serpentwithfeet, the Baltimore born singer-songwriter, is taking natural steps as a versatile talent from chapter to chapter in his career. His third album GRIP is the result of these latest steps. GRIP finds its home on the dance floor of Black gay clubs and the intimate moments that happen there and afterward, no matter the location. It explores the small moments of physical touch and how they occur. Whether it be a grip around the waist or the face, serpentwithfeet manages to explore all angles.

GRIP and the Black gay club share an interesting juxtaposition: the club is public; the dancefloor is obviously a place where people look at and watch one another. At the same time, the Black gay club is a safe community space, it is “for us”, and in that way is very private, very intimate. These clubs provided a different atmosphere for him, a different comfort, and a different sense of welcoming that nurtured him in a new way.

From start to finish, GRIP sonically lives the highs and lows of not only a night out at the club but of romance as well. “Damn Gloves (ft. Ty Dolla $ign and Yanga YaYa)” captures the adrenaline rush of a night’s peak with a thumping bass entwined in dance production that mimics the heartbeat’s speed as intimacy runs high between two lovers. “Spades” employs a sweet guitar-driven melody to create a tender moment as a slow-dance would. “Lucky Me” is sweet and honest, void of anything that distracts from the moment at hand as serpent’s voice, a twinkling guitar melody, and enchanting synths serve as the driving force to champion a new romance.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:

1. Damn Gloves
2. Safe Word
3. Spades
4. Deep End
5. Rum / Throwback

SIDE B:

6. Black Air Force
7. Hummin’
8. Ellipsis
9. Lucky Me
10. 1 To 10

LOVE + POP is a snapshot of a moment in not-so-far-away time; something fast, loud, moody and a little dangerous. It is, in some ways, classic Current Joys: full of wild ambition, sneaky hooks, and songs that move from concept to completion with prolific speed. But LOVE + POP also explodes myriad expectations with aggressive, deconstructed production, house music influence, and a guest appearance from Lil Yachty. It is not so much a twist as it is a unique multiverse identity for Current Joys, as Nick Rattigan’s set out to “capture this sonic moment and harken back to the way I first released music.”

The story of LOVE + POP begins with one of those house parties: the kind that bulldozes your home and, in its aftermath, leaves a wreckage that finds you flattened but also ready to be new. In that mess and mayhem, Rattigan watched Everybody’s Everything, the documentary of Lil Peep, and recorded a cover of “walk away as the door slams”. But the itch wasn’t scratched, and what began as a moment of homage morphed into something bigger, deeper and more fundamental, a point where the seemingly haphazard – in his home, in Peep’s process – opened Rattigan up to an entire creative space and a new approach to bending or even detonating genre.

Crucially, all of this was recorded at home, in what Rattigan calls a “tribute to the process of creating” in a DIY space. And what began as a singular passion project unexpectedly grew into a uniquely collaborative record for Current Joys. “I’ve set out to make collaborative records before,” Rattigan explains, “but they often end up totally me, with just a couple exceptions. But then this record gave me the opportunity to be extremely collaborative, to let other people write instrumental tracks, sending links around for people to mess with and weigh in on. I sat down to do credits and realized here were all these people and styles and they all came together and worked.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Walk Away As The Door Slams (feat. Your Angel)
2. LOVE + POP (feat. Your Angel)
3. Gatsby (feat. Lil Yachty)
4. My Shadow Life (feat. Oddbody)
5. CIGARETTES
6. Bb Put On Deftones
7. Dr Satan
8. Moon Sickness
9. Rock N Roll Dreams (feat. Brutus VIII)
10. I Feel Truth Inside Of U
11. 3lefant (feat. Slow Hollows)
12. U R THE REASON

William Eggleston is a famed photographer and musician credited for iconic album covers such as Spoon’s Transference and Jimmy Eat World’s Bleed American. 512 was inspired and recorded at the Parkview Apartments in Memphis, Tennessee where Eggleston lived for almost ten years. The apartment was full of art and inspiration: cameras, naturally, but also high-end stereo tube amplifiers and objects that you’d rush towards money in hand at your local flea market. But also a gigantic nine foot Bosendorfer grand piano and a massive grand vintage JBL theater speaker console. His home was overwhelmed by music.

