these songs. You can hear the emotional range of her performances more than ever before, from the spectral harmonizing of “Are You Really Gonna Move To The South” to the cheeky boredom of “All Out Of Catastrophes,” two other highlights. As a singer, she has never sounded more confident than she does here.

Adding to the album’s deeply personal feeling is its abstracted artwork, featuring Nadler’s original oil paintings. Though Nadler is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and a semi-retired art teacher (she has one student left—a 95-year-old named Doris), For My Crimes marks the first album cover bearing one of her paintings. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Nadler has never failed to tickle the feels with her own brand of gothic acousticry, slowly morphing from quiet folk ballads into grand, echoic anthems. Layering Nadler's haunting vocals on top of each-other to great effect and underpinned with a spine-tinglingly haunting instrumental sensibility, this is without a doubt, her greatest work. Beautiful.

TRACK LISTING

1 For My Crimes
2 I Can't Listen To Gene Clark Anymore
3 Are You Really Going To Move To The South?
4 Lover Release Me
5 Blue Vapor
6 Interlocking
7 All Out Of Catastrophes
8 Dream Dream Big In The Sky
9 You're Only Harmless When You Sleep
10 Flame Thrower
11 Said Goodbye To That Car

“You shouldn't have a tough time finding the angle to Deportation Blues,” claims Brian ‘BC Camplight’ Christinzio. “The past few years have been a fucking nightmare.”

But what a fucking great record he’s made off the back of his nightmare. His second album for Bella Union, Deportation Blues is an exhilarating, dynamic document of calamity and stress, relayed through richly melodic and bold arrangements spanning singer-songwriter classicism, gnarly synth-pop, ‘50s rock’n’roll and various junctures between, mirroring their maverick creator’s jarred emotions and fractured mindset.

For the full story, you have to head back to before Christinzio’s Bella Union debut, 2015’s How To Die In The North. Born in New Jersey, but living in Philadelphia, Christinzio had released two albums while battling addiction and mental illness. Both albums won rave reviews and earned Christinzio a reputation as one of independent music’s most forward-thinking artists. Soon after, however, as illness rendered him unable to function as a working songwriter, Christinzio retreated to a life squatting in an abandoned church. Despite some notable appearances as a session pianist (Sharon Van Etten) and occasional live work for Philly faves The War On Drugs (Robbie Bennett and David Hartley were in the original BC live band) he knew a sea change was needed in order to regain his career and sanity.

Feeling he’d be “dead or in jail if I stayed”, he acted on a friend’s suggestion to cross the ocean to Manchester. There, Christinzio found new inspiration, new friends, a girlfriend, a dog, and finally a new album (his first in eight years).

So, imagine his mood when he fell foul of UK immigration. “I’d had such high hopes for How To Die In The North, and I was told I was being deported two days after it came out, and banned from the UK. The next thing I know, I’m playing Pac Man in my parents’ basement, thinking, this is my life now.”

Occasional gigs in Europe, where his Manchester-based band could meet him, and extended sojourns in Dublin and Paris, broke up the monotony, but it was still like “living in a constant panic attack.”

But then the cavalry arrived! Courtesy of his grandparents, Christinzio secured Italian citizenship. It cost time, money and a portion of his sanity, “but after a year and a half I could finally shove my Italian papers in their faces at the airport and return to sunny Manchester. The thing is, despite being American, I feel Mancunian, and I couldn’t think about making another record, until I got back.”

To add insult to injury, “Brexit happened, like a day after I got back. Can I get a fucking break here, please?”

Once the dust had settled, Christinzio realised, “I didn’t feel any better, I had so much anger, I felt destroyed. The demons were back and had lost me friends, I’d drunk too much, and I felt nothing but dread and disease. I thought, I can’t wait to hear what this next album is going to sound like.”

Recording in Liverpool’s Whitewood studios, Christinzio locked himself in the windowless studio and recorded almost exclusively in the dark. “The thoughts and sounds that began to flow out of me were pretty scary. I’m pretty sure the engineer started carrying a shiv in his pocket after about the second day. Nothing playful sounding came out. If the last album had elements of whimsy, the thought of any on this album made me want to vomit.” “A couple of months later we had finished Deportation Blues and emerged from the studio like mole people”. Christinzio recorded the album mostly on his own, plus drummer Adam Dawson, occasional guitar by Robbie Rush, and a couple of session horn players. The lead track is ‘I’m Desperate’, “an ominous synth burner,” says Christinzio, with a Suicide-style throb and a haunting female vocal counterpoint that underlines the album’s manic, careering edge, fantastic hooks and instrumental verve. It’s an uncompromising way to introduce Deportation Blues, likewise the album’s title-track opener. Bookended by metallic power chords, cascading synths and a gorgeous downbeat mood lead into slower doo-wop complete with howling falsetto. “It’s instantly a different, darker record than How To Die In The North,” Christinzio notes. Deportation Blues is also noticeably more electronic than its predecessor. “I was feeling cold so every time something sounded pretty, I replaced it with something that sounded like an ice pick. The apocalyptic nuclear feel really appealed.” Throughout, Christinzio sounds as if he’s walking a knife-edge. Take second track ‘I’m In A Weird Place Now’, a heady conflagration of Spector and Springsteen, with Christinzio confessing “And there’s something about Manchester town / And the silly little things she makes me do.” “I like the oppressiveness of the weather in Manchester, it brings everyone down to my level” he explains. The fried mood continues on ‘Hell Or Pennsylvania’, splicing woozy noir jazz lounge-drunk cabaret by way of ‘50s legend Jerry Lee Lewis - Christinzio’s entry point to music through his mother’s record collection. “It’s the first time I’ve reflected that on a record,” he says. “Jerry Lee was this guy bashing at a piano who didn’t give a shit, and I didn’t give a shit.” The lyrical reference to “lemon twirls” meanwhile, represents Brian’s struggle with substance abuse: “The big choruses are a celebration of cocaine whilst the jazz sections represent the lament, the familiar loathsome aftermath.” The sudden changes of mood and style are also metaphorical. For example, ‘Am I Dead’ embraces cinematic horns, broody pop and synth-bass afro-funk. “I go through highs and lows and have trouble staying entertained,” he admits. “A musical part can state its purpose in fifteen seconds, sometimes it doesn’t need repeating. The trick is tying everything together without it sounding confusing.” ‘Am I Dead’ is segued between ‘When I Think Of My Dog’ and ‘Midnight Ease’, two plush, heart-aching piano ballads with rippling saxophone. After ‘Fire In England’, a greasy, nervy rocker, is a bitter ode to British PM – and former immigration controller (as Home Secretary) Theresa May (“dresses like a bus seat, doesn’t she?”). It’s a complex, bleak record I guess” Christinzio concludes. “As dramatic as it may sound, this album was made by a dude who wasn’t sure he’d be alive the next day. Nothing is there for any other reason than it’s the truth. It’s not trying to sound cool or get on the radio.” Though Christinzio points out “this is no redemption I-saw-the-light story,” he is allowing himself a little bit of hope for once: “I’ve never been as pleased with where I am artistically as I am right now.” On top, his new band, “is phenomenal.” Alongside trusted drummer Dawson is Luke Barton (guitars, synths), guitarist Tom Rothery and multi-instrumentalist/ backing singer Ali Bell. Leading them is a man that a bartender in Manchester recently described as “like Mozart and Tony Soprano had a kid." Brian Christinzio, and BC Camplight, genius and pain, may be here to stay at last.