By recording there the album captures not just his performances, but also the vibe of the place; it often felt as though there were artists lurking in the aether listening along. His visitors over the years were no small change: Lee Friedlander, Carl Sagan, Dennis Hopper , Paul McCartney and many others came to see him and listen to his hypnotic “Musik”. You can hear local traffic, a dog barking, weather; reality, in other words. But there was another space layered on top, a kind of surreality echoing his music, as you can imagine a gathering of musicians listening in, eager to join him. Thus came along 512 which features the legendary Brian Eno on bells and production from Leo Abrahams (Regina Spektor, Paul Simon, Jon Hopkins).”

TRACK LISTING

1. Improvisation
2. Ol’ Man River
3. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
4. Over The Rainbow
5. That’s Some Robert Burn
6. Onward Christian Soldiers

Axxess and Ace stood to be Songs: Ohia's third album release in 1999, Jason Molina is assisted by Geof Comings (Party Girls), Michael Krassner (The Lofty Pillars, Boxhead Ensemble, Edith Frost Band), Joe Ferguson (Pinetop Seven), Dave Pavkovic (Boxhead Ensemble), Julie Liu (Rex) and Edith Frost. This album was recorded by Krassner at his Truckstop Studios in Chicago. 'Axxess and Ace' flickers between Liu's aching violin and Molina's intensely personal lyrics quilting the worries and anxieties of the idea of imperfections. It is direct, in the way that love songs can be, recorded almost entirely live and first take. The finished product is full of spontaneity and surprise for the listener to enjoy time and time again. Repressed on colour for the first time in ages!

In a 1997 debut album release, singer/ guitarist Jason Molina unfolds the beginning chapter of the influential and essential discography of Songs: Ohia. The self-titled album sometimes referred to as 'The Black Album', was recorded on an 8-track over the span of one afternoon, was the start of Molina's ideal "first draft" sound that opened the fourth wall into the haunted world-building the album creates for the listener. The sound flickers between undiscovered folk tradition, circular lyrical patterns, and love seesawing between the emotional weight of fear and exhilaration. Repressed on colour for the first time in ages!

It’s been four years since Cherry Glazerr released their resplendent third album Stuffed and Ready, but Clementine Creevy has been in no rush. “I’ve spent these years taking a hard look at myself, at my relationships, and writing about it,” she says. “I guess I’m coming to terms with a lot of my bullshit.” Cherry Glazerr has been on the road more often than not since Creevy was still in high school, and when the pandemic hit, she immersed herself in a static existence she’d been deprived of.

Creevy describes Cherry Glazerr’s ambitious new album, I Don’t Want You Anymore, as some of her most personal, raw music to date, a collection of songs that elaborate on this period of self-reckoning. It’s the first she’s produced since Cherry Glazerr’s garage rock debut, Haxel Princess, released nearly a decade ago when Creevy was a teenager.

Creevy describes I Don’t Want You Anymore as a “mature” album, moreso in reference to her personal growth than a reflection of the record, which in true Cherry Glazerr fashion is best described as Extremely Fun. To make it, Creevy linked up with producer Yves Rothman, who’s best known for his work with Yves Tumor.

Lead single “Soft Like a Flower” exemplifies that growth. A murky guitar riff inaugurates the track, before Creevy’s unguarded vocals enter the mix. She sings of a consuming obsession and is joined on the chorus by longtime bandmate Sami Perez. It’s proudly emotive, what Creevy calls an “Evanescence moment.” “It’s a real ‘losing your fucking shit’ kind’ve vibe,” she says. “I wanted this album to be just heart and soul. Completely exposed.”

I Don’t Want You Anymore uses the element of surprise to its advantage; each track is a radical reimagination of what Cherry Glazerr is and can be. “Bad Habit” opens with a spiraling vocal loop that Creevy began recording at home and it expands into a delirious downtempo dance track without ever invoking a guitar. The subsequent track, “Ready for You” is sung in funky staccato and the initially spare bassline on the opening verse is eventually overtaken by a massive, staticky guitar riff that reminds you this is, at its heart, a rock album. These are songs to soundtrack the listener’s life, a score to suit any occasion. The titular track makes a promise to an unnamed other, but the repeating lyrics on the bridge could just as easily serve as a love letter to listeners: “In the end, you’re always holding me.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Gigantic swathes of distorted poppy guitar riffs and shimmering shoegaze progressions. It's a huge thematic progression from her 2019 LP, 'Stuffed & Ready', bringing in myriad influence from pop-punk to driving garage rock and grunge.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Addicted To Your Love
2. Bad Habit
3. Ready For You
4. Touched You With My Chaos
5. Soft Like A Flower
6. Sugar

SIDE B:
1. Golden
2. Wild Times
3. Eat You Like A Pill
4. Shattered
5. I Don’t Want You Anymore

Baby Rose is undeniably a once-in-a-lifetime artist. She burst onto the scene with her 2019 debut project To Myself, which has amassed over 25 million global streams to date and landed her early co-signs by SZA, J. Cole, James Blake, Kehlani, and LeBron James. Later the singer received a Grammy nomination for her contribution to Dreamville’s Revenge of the Dreamers III album and was also featured on albums from Big Krit and Matt Martians.