TRACK LISTING

1 Deportation Blues
2 I'm In A Weird Place Now
3 Hell Or Pennsylvania
4 I'm Desperate
5 When I Think Of My Dog
6 Am I Dead Yet?
7 Midnight Ease
8 Fire In England
9 Until You Kiss Me

Ari Roar - moniker of Texan singer songwriter Caleb Campbell - releases his debut album ‘Calm Down’ via Bella Union

With intuitive powers of clarity and concision to the fore, ‘Calm Down’ is an album that draws on 1960s pop and modern DIY heroes for a set of lovingly languid, lo-fi miniatures. Depths of detail and lived experience bustle beneath effortlessly melodic surfaces - sure signs of a writer in confident command of his pitch.

With a tight run time of 28 minutes and few of its 15 songs breaching the two-minute mark, ‘Calm Down’ is not an album that overstates its case. ‘Called In’ merges the influences of garage pop and Grandaddy in its plaintive plea to “stay alert,” while the brightly summery ‘Windowsill’ and literal shaggy-dog tale ‘Lost And Found’ show an easy lightness of narrative touch and mood control.

Elsewhere, Ari makes weightless work of variously playful, psychedelic material, navigating his songs with expressive ease even when he’s documenting difficulties navigating high school hallways on ‘Don’t Have A Fit’. ‘Off And On’ is luminous, ‘Implode’ sweetly chugging. ‘Sock Drawer’ recounts an inner voyage with a gently psychedelic touch before the playful strut of ‘Choke’ and buoyant release of ‘Lucky One’ offer precision-judged notes of climactic uplift.

For Ari, ‘Calm Down’ is a milestone in a journey that began in Dallas, Texas, where he started songwriting on his family’s “super-old, outof- tune piano” as a child. Early inspirations included Grandaddy’s ‘Under The Western Freeway’ and Radiohead’s ‘OK Computer’; his first concert experience was The Doobie Brothers, with his parents. But it was a gorgeous solo performance by Jason Schwartzman in the teen comedy ‘Slackers’ that inspired Ari to start writing songs with lyrics at 14: “I remember being mesmerized by it… and I went into my room and started trying to write something similar. After that I just never stopped.”

TRACK LISTING

Calm Down
Called In
Windowsill
Lost And Found
Picked The Lock
Hidden Playground
Don't Have It
Off And On
Implode
Feeding Out The Slack
Blow Dry
In My Day
Sock Drawer
Choke
Lucky One

Long before they were a band, Montreal duo The Beat Escape took a small first step towards a longer journey at a university video class. “We made a short oddball work; a video piece that followed two characters through a psychedelic waking dream,” say Beat Escapists Addy Weitzman and Patrick A Boivin of their founding collaboration. Many other projects and outside collaborations later, the duo have crafted a debut album their younger selves would be proud of: Released through Bella Union, the sublimely immersive ‘Life Is Short The Answer’s Long’ plays like a waking dream of near-psychedelic electronic pop, moving to its own beat in the push-pull of forward motion and submerged reflection.

That sense of propulsion ushers opener ‘Sign Of Age’ into rising view, its sparse drums, hypnotic sequence and melancholic chords resembling house music as reimagined by Angelo Badalamenti. The enveloping mood holds as ‘Moon In Aquarius’ unfurls like a nighttime road ahead, ghosted by narcotic harmonies. ‘Limestone Alps’ lingers meditatively, hymnal vocals reverberating. ‘Where Water Ends’ and ‘More Dreams’, meanwhile, navigate the porous boundary lines between Krautrock, Factory Records and obscure minimal wave records of the 80s.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Superb throbbing pseudo-synthery from The Beat Escape, Bella Union's answer to Pye corner Audio mix swooning pads and soaring vocal abstractions around a dynamic core of weighted percussion, flickering arpeggios and spine-tingling euphoric leads.