Through and Through will show Baby Rose like we have never seen or heard her before. Sonically, the album see’s Rose carving out a lane for herself that is unrestricted by genres and showcases her extraordinary range as a skilled singer, songwriter and executive producer. Paired with her once-in-a-lifetime voice, Through and Through will exist like nothing else in music right now. 

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2023 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY APRIL 22ND ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

IF THERE ARE ANY REMAINING COPIES THEY WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE ONLINE AT 8PM ON MONDAY APRIL 24TH).

This is the first-ever physical pressing of fan favourite track ì7 Secondsî and includes never previously heard demo of track from Top 40 Album - 'Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To The Sky'. The release will be hand numbered and limited to 1000. ì7 Secondsî has amassed over 3.4 million streams and the bandís press/radio history includes: 6Music Playlist (A Rotation), The Observer/Guardian, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone UK, Line of Best Fit, i Paper & Mojo alongside a Mercury Nomination.

For the first time on vinyl and returning from a long time out-of-print, Secretly Canadian is proud to re-present The Sojourner Box Set from Magnolia Electric Co. The four LPs that comprise The Sojourner Box Set are from four distinct recording sessions that Magnolia Electric Co. undertook following the release of their debut studio album, What Comes After The Blues.

From these, sophomore album Fading Trails was born. But the four sessions, in full, chart the celestial map of Magnolia Electric Co.: its constellations and shooting stars, its Americana stompers and lean folk dirges. And, of course, the center of gravity that is Jason Molina’s mournful, incomparable voice. The session known as “Nashville Moon” was recorded by Steve Albini at his Electrical Audio studios in Chicago, Illinois.

The session known as “Sun Session” was recorded at the legendary Sun Studios in Memphis, Tennessee. The session known as “Black Ram” was recorded by David Lowery at his Sound Of Music studios in Richmond, Virginia and features an entirely different cast of characters including Lowery, Rick Alverson, Andrew Bird, Molly Blackbird, Miguel Urbiztondo and Alan Weatherhead.

The session known as “Shohola” was recorded by Jason Molina alone, with a guitar and microphone. With LP covers drawn from original box illustrations and with the original box’s poster included, this LP edition of The Sojourner Box Set delivers for the most ambitious and robust Magnolia Electric Co. release to date.

TRACK LISTING

Nashville Moon
Side A
1. Lonesome Valley
2. Montgomery
3. Don’t Fade On Me
4. Hammer Down
5. No Moon On The Water
6. Nashville Moon
Side B
7. What Comes After The Blues
8. Don’t This Look Like The Dark
9. North Star
10. Bowery
11. Texas 71
09 North Star (3:55)
10 Bowery (3:38
11 Texas 71 (4:17
12 Down The Wrong Road Both Ways (3:21

Black Ram
Side A
1. In The Human World
2. The Black Ram
3. What’s Broken Becomes Better
4. Will-O-the-Wisp
5. Kanawha
Side B
6. A Little At A Time
7. Blackbird
8. And The Moon Hits The Water
9. The Old Horizon

Sun Session
Side A
1. Talk To Me Devil, Again
2. Memphis Moon
Side B
3. Hold On Magnolia 

Shohola
Side A
1. Steady Now
2. Spanish Moon Fall And Rise
3. Night Country
4. Shiloh Temple Bell
Side B
5. The Spell
6. Take One Thing Along
7. The Lamb’s Song
8. Roll The Wheel

Faye Webster announces ‘Car Therapy Sessions’, an EP of new and re-imagined songs by Websterrecorded at Spacebomb Studios with a 24 pieceorchestra. The orchestra was headed by Trey Pollard,who was responsible for both conducting andarranging, and Drew Vandenburg produced and mixedthe EP.

“I have a vivid memory of walking around London in2018 listening to a mix of ‘Jonny’, which I had justwritten. I remember thinking ‘I want to perform thissong with an orchestra’. I truly have had my heart seton it since then, always talking about it and figuring outhow or when to make it happen,” says Webster.