TRACK LISTING

Sign Of Age
Moon In Aquarius
Limestone Alps
Where Water Ends
More Dreams
Then I Drift Away
Seeing Is Forgetting
Thousand Pound Shoes
Nemo Propheta

Sequestered away in rural bliss, 90 minutes north of Seattle on the Washington state coast, Karl Blau has been making records for 20 years but never with European distribution. So, when Bella Union released ‘Introducing Karl Blau’ in 2015, it shone a belated and deserved light on “one of the great hidden treasures of music,” claimed album producer Tucker Martine.

However, given ‘Introducing’s specific agenda - a set of gorgeous, lush cover versions drawing mostly on vintage Nashville’s country-soul with Blau concentrating on his rich, reverberating voice - his latest album ‘Out Her Space’ is so different that it could be titled ‘Reintroducing Karl Blau’.

‘Out Her Space’ features Blau’s own material, production and multi-instrumental skills and forges a gorgeous, languid and hook-infested gumbo of soul, funk, some jazzy blowing and Afro-pop, to arrive somewhere else entirely. Or as the Secretly Important blog says of Blau: “He manages to find what’s unique about a genre and throws it against the wall like a fist full of wet noodles; over and over, until what’s stuck is a unique genre amalgam.”

The album also testifies to Blau’s studio skills, as he captures the glimmering, humid depths of those sweltering southern influences, despite his north-western heritage. But then Blau has engineered and produced a heap of records for himself and others, often at his home in Anacortes, releasing records on Washington’s favourite indies K and Knw-Yr-Own, as well as through his own Kelp Lunacy Advanced Plagiarism Society subscription service.

TRACK LISTING

Slow Children
Poor The War Away
Beckon
Valley Of Sadness
Blue As My Name
I’ve Got The Sounds (Like You’ve Got The Blues)
Where Ya Goin’ Papa
Dub The War Away

For a singer songwriter, the benefit of starting from a point of quiet is the room it allows for manoeuvre afterwards. Such is the case with the subtly cinematic second album from Sandra Sumie Nagano, ‘Lost In Light’, through Bella Union.

On 2013’s eponymous debut, Sumie tapped into the mid-point between Scandinavian and Japanese folk music to deliver an album of blissful restraint, its quietude shaped by a combination of parenthood and natural inclination.

The follow-up is an album of stealthy dynamism, drama and mystery, its impact made all the greater because it skirts obvious routes to dance just out of hand’s reach, always seeming to be on the verge of departure.

Those who helped Sumie climb that poised peak included producer Filip Leyman, in whose Gothenburg studio the album was recorded. Fellow contributors numbered Karl Vento and Albert af Ekenstam on electric guitars, Emma Strååt and Kajsa Persson on strings and Max Lindahl on trumpet.

Sumie has also surfaced on others’ work. She sings on ‘Cover Hearts’, a track from sometime soundtrack composer David Wenngren’s Library Tapes project and on Gothenburg electro-collective Tegami’s pulsing ‘Screen Dream’. Meanwhile, back at base camp, ‘Lost In Light’ is a screen-style dream of an album itself: immersive while it lasts, haunting after it flickers out of view.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Beautiful brittle acoustic guitar, slowly pulling strings and the haunting addition of Nagano's beautiful vocals make this an essential addition to any collection.

TRACK LISTING

Fortune
Night Rain
Blue Lines
Pouring Down
Frö
Divine Wind
Leave Me
The Only Lady
Walk Away

They may share a name and home country with one of Nordic TV’s darkest detective dramas, but you won’t find any dismembered bodies or nihilistic feelings on Broen’s ‘I <3 Art’, released through Bella Union.

Bursting with experi-pop exuberance and driven by a spirit of warm commonality, the five-piece’s debut album exults in the pleasures of intelligent music; its deep rhythms, dreamy melodies and dazzling sounds building bridges between bustles of jazzy percussion, psychedelic flourishes, funk grooves, mellifluous electronics and hip-hop beats. And if Norwegian-noir clichés and all other generic conventions are playfully bucked on its brightly exploratory way, such is Broen’s mission.

Recorded in Oslo’s Studio Paradiso, engineered by Jaga Jazzist’s Marcus Forsgren, and mixed by the band with Nick Terry, ‘I <3 Art’ bursts with invigorating life.

As Hans Hulbækmo (drums) puts it, “It’s both soft and hard. Beautiful and ugly or corny. Adventurous and experimental but still groovy. It’s honest and ironic. It has a lot of good energy. It was recorded live in the studio and it was a very joyful and positive experience. I think that shines through in the music, at least for us”.

TRACK LISTING

(Waters Changing)
Time
Black Line
<3
You (Detective)
Serenade
Pride
Water Is My Mirror

A heavenly voice couched in spellbinding Country & Western ballads, with a devastating emotional delivery: Holly Macve is a fantastic addition to the Bella Union family and her album ‘Golden Eagle’ is one of the most remarkably assured debuts of this or any other year, especially given that she’s only 21 years old.

“Words are my main love,” she declares. “I love songs that tell stories and take you somewhere else. I’ve always been drawn to that old country sound with its simple and memorable melodies. I enjoy music that feels timeless, that you don’t know quite when it was recorded.”

The bulk of ‘Golden Eagle’ was recorded in Newcastle at the home studio of producer Paul Gregory (of Bella Union labelmates Lanterns On The Lake), with extra recording in Brighton and London. Throughout, ‘Golden Eagle’ remains beautifully spare and delicate, putting Holly’s goosebumpraising voice centre stage, beautifully controlled yet riven with feeling.

On stage she’s a magnetic presence; it’s not just voice and songs. Audiences who caught her supporting the likes of John Grant, Villagers and Benjamin Clementine - incredible company to keep at this early stage - were doubtless stopped in their tracks. ‘Golden Eagle’ is surely going to have the same effect.

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: This album would sit comfortably alongside the traditional honky-tonk / country of Patsy Cline as easily as it would more contemporary artists such as Gillian Welch and Laura Marling. The song structures follow a 'classic' country format, but the simplicity and stripped back nature of the recording (often just guitar or piano and vocals) allows for Holly's incredible, vocals to weave their magic and create a really wonderful, timeless album.

TRACK LISTING

White Bridge
Corner Of My Mind
Heartbreak Blues
Shell
All Of Its Glory
Timbuktu
Fear
No One Has The Answers
Golden Eagle
Sycamore Tree

Following much acclaim for their sophomore album ‘A Hermitage’, which was released in June 2016 via Bella Union, South Korean trio Jambinai announce that their debut album ‘Differance’ will be released on vinyl for the first time outside of South Korea. The debut full-length from Jambinai, originally released in February 2012, is a challenging and compelling affair that won them the prize for Best Crossover Album at the 2013 Korean Music Awards. A heady mixture of traditional instrumentation, crashing percussion and classic crescentic post-rock, Jambinai manage to maintain the brooding atmospherics and driven aesthetic through rapid-fire stylistic changes and skillful segues. Part metal, part instrumental and cinematic rock, and entirely fascinating, this is an excellent standalone outing, and a brilliant insight into the formation of the sound heard on their latest epic 'A Hermitage'.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Gloomy, brooding instrumental rock meets crashing metallic bursts, all interspersed with forlorn strings, floating ambience and triumphant crescendos. A superb outing, and a vastly underappreciated gem now available on vinyl!

TRACK LISTING

Time Of Extinction
Grace Kelly
Glow Upon Closed Eyes
Paramita Pt. 1
Paramita Pt. 2
Hand Of Redemption
Empty Pupil Pt. 1
Empty Pupil Pt. 2
Connection

In the two and a half years since the release of their last album ‘Rookie’, Brisbane’s The Trouble With Templeton have, says frontman Thomas Calder, been busy “breaking down and re-assembling what it means to make music for us.” On the evidence of the richly confident and clear-sighted ‘Someday, Buddy’, released through Bella Union, that time was well spent.

The full-bodied songs here can take the emphasis, no trouble. The Trouble With Templeton weren’t slouching on ‘Rookie’, where Calder and company wedded vibrant melodies and multifarious alt-rock flavours - epic, jangly, glam - to a core of emotive cogency. On ‘Someday, Buddy’, however, their personality emerges sharper and clearer. “Our goal was to make a record that is raw, bare and honest,” says Calder, a claim borne out by the incisive lyrics of the swelling ‘Sailor’ and lilting ‘Heavy Trouble’, where Calder’s falsetto dances over a tender indie folk backdrop.

Sometimes fragile, sometimes forceful, Calder’s voice remains a marvel on ‘Bad Mistake’, a combination of intricate verses and a huge chorus pitched somewhere between Pavement and Elliott Smith.  ‘Someday, Buddy’s recipe is one of slow burn songs harbouring great reserves of potency: the discreet neo glam swagger of ‘Complex Lips’, the sunburst chorus of ‘Vernon’, the gorgeous ripples of album highlight ‘1832’.

For The Trouble With Templeton, the album is the culmination of time spent refining the band’s qualities following extensive touring for ‘Rookie’. After taking time out to recharge their batteries, Calder, Ritchie Daniell (drums) and Sam Pankhurst (bass) recorded as a trio with help from their friend Matt Redlich; later, they were joined by another buddy, guitarist Jack Richardson. As a result, says Calder, the band’s bonds are “stronger than ever.” By the time ‘Someday, Buddy’ fades out with the understated confidence and poised beauty of ‘Sturdy Boy’ no one could doubt it.

TRACK LISTING

Sailor
Heavy Trouble
Bad Mistake
Complex Lips
Vernon
I Want Love
Double Life
1832
Sturdy Boy

Having announced themselves to the world with their acclaimed self-titled debut in 2014, Arc Iris return with their second album, ‘Moon Saloon’, released on Bella Union.

‘Moon Saloon’ constitutes a natural progression from the first album’s whimsical explorations. Produced by the group and mixed by electronic producer David Wrench of FKA Twigs and Caribou fame, the album showcases beat-heavy melodies and textural, grooveriding rhythms. It developed from the band’s distillations of musical influences, combining traditional elements with percussive structures and dense, beguiling harmonies.

In many ways this second album captures Arc Iris’ musical odyssey as a band. “It has a heavier sound, more intense,” says Arc Iris keyboardist Zach Tenorio- Miller, who makes liberal use of sampling in many of the songs. The group matches an unusual array of organic acoustic instruments with layered electronic sounds.

“Though they are only a three-piece, they have a large arsenal of sounds and sensibilities to work with, and they use every bit of it to make beautifully textured soundscapes difficult to box into any genre.” - Stereogum

TRACK LISTING

Kaleidoscope
Kingdom Come
Paint With The Sun
Pretending
She Arose
Lilly
Johnny
Saturation Brain
Rainy Days
Moon Saloon

M. Ward returns with a stunning new album, ‘More Rain’, released on Bella Union. Ward has released a string of acclaimed solo albums over the past several years, along with five albums with Zooey Deschanel as She & Him and a 2009 collaborative album with My Morning Jacket’s Jim James and Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis under the moniker Monsters Of Folk.

In addition to his celebrated work as a musician, Ward is an accomplished producer, handling those duties for such luminaries as Mavis Staples, Jenny Lewis and Carlos Forster as well as his own projects.

M. Ward knows how to live with rain. Having spent the last decadeand- a-half based in the perennially damp Portland, Oregon, the singer-songwriter and producer has learned how to shine through the soggy gloom by simply embracing its inevitability. For Ward, there is inspiration in a dark sky and harmony in foreboding winds. With his new album ‘More Rain’ he has made a true gotta-stay-indoors, rainyseason record that looks upwards through the weather while reflecting on his past.