On the EP, Webster reimagines three songs from hercritically acclaimed 2021 release, ‘I Know I’m Funnyhaha’, and 2019’s ‘Atlanta Millionaire’s Club’. Thesongs ‘Kind Of’, ‘Sometimes’ and ‘Cheers’ take on acinematic and glimmering new sheen.

In addition to the title track, she also shares asprawling and emotional work - ‘Suite: Jonny’ - whichcombines fan-favourites ‘Jonny’ and ‘Jonny (Reprise)’.The two songs originally appeared on the ‘AtlantaMillionaire’s Club’ tracklist, two different views on thesame narrative. Here they are presented together. It’s remarkable how beautifully Webster’s work cantake on this orchestral treatment. Like Cole Porter, orJudy Garland, her delicate and emotional deliverypacks a gut punch when dramatized by the EP’srobust arrangements.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Kind Of (Type Of Way)
A2. Sometimes (Overanalyze)
A3. Car Therapy
B1. Suite: Jonny
B2. Cheers (To You & Me)

NNAMDÏ has never been able to stay in one place. The Chicago multi-instrumentalist and songwriter set a blistering pace in 2020 with his critically acclaimed genre-fusing LP Brat, a punk EP Black Plight, and Krazy Karl, a full-length tribute to Looney Tunes composer Carl Stalling. Add in his role as co-owner of label Sooper Records, as well as recent tours with Wilco, Sleater-Kinney, and black midi, and it’s an overwhelming schedule. However, his latest album, Please Have A Seat, is the result of a muchneeded pause.

“I realized I never take time to just sit and take in where I’m at,” says NNAMDÏ. “It’s just nice to not be on ‘Go, Go, Go!’ mode, and reevaluate where I wanted to go musically.” This period of reflection allowed him to take stock of his life and his relationships. “I wanted to be present,” he says. “Each song came from a moment of clarity.” Please Have A Seat serves as an invitation to listen. It’s a request to sit down, be present, and take in a moment. With this quiet introspection, NNAMDÏ found inspiration in silence and nuance.

While making the record, he decided to stretch the limits of his pop songwriting: every track had to be hummable. Though he’s written earworms throughout his career from playing in bands in Chicago’s DIY community or releasing goofy raps as Nnamdi’s Sooper Dooper Secret Side Project, here, his shapeshifting hooks are undeniable. Each of the album’s fourteen songs, which NNAMDÏ wrote, produced, and performed entirely himself, are relentlessly replayable, careening into unexpected and disorienting places. With NNAMDÏ’s singular vision, Please Have A Seat is yet another leap from Chicago’s hardest working musician. By taking a minute to sit down and catch his breath, he reemerged with the most ambitious, accessible, and nuanced work of his career.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Ready To Run
2. Armoire
3. Dibs
4. Touchdown
5. Grounded
6. I Don’t Wanna Be Famous
7. Anxious Eater
8. Anti

SIDE B:
9. Dedication
10. Smart Ass
11. Benched
12. Careful
13. Lifted
14. Some Days

Helen Ballentine’s spellbinding first full-length album Quiet the Room is the sound of a window opening, a barrier dissolving. Across these fourteen tracks, the outside world seeps in and the inside world crawls out. The result is a stunning and quietly moving work that reflects the journeys we take through the physical and spiritual realms of ourselves in order to show up for the world.

While writing the album in the summer of 2021, Ballentine drew inspiration from her childhood home in Mount Vernon, NY. What she set out to capture on Quiet the Room was not the innocence of childhood, as it is so often portrayed, but the intense complexity of it. Past and present merge Escher-like in this dreamlike space laced with elements of fantasy, magic, and mystery. Musically, this translates into a sound that feels somehow weighty and ephemeral all at once, like a time lapse of copper corroding.

To capture the effortless blend of electronic, ambient, folk, and rock, Ballentine and her partner and collaborator Noah Weinman brought in producer Andrew Sarlo to record at Chicken Shack studio in Upstate New York, close to where Ballentine grew up. “We wanted every song to have that little twinkle, but also a sense of crumbling,” she says. These songs thrum with moments of anxiety that boil over into moments of peace, as on lead single “Whatever Fits Together,” which chugs to a ragged start before the gears catch and ease. On “It’s Like a Secret,” Ballentine struggles to connect and let people in, recognizing that no one can ever fully know our inner worlds and that to understand each other is to cross a barrier and leave a part of ourselves behind. And yet, on closing track “You are my House,” she finds a way to reach out. “You are the walls and floors of my room,” she sings in perfect, hopeful harmony.