“I think one of the biggest mysteries of America right now is this: How are we able to process unending bad news on Page One and then go about our lives the way the style section portrays us?” says Ward. “There must be a place in our brains that allows us to take a bird’s-eye view of humanity, and I think music is good at helping people - myself included - go to that place.”

This album, Ward’s eighth solo affair, finds the artist picking up the tempo and volume a bit from his previous release, 2012’s ‘A Wasteland Companion’. Where that record introspectively looked in from the outside, ‘More Rain’ finds Ward on the inside, gazing out. Begun four years ago and imagined initially as a DIY doo-wop album that would feature Ward experimenting with layering his own voice, it soon branched out in different directions, a move that he credits largely to his collaborators here who include REM.’s Peter Buck, Neko Case, kd lang, The Secret Sisters and Joey Spampinato of NRBQ.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: More warm 50's/60's vibes from the golden voiced maestro. Another enveloping record where everything feels just right. Great songs, obviously.

TRACK LISTING

(More Rain)
Pirate Dial
Time Won’t Wait Up
Confession
I’m Listening (Child’s Theme)
Girl From Conejo Valley
Slow Driving Man
You’re So Good To Me
Temptation
Phenomenon
Little Nany
I’m Going Higher

Wild Nothing, aka Brooklyn-based musician Jake Tatum, released his debut album ‘Gemini’ in 2010 to critical acclaim. Five years on, with an equally impressive sophomore release and a series of EPs under his belt, Tatum is pleased to announce his third-studio album and self-proclaimed most “mature and honest” work to date, ‘Life Of Pause’.

When Jack Tatum began work on ‘Life Of Pause’ he had fascinating ambitions. “I desperately wanted for this to be the kind of record that would displace me,” he says. “I’m terrified by the idea of being any one thing, or being of any one genre. And whether or not I accomplish that, I know that my only hope of getting there is to constantly reinvent. That reinvention doesn’t need to be drastic, but every new record has to have its own identity, and it has to have a separate set of goals from what came before.”

‘Life Of Pause’ is an exquisitely arranged and beautifully recorded collection of songs that marry the immediate with the indefinable. “I allowed myself to go down every route I could imagine even if it ended up not working for me,” he says. “I owe it to myself to take as many risks as possible. Songs are songs you have to allow yourself to be open to everything.”

After a prolonged period of writing and experimentation recording took place over several weeks in both Los Angeles and Stockholm, with producer Thom Monahan (Devendra Banhart, Beachwood Sparks) helping Tatum in his search for a more natural and organically textured sound. In Sweden, in a studio once owned by ABBA, they enlisted Peter, Bjorn & John drummer John Ericsson and fellow Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra veteran TK to contribute drums and marimba. In California, at Monahan’s home, Tatum collaborated with Medicine guitarist Brad Laner and a crew of saxophonists.

From the hypnotic polyrhythms of ‘Reichpop’ to the sugary howl of ‘Japanese Alice’ to the hallucinogenic R&B of ‘A Woman’s Wisdom’, the result is a complete, fully immersive listening environment. “I just kept things really simple, writing as ideas came to me,” he says. “There’s definitely a different kind of ‘self’ in the picture this time around. There’s no real love lost, it’s much more a record of coming to terms and defining what it is that you have - your place, your relationships. I view every record as an opportunity to write better songs. At the end of the day it still sounds like me, just new.”

TRACK LISTING

Reichpop
Lady Blue
A Woman’s Wisdom
Japanese Alice
Life Of Pause
Alien
To Know You
Adore
TV Queen
Whenever I
Love Underneath
My Thumb

In 2013 MONEY released their debut album ‘The Shadow Of Heaven’, following a handful of concerts that felt more like communions in out-of-the-way venues, advertised by word-of-mouth only.

Two years on, the new MONEY album, ‘Suicide Songs’, takes you deeper into their sound and vision. It feels more advanced and yet simpler, more perfected and yet more open. It is, by turns, a tender, barren, cavernous, smouldering, despairing and inspirational piece of work.

Out of a renewed, richer palate of sound, a sense of greater self-belief has emerged. However, as its title suggests, ‘Suicide Songs’ doesn’t shirk from the emotional truths that birthed it. “I wanted the album to sound like it was ‘coming from death’ which is where these songs emerged,” Jamie explains. “Above all else, I’m just trying to project and portray a poetic truth. Suicide is about anonymity, to the point where you don’t exist, which I definitely feel in my songwriting and as a person. But rather than writing myself out of anonymity, I want to remain there, in this record at least.”

TRACK LISTING

I Am The Lord
I’m Not Here
You Look Like A Sad Painting On Both Sides Of The Sky
Night Came
Suicide Song
Hopeless World
I’ll Be The Night
All My Life
A Cocaine Christmas And An Alcoholic’s New Year

Billie Lindahl, the woman behind the name Promise & The Monster, brings a vivid landscape to life on ‘Feed The Fire’, her first album for Bella Union.

‘Feed The Fire’ was recorded in Stockholm, where Lindahl lives, at Labyrint, a small basement studio run by her friend Love Martinsen who produced the ‘Feed The Fire’ album and shares most of the instrumentation with Lindahl. “We aimed at combining the elegance of old Sixties recordings with something darker and more mechanical,” she recalls. “Like you would play a Lee Hazlewood song on top of Nico’s late Eighties records.”

Duality sits at the core of ‘Feed The Fire’, likewise the name Promise & The Monster. “To feed the fire can be seen as both constructive and destructive,” Lindahl concludes. “You keep the fire burning, the spark alive. But fire can kill you. To see, listen and feel is quite a violent and confusing experience, and I think my lyrics often evolve around that, blurring boundaries between dream and reality, and between sanity and insanity.”

TRACK LISTING

Feed The Fire
Hunter
Time Of The Season
Slow And Quiet
Apartments Song
Julingvallen
Hammering The Nails
The Weight Of It All
Machines
Fine Horseman

Lost treasure needn’t be found in the distant past; the 21st century hides many artists who disappeared into the great wide yonder. BC Camplight is one such example. The alter-ego of American songwriter Brian Christinzio released albums in 2005 and 2007, both gems of a certain psych-pop vintage, combining eloquent songwriting with a self-destructive bent. Christinzio certainly knew it – he’s described himself as, “the guy who blew it.”

But this sublime talent with the keening vocal and fearless approach to lyrical introspection has another chance. His new album ‘How To Die In The North’, recorded in his newly adopted home of Manchester, England, is a fantastically rich, stylistically diverse trip. From dramatic, layered pop to a haunted take on Sixties sunshine-pop, from blue-eyed soul to speedy surf-pop, from sparser piano balladry to psychedelic showstoppers and a grand finale that’s part Nilsson and part Broadway showtune.

Originally from New Jersey, Christinzio started playing piano aged just four, inspired by his mum’s Jerry Lee Lewis and Nilsson records and his Dad’s classical collection. Depression and crippling hypochondria clashed with captaining the football team and a penchant for boxing. Post-school, he fell in with people, “willing to go through shit to be a musician,” which saw him relocate to Philadelphia where he occasionally played live with Philly faves The War On Drugs and guested on Sharon Van Etten’s album ‘Epic’.

He’s already done two sessions for long-term fan Marc Riley at BBC 6 Music, which featured Christinzio’s band of Mancunians who he met at The Castle Hotel pub, a watering hole in the city centre particularly popular with musicians. Christinzio also heard John Grant’s album on the jukebox there, which encouraged him to approach Bella Union. Grant’s cocktail of depression and self-sabotage thwarted an outrageous talent, but he took his second chance. The same deserves to happen to Christinzio, a similarly outsize, sharp and funny personality with a non-conformist streak. Far from dying, BC Camplight has been reborn in the North!

Electric Wurms is the new side-project from Wayne Coyne and Steven Drozd of The Flaming Lips.

This is the first of what could be endless communicated sound stories. It is titled Musik, Die Schwer Zu Twerk, which predicted this modern day dance move by almost forty years ago. Some of it is indeed hard to twerk to but some of it, is not. There is a particular track called Transform!!! that closely resembles a drug fuelled boogie freak rock track by Miles Davis. Another verse Heart Of The Sunrise sounds vaguely like a song by the prog folk group Yes. Of course Yes also turned themselves into space ships so it's no wonder these songs share a similar vibe.

The ensemble leans toward a hypnotic mood for most of the space bible readings. It is a scary truth that we are hearing and then forced to ponder. The pulsating poem Living states… "live as if you were living already for the second time. And that you had acted wrong the first time". So they call themselves Electric Würms after the greatest of the super freaks. But they are not a super-group. They are like Sherpas climbing with you. To help you. To love you. All the secrets that they know they tell you. That's what love is.

TRACK LISTING

1. I Could Only See Clouds
2. Futuristic Hallucination
3. The Bat
4. Living
5. Transform!!!
6. Heart Of The Sunrise

Horse Thief are purveyors of a panoramic yet nuanced sound, flowing from intimate to anthemic, the mood from vibrant to contemplative, with frontman Cameron Neal’s lyrics ranging from confessional to metaphorical. The result evokes the wide-open spaces of America’s Midwest but infuses the sense of grit and wonderment with edgier emotions.

TRACK LISTING

Intro
I Don’t Mind
Human Geographer
Devil
Holding On
Already Dead
Little Dust
Dead Drum
Let Go
Come On
Warm Regards

The impulse that drove artists such as Suicide, Einstürzende Neubauten and Scott Walker to embark on extraordinary and uncompromising journeys, refusing to flinch in the face of humanity’s ugly truths and terrible beauty, also underpins the sound and vision of Xiu Xiu, aka LAbased duo Jamie Stewart and Angela Seo.

‘Angel Guts: Red Classroom’ is the sound of Xiu Xiu’s descent into the deepest blackness endurable.

TRACK LISTING

Angel’s Guts
Archie Fades
Stupid In The Dark
Lawrence Liquors
Black Dick
New Life Immigration
El Naco
Adult Friends
The Silver Platter
Bitter Melon
A Knife In The Sun
Cynthya's Unisex
Botanica De Los Angeles
Red Classroom

MONEY release their debut album The Shadow of Heaven on 26th August via Bella Union Records. Recorded in London through the deep, dark winter of 2012/13, it’s an ethereal, transcendent record that’s notable for its musical and intellectual ambition. Though ambition is perhaps not quite the right word. Because MONEY would never talk about ambition. Such things don’t sit well with them. They’d talk about anti-ambition and the revision of existing values — the kind of bold gesture already signalled by their unabashedly iconic name. It’s an album that defies convention and cliché, asking us instead to be courageous enough to see the world in different ways. As lead singer and ideologue Jamie Lee says, ‘Our aim with this band — in all things we do — is to create the world afresh on our own terms.’

MONEY are Jamie Lee, Charlie Cocksedge, Billy Byron and Scott Beaman. Having formed in Manchester amidst a prolific underground milieu, they soon came to embody the passion, creativity and optimism of a new generation of artists and musicians who found themselves presented with what Jamie describes as ‘an extraordinary, poetic city’. MONEY played shows in esoteric venues such as Salford's Sacred Trinity Church and ‘the Bunker', a former factory near Strangeways Prison and home to the cult independent label SWAYS, who released the band’s debut 7” single, ‘Who’s Going to Love You Now’ / ‘Goodnight London’ to wide acclaim. Having been tracked down by Simon Raymonde, the band subsequently signed to Bella Union, headlining the label's Christmas party at the Union Chapel before taking to the studio to record 'The Shadow of Heaven'.