As the album cover invites, these are dollhouse songs to which we bend a giant eye, peering into the laminate, luminous world that Ballentine has created. Like a kid constructing a shelter in a patch of sharp brambles, she reminds us that beauty and terror can exist in the same place. The complexities of childhood are so often overlooked, but through these private yet generous songs, she gives new weight to our earliest memories, widening the frame for us—even opening a window.

STAFF COMMENTS

Liam says: Don't let the name fool you... Debut LP from Skullcrusher (real name Helen Ballentine), 'Quiet the Room' is a stunning mix of folk, ambient and field recordings - all wrapped up in an ethereal dreamlike bow. Reminds me of Lucy Rose mixed with Lina Tullgren - lovely stuff!

TRACK LISTING

1. They Quiet The Room
2. Building A Swing
3. Whatever Fits Together
4. Whistle Of The Dead
5. Lullaby In February
6. Pass Through Me
7. Could It Be The Way I Look At Everything?
8. Outside, Playing
9. It’s Like A Secret
10. Sticker
11. Window Somewhere
12. (Secret Instrumental)
13. Quiet The Room
14. You Are My House

It could only be called alchemy, the transformative magic that happens during the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ most tuned-in moments in the studio, when their unique chemistry sparks opens a portal, and out comes a song like “Maps” or “Zero” or the latest addition to their canon, “Spitting off the Edge of the World featuring Perfume Genius” — an epic shot-to-the heart of pure YYYs beauty and power.

A thunderstorm of a return is what the legendary trio has in store for us on Cool It Down, their fifth studio album and their first since 2013’s Mosquito. The eight-track collection, bound to be a landmark in their catalog, is an expert distillation of their best gifts that impels you to move, and cry, and listen closely.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1) Spitting Off The Edge Of The World (feat. Perfume Genius)
2) Lovebomb
3) Wolf
4) Fleez
SIDE B:
5) Burning
6) Blacktop
7) Different Today
8) Mars

Whitney, the Chicago duo of Julien Ehlrich and Max Kakacek, return with their third album, SPARK. SPARK reintroduces Whitney as a contemporary syndicate of classic pop, its dozen imaginative and endearing tracks wrap fetching melodies around paisley-print Dilla beats and luxuriant electronics. However surprising it may sound, SPARK is less a radical reinvention for Whitney than an honest accounting of how it feels when you move out of your past and into your present, when you take the next steps of your lives and careers at once and without apology. SPARK maintains the warmth and ease of Whitney’s early work; these songs glow with the newness of now.

The start of SPARK traces back to the surprise success of Whitney’s 2016 debut, Light Upon the Lake. Its softly distorted psych-folk dreams found a wide audience more readily than the pair ever expected; after years of ceaseless touring, they felt compelled to plug into the same sound for round two, 2019’s Forever Turned Around. As the sessions progressed, though, they became a slog, as Julien and Max worked to be versions of themselves they no longer were, to write songs in a mold that no longer fit. “What are we doing? How do we fix this, together?” Max remembers often asking Julien, as they contended with broken tape machines that felt like metaphors. This no longer felt like their music, but a vestige of their initial enthusiasm. They barely had enough material or energy to finish.

Max and Julien knew a drastic change was necessary, but they never envisioned, of course, international lockdowns would facilitate it. Weeks after Julien decamped to Portland to clear his head after the end of a years-long relationship, Max followed, hoping to escape the tail of a long Chicago winter with his best friend and co-writer. Four days later, flights were grounded. Upcoming tours were canceled. For the next 14 months, they dug in with a zeal and determination that recalled their start, before success set expectations. “We had time to just sit and watch the body of work grow in real time,” Julien says. “We were just stacking stronger and stronger songs on top of each other.” Max picks up his thought: “Our favorite way to make records, the way we made the first one.”

Even if the way was similar, the results are remarkably different, a refreshing reminder of how effortless a pivot can feel when it’s a true course correction. Max and Julien weren’t immune to this moment of overwhelming loss, either. Max lost his grandfather to COVID-19 in December 2020, soon after the duo’s mutual mentor, Girls’ JR White, died. But the key to SPARK—even on these saddest of songs, all of which sparkle like gentle technicolor dreams—is sublimation, or Whitney’s ability to hang around long enough for conditions to improve. To wit, the first song Max and Julien wrote upon returning to Chicago in May 2021—and the last one they finished before heading to Texas to cut SPARK with producers Brad Cook and John Congleton—is “REAL LOVE,” which celebrates the overdue end of one relationship as an opportunity to fall completely for the right someone. From its Wurlitzer chime to its serrated bass, from its beaming harmonies to its massive chorus, “REAL LOVE” is a bright-eyed celebration of what will be, not a eulogy for what was. It feels, as with much of SPARK, like twirling in whatever sunbeam happens to peak through the clouds. The video, directed by Aaron Brown, is an entirely different visual presentation than anything the band’s ever released.