The album consists of ten songs that range from stripped-back piano ballads such as ‘Goodnight London’ and ‘The Cruelty of Godliness’ to the more epic ‘Hold Me Forever’ and ‘Bluebell Fields’. Rooted in universal themes of the spirit, love and loss, the album also addresses man’s condition in the modern world, issues ‘such as isolation and mental health as logical reactions to it', says Jamie. It’s an album full of yearning and soul-searching, a voyage of (non-) discovery that only ends up finding itself and the sheer, aching beauty of questions asked in full knowledge of their own answerlessness. It’s metaphysics for the modern age, which might not be quite as spiritually bankrupt and bereft of meaning as we once believed.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: There's always been a buzz around this band. This passionate debut album totally justifies it. Today: Piccadilly Records, tomorrow The World?!

As their previous incarnation (Lulu & The Lampshades) they’re probably best known for the viral cup song ‘You’re Gonna Miss Me’ (over 3 million hits and counting on YouTube), but in the ensuing period Landshapes have undergone a considerable musical metamorphosis.

The band have learned and grown together - four distinctive personalities jostling and pulling, each with their own set of influences and sensibilities, an unlikely alchemy which comes together and makes sense.

Broad brushstrokes, big sounds and mournful melodies forged a new soundscape, so when a typo accidentally billed them as Landshapes it seemed an appropriate description for an altogether new sound, and an altogether new band.

Landshapes is the sound of four people in a dingy practice room, building on accidents, listening over and reworking obsessively until every band member is satisfied. An unconventional and serendipitous process it might be, but it’s crucial to Landshapes’ overall sound.

Poor Moon is a band comprised of longtime friends Christian Wargo, Casey Wescott, and brothers Ian and Peter Murray. And Poor Moon is the title of their full-length debut. But before there was a band or a record, there was the music, a series of songs forged by Christian Wargo over a period of several years. That's one of the things that makes Poor Moon sound so special: this band grew out of the songs, not vice-versa.

"I've known Christian for so long, and have loved his songwriting as long as I've known him," says Wescott. The two men previously played together in Pedro the Lion and Crystal Skulls; both are members of Fleet Foxes. For the past few years, he and the Murray brothers had been transfixed by the solo recordings Wargo periodically shared with them.

Thanks to their affinity for warm, earthy tones the music of Poor Moon can sound deceptively simple. Assorted timbres decorate these tenoriginals—marimba, harpsichord, fretless zither—but this isn't everything-but-the-kitchen-sink arranging. Whatever the instrumentation, the sense of choosing the right tool for the job always prevails. Thoughtful, impassioned vocal harmonies further reinforce the myriad musical bonds at play.

Likewise, the considered manner in which the words and music coexist, often despite seeming incongruities of mood, accounts for the distinctive character of the songs. The stretch between 2008 and the present when they were composed includes some of the most tumultuous episodes in Wargo's life. Yet Poor Moon handles even the heaviest topics, including death, addiction, and spirituality, with a certain lightness. "The way I deal with those is by drawing attention to the mystery and enjoying the whimsical aspects, but without being cute or precious about it," Wargo explains.

TRACK LISTING

1. Clouds Below
2. Phantom Light
3. Same Way
4. Holiday
5. Waiting For
6. Heavens Door
7. Pulling Me Down
8. Bucky Pony
9. Come Home
10. Birds

Treefight For Sunlight’s self-titled debut album bottles their epic sunshine pop into ten mini-symphonies and shows Bella Union are embracing the new year with the same eclectic enthusiasm as ever… The band, who have known each other since childhood, hail from Denmark; clearly a breeding ground for mavericks judging by the likes of Mew, The Raveonettes, Oh No Ono and Treefight’s fellow Bella Union voyagers The Kissaway Trail. Bands that unstitch rock/pop’s rich tapestry and weave in their own unique and challenging DNA.

In Treefight For Sunlight’s case, it’s the legacy of California’s west coast pop art, from its origins in the epic harmonies of The Association and The Turtles, which had a knock-on effect in the 70s with Sparks and the 80s with LA’s Paisley Underground scene. Fans of the Flaming Lips, MGMT and Panda Bear will surely also appreciate Treefight For Sunlight’s layered, twisting, caramelised energy and absorbing imagery.

TRACK LISTING

1. A Dream Before Sleep
2. You And The New World
3. The Universe Is A Woman
4. They Never Did Know
5. Facing The Sun
6. Rain Air
7. Tambourhinoceros Jam
8. Riddles In Rhymes
9. What Became Of You And I?
10. Time Stretcher

Hailing from Denmark, Our Broken Garden is the sound of sometime Efterklang keyboardist Anna Bronsted’s bewitching voice and songs plus assorted musical friends. Our Broken Garden’s debut album, “When Your Blackening Shows”, arrived in September 2008 and signalled Anna’s connection to water with various nautical references in her lyrics, and a deeply atmospheric, drifting ebb and flow to the sound - with a serene, torchy Anna resembling a modern day siren at its heart.

"Golden Sea" is a substantial step forward. There’s more drama and rhythm this time round and Anna’s song-writing has evolved significantly… "In The Lowlands" has an overriding sense of blissed-out serenity sense while "Nightsong" is more haunted. "Share" and "Warriors Of Love" are more typically dreamy numbers before the devastating finale "The Dark Red Roses" where mournful strings preface one of Anna’s most haunting vocals… 

Like the golden sea that names Our Broken Garden’s new album, their music is wide and deep, beautiful and mysterious…

TRACK LISTING

1. The Departure
2. In The Lowlands
3. The Fiery And Loud
4. Garden Grow
5. Nightsong
6. Garden The Burial
7. Seven Wild Horses
8. Share
9. Warriors Of Love
10. The Dark Red Roses

Lone Wolf, is Leed’s singer songwriter Paul Marshall. “Keep Your Eyes On The Road” is the first single to be lifted from his “The Devil & I” album.
It’s an intoxicating blend of intricate folk-tinged guitar, pounding drums, and hushed vocals. With some nice rhythmic twists and turns along the way it eventually ends in heavy crashing climax. But despite the rock-out ending it still sits well alongside the likes of Fleet Foxes, John Grant , Tunng, Vetiver etc.
One to watch we think!