Julien elaborates: “Max and I wrote ‘REAL LOVE’ in June 2021 right after a cross country move back to Chicago. I was experiencing heightened levels of anxiety and panic, while the entire city was re-emerging from isolation. I’ve been running away from and self medicating my anxiety for as long as I can remember, but for whatever reason, it felt like it was time to dive straight into it. During late night sessions over a two week period, we captured the embrace of anxiety and fear in a way that resonated with us immediately. We spent the next few summer nights driving on Ashland with the windows down and the song turned up. It felt like an emotional and musical burst of light and we’re so grateful to finally be sharing that with people.”

You’ll notice frequent references to smoke and fire throughout SPARK, itself a double entendre for inspiring something new or burning down the old. Max and Julien were living in Portland when smoke from nearby fires choked the city at record levels. Scientists speak increasingly of serotiny, an evolutionary miracle that causes some trees to release seeds only amid a season of fire. That is how SPARK often feels—Whitney’s circumstances were fraught on so many levels that they hung “the past...out to dry” and began again, finding a fresh version of themselves, their relationship, and their band after the blaze. SPARK is an inspiring testament to perseverance and renewal, to best friends trusting each other enough to carry one another to the other side.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Whitney really hit the mark here with their beautiful soulful, soft early 70's sound, and possibly the best song-writing of their career so far. Lovely mellow stuff.

TRACK LISTING

1. Nothing Remains
2. Back Then
3. Blue
4. Twirl
5. Real Love
6. Memory
7. Self
8. Never Crossed My Mind
9. Terminal
10. Heart Will Beat
11. Lost Control
12. County Lines

Like the many Banded Stilts that spread across the cover of her newest album Flood, Stella Donnelly is wading into uncharted territory. Here, she finds herself discovering who she is as an artist among the flock, and how abundant one individual can be. Flood is Donnelly’s record of this rediscovery: the product of months of risky experimentation, hard moments of introspection, and a lot of moving around.

Donnelly’s early reflections on the relationship between the individual and the many can be traced back to her time in the rainforests of Bellingen, where she took to birdwatching as both a hobby and an escape in a border-restricted world. By paying closer attention to the natural world around her, Donnelly recalls “I was able to lose that feeling of anyone’s reaction to me. I forgot who I was as a musician, which was a humbling experience of just being; being my small self.”

Reconnecting with this ‘small self’ allowed Donnelly to tap into creative wells she didn’t know existed. Soon songs were coming to her in a way she could not control and over the coming months, Donnelly accumulated 43 tracks as she moved out of Bellingen and around the country, often finding herself displaced due to border restrictions and a tough rental market.

Though the writing of Flood was an intensely personal undertaking, Donnelly still saw the recording process as one of her most collaborative projects yet. Along with her band members, co-producing the record beside Anna Laverty and Methyl Ethyl’s Jake Webb helped to foster an important spontaneity in the studio. With Webb, Donnelly could “dig in” and discover a “forward-leaning sound” she’d been searching for, while Laverty’s ability to “capture the piano” and discern the “perfect take” allowed the songwriter to take risks, many of which have clearly paid off.

Looking back at the Banded Stilt, Donnelly ultimately appreciates how when “seen in a crowd they create an optical illusion, but on its own it’s this singular piece of art.” While each song in Flood is a singular artwork unto itself, the collective shares all of Stella Donnelly in abundance: her inner child, her nurturing self, her nightmare self; all of herself has gone into the making of this record, and although it would take an ocean to fathom everything she feels, it’s well worth diving in.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1) Lungs (03:31)
2) How Was Your Day? (02:32)
3) Restricted Account (04:08)
4) Underwater (04:57)
5) Medals (04:05)

Side B
6) Move Me (03:07)
7) Flood (03:43)
8) This Week (02:52)
9) Oh My My My (03:13)
10) Morning Silence (02:10)

11) Cold (04:36)

“All my friends were playing in these bass-guitar-drum bands,” speaks Jens Lekman, casting his mind back over twenty years to his first rudimentary experiments with sampling using his father’s old cassette recorder, and an instinct to create music that would set him far apart from his Swedish pop peers. “I’m going to sound like Scott Walker. But I’m going to do it in my bedroom.” Works of sweeping, maximalist, orchestral wonder sung in a sumptuous tenor, weaving lifts from obscure fleamarket vinyl records with by turns burningly romantic and mordantly funny true-life tales from the sleepy-shadowy suburbs of Gothenburg – Lekman’s early songs come from a different time, a different place. An era when the internet was young, limitless and disruptive, sample culture was turning music inside out, and anything felt possible. After initially finding an audience through peer-to-peer file sharing sites, Lekman signed to Secretly Canadian Records in 2003, and went on to release a slew of cherished material, including three cult limited-edition EPs – Maple Leaves, Rocky Dennis and Julie – later collected on the 2005 compilation album Oh You’re So Silent Jens.

His DIY fantasias found their fullest and most celebrated form in 2007 on his second album proper, the exquisite Night Falls Over Kortedala – Lekman’s self-professed “dream record”. It went to number one in Sweden and was later hailed as one of the 200 best albums of the 2000s by Pitchfork, as well as one of the top 100 albums of the 21st century so far by The Guardian. Now, like Oh You’re So Silent Jens, it no longer exists in its original form. Oh You’re So Silent Jens enigmatically disappeared in 2011; Night Falls Over Kortedala followed suit in early 2022. Lekman’s impulse for giving old music fresh life and context has led him to remake the records under new names, each delicately positioned in dialogue with the past – the same albums, just different.

The Cherry Trees Are Still In Blossom and The Linden Trees Are Still In Blossom are a pair of lovingly and painstakingly assembled reduxes each keeping the same core tracklisting, spirit and source material as the originals, but blending brand new versions of some tracks, in part or in whole, together with many tracks left largely as they were. Both records are fleshed out with rare, previously unreleased, and even previously unfinished old songs, as well as other contemporaneous material such as cassette diaries.

On The Cherry Trees, two of Lekman’s best-loved early breakout singles are completely reimagined – ‘Maple Leaves’ as a tender ballad burnished with warm strings; tragi-comic illegal taxi ride to oblivion ‘Black Cab’ in two different versions, a handsome full band pop song and a gentle acoustic lullaby.

The Linden Trees repackages all the true-life tales, magic, and mystery of Night Falls for a new age, yet in wholly familiar form, from the joyous ‘The Opposite of Hallelujah’ to hilariously uplifting missive ‘A Postcard to Nina’ and open-hearted love-song ‘Your Arms Around Me’. Taken together, the new albums form a sort of belated farewell to Lekman’s formative days as a bedroom Scott Walker, panning for sample gold in stacks of vintage vinyl. Albeit not a farewell to the original albums themselves, which will live on in fans’ record collections, and perhaps illicit corners of the internet. Spread to the wind. “I feel like these new records are like portals that can lead you to the old records if you want,” Lekman reflects. “I think that they can lead you to another time and a place, where you could work with music in a different way

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It's a really interesting idea this, and 'Cherry Trees...' sees Swedish pop maestro Jens Lenkman revisit 'Oh You're So Silent, Jens' from 2005 and is a brittle and beautiful reconstruction of those wonderfully evocative pieces. Though the structure is recognisable, it's brought things right up to date with orchestral flourishes and a modern production aesthetic, paying homage to the original whilst completely reinventing it at the same time. Beautiful.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1) November 27, 2002
2) At The Dept. Of Forgotten Songs
3) Maple Leaves
4) Sky Phenomenon
5) Pocketful Of Money
6) Black Cab

SIDE B:
7) Someone To Share My Life With
8) December 19, 2002
9) Rocky Dennis’ Farewell Song To The Blind Girl
10) Rocky Dennis In Heaven
11) Jens Lekman’s Farewell Song To Rocky Dennis
12) Julie (RMX)

SIDE C:
13) April 23, 2003
14) I Saw Her In The Anti-War Demonstration
15) A Sweet Summer’s Night On Hammer Hill
16) A Man Walks Into A Bar
17) Another Sweet Summer’s Night On Hammer Hill
18) F-Word

SIDE D:
19) The Wrong Hands
20) June 1, 2003
21) Eureka
22) The Cherry Trees Are Still In Blossom
23) Black Cab (Acoustic)

When Porridge Radio’s Dana Margolin, one of the most vital new voices in rock, began to consider the themes of her new album, three vivid words began to emerge: joy, fear and endlessness. The artwork of the band’s third full-length, Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To The Sky, is a surreal image that evokes the ducks and dives, slippery slopes and existential angst of life in recent times. “To me, the feelings of joy, fear and endlesses coexist together,” says Dana. “You’re never just happy or unhappy.”