TRACK LISTING

Keep Your Eyes On The Road
This Is War

Emily Loizeau is no sedentary contemplative singer. Not for her the captive heart and cracked whisper of some Proustian maiden kept far from the world's clamour. Emily tends more towards Rimbaud, Jack London and Kerouac. She expresses her taste for adventure and hazardous encounters musically with all the force of a tropical cyclone, and lyrically with the reflective delicacy of the bilingual child still living within her. Emily calls Pays Sauvage her "hippie record": all her friends were invited to join the party, bringing their instruments and temperament along. Since the country house was too small to accommodate the whole shebang, these encounters took place in the studio in Paris, with sound recording from Jean-Baptiste Bruhnes and production by Emily. In today's France, where bands are born of international marriages, Emily (who is half English on her mother's side) has no shortage of cousins. Having admired albums by Herman Düne and Moriarty, she offered them visas for her "country", which she saw as a land of communion. David Herman Düne contributed to five tracks in different roles (co-arranger, musician and duettist), while the entire Moriarty family appear on four songs (their distinguished folk collective sets some memorable sparks flying!). Still, Pays Sauvage was primarily built around the two musicians who back Emily on stage and worked on the album's arrangements: cellist Olivier Koundouno and drummer and guitarist Cyril Avèque. Over the months, an extended troupe formed around this nucleus (with the addition of violinist Jocelyn West), building on songs that Emily devised in a spirit of pure sharing, deliberately choosing not to make herself their sole focus.

"Year In The Kingdom" unravels some kind of galactic wilderness. J. Tillman's sixth album lyrically borders on the mystic; proffering a transcendent union, an effortlessness. Strange and honest, this song cycle inhabits it's own idea-scape; one seemingly obsessed with wrestling death. These are afterlife dialogues of a mysterious future. Celestial badlands. Unknown to just about everyone, Tillman started recording in April, tracking most of the instruments during the two week session himself. Hammered dulcimer, banjo, recorder, cymbals of varying size and wheezing air organs all feature heavily and lend "Year In The Kingdom" it's bizarre scale, conjuring tidal shifts with tiny movements. The string arrangements, performed by Jenna Conrad, as well as transposed from Tillman's sung direction, were intended to rest on chords almost counter-intuitively, bringing to bloom complex, de-contextualized tones. Most noticeable upon first listen, however, is the production itself. While most of Tillman's records evidence some shambolic home recording, it is undisturbed throughout. Out up front of the mix, and dry as a bone, Tillman's voice is featured in a way unlike any of his previous records.

Tracklisting
1. Year In The Kingdom
2. Crosswinds
3. Earthly Bodies
4. Howling Light
5. Though I Have Wronged You
6. Age Of Man
7. There Is No Good In Me
8. Marked In The Valley
9. Light Of The Living

"Beacons" is the beguiling UK debut of Ohbijou. Borne in the bedrooms of a family home in Ontario, Casey Mecija's gentle compositions, bound with youthful frailty and unnerving beauty, found their natural habitat in Toronto. Enlisting the help of her younger sister, Jenny, and friends Heather Kirby and Anissa Hart, Mecija's songs began to take flight. An encounter with James Bunton and Ryan Carley led to further collaboration and the conception of Ohbijou. Andrew Kinoshita soon added his talents to Ohbijou's orchestration. Furnished with mandolin, violin, piano, banjo, cello and an impressive array of other instruments, a seven piece orchestral pop force began to appear on stages around Toronto that quickly affected the landscape of independent music in the city. Mecija pens songs wrought with the romantic afflictions of big city life. She sutures the intimate details of her personal relations to the macrocosmic relations of her city. Dressed with intricate melodies and vocal harmonies arranged by her bandmates, the songs reveal a striking musicality and virtuosity. Ohbijou's music has a seductive beauty, their delicate songs framed by elegant orchestral arrangements. Their emotive music is simultaneously both sad and life-affirming.

Another uber-hyped album from a band that deserve all the impressive praise they've rapidly garnered, this beguiling record remains unrelenting in its sheer beauty. Appetites whetted by the absolutely stunning five-track EP "Sun Giant" this soon became a nailed-on Piccadilly album of the year, happily uniting all staff with its assured accessibility. Whilst many have been swift to dismiss their sound as too derivative – doubly accusing the Foxes of committing flagrant musical theft and lacking authenticity due to the tender age of lead singer Robin Pecknold - this record can be much better understood as a group of very talented music fans/singer-songwriters crafting effortlessly stellar tracks that, yes, borrow heavily from country-rock, gospel, baroque pop and the soft A.O.R of America, Dan Fogelberg and CSNY, yet make these influences sound utterly fresh and relevant today. This new 2CD version also includes all five tracks from the "Sun Giant" EP along with a brand new recording of the Steeleye Span classic "False Knight On the Road".

Tracklisting
CD1
1. Sun It Rises
2. White Winter Hymnal
3. Ragged Wood
4. Tiger Mountain Peasant Song
5. Quiet Houses
6. He Doesn't Know Why
7. Heard Them Stirring
8. Your Protector
9. Meadowlarks
10. Blue Ridge Mountains
11. Oliver James
CD2
1. Sun Giant
2. Drops In The River
3. English House
4. Mykonos
5. Innocent Son
6. False Knight On The Road