Following Every Bad’s release in 2020, Margolin was quickly becoming regarded as one of the most magnetic band leaders around. But if Every Bad established Dana’s bravery in laying herself bare, her band’s third record takes that to anthemic new heights. While there are moments of guttural release, she also finds soft power on songs. “I used to think I had to be loud to be heard,” she admits, “but now I’m definitely less afraid of being gentle.” The band’s first new single, ‘Back To The Radio’, sets out their stall, a lurching call to arms that contrasts Dana’s lyrics of panic and closing herself off. This song is just one of example in WDBLTTS that explores something that has long been an important part of Porridge Radio’s process: playfulness. “I think the album needed to have that balance,” Dana explains.

Balance: that’s the word the album seems to be eternally striving for – joy, fear and endlessness in harmony but also self-acceptance. Dana is more aware of how she’s creating a persona as her star continues to rise, and how she’s singing personal songs that now belong to other people which gives her purpose. She says, “I wrote these songs for myself, but I think everyone wants to feel like what they’re doing is useful in some way. I’m ready to embrace it all now, whatever happens.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There's a wonderful strength around the new Porridge Radio LP, it's bold and it's nuanced and anthemic but it's also defiant, with moments of instrumental and lyrical fragility perfectly offset by grand crescendos and almost post-rock levels of intensity. Beautifully written and melodic throughout, but with both moments of divine joy and passages of honest vulnerability.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Back To The Radio
2. Trying
3. Birthday Party
4. End Of Last Year
5. Rotten
6. U Can Be Happy If U Want To

SIDE B:
7. Flowers
8. Jealousy
9. I Hope She’s OK 2
10. Splintered
11. The Rip
12. Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To The Sky

The second album from Hatchie, ‘Giving The World Away’ is the truest introduction to the songwriter at the helm of the project, Harriette Pilbeam. Although her sound arrived fully-formed, a dazzling dream-pop and shoegaze tangle, it’s here that she distills the core of herself into a record.

“There's more to me than just writing songs about being in love or being heartbroken -- there's a bigger picture than that,” Pilbeam explains. “This album really just feels like the beginning to me, and scratching the surface – and even though it’s my third release as Hatchie, I feel like I’m rebooting from scratch.”

For Pilbeam, that bigger picture explored here includes confronting her anxieties after decades of compartmentalisation; realising her own self-confidence and self-esteem; taking control of her own narrative, and her place in both her professional and personal life. On ‘Giving the World Away,’ she held herself to higher standards, especially with personal lyrical precision. At the time she started working on it, she was caught in a strange headspace. When 2018 EP Sugar & Spice and subsequent debut LP Keepsake both arrived to critical acclaim and catapulted Hatchie into an international spotlight, she felt both unsure of herself and an intense, self-imposed pressure to keep going forward. Trapped in constant motion, Pilbeam was unable to be present or appreciative of herself, both professionally and personally.

She tackles that struggle directly in the moody single “Quicksand,” written with GRAMMY-nominated Olivia Rodrigo collaborator Dan Nigro. “I used to think that this was something I could die for / I hate admitting to myself that I was never sure,” she sings, inverting the thesis of one of her early break-out singles “Sure.” And then, a few lines later, she regains her footing -- in her musicality, and in herself: “It’s all I know, and I’m taking it back.”

“Quicksand is about dealing with the realisation that you'll never be satisfied” Pilbeam comments. “I started writing it when I was home between tours in 2019 before finishing it with Joe Agius and Dan Nigro the next year. I was feeling guilty and ungrateful for not being happy about a few different things in my life that were technically going well. I had to work through some tough learned thought processes and emotions that had been working away for years to try to understand how to be happy with my present, and stop fixating on my past and future. The video digs deeper into showing this juxtaposition of such sadness and anger despite being surrounded by glamour and grandeur."

Director Nathan Castiel adds: “For ‘Quicksand', I created a video that plays off of some tropes of Hollywood glamour in a melancholy and surreal way while giving Harriette room to perform and express the song's raw emotions. We leaned into a neon-tinged after hours aesthetic and shot on 16mm which added a griminess to the opulent locations and set pieces.”

“Quicksand” sets up the rest of the record; an album about self-confidence, about reclamation, about the strange time in young adulthood where you begin to finally be able to see yourself clearly.

Produced by Jorge Elbrecht, also recently GRAMMY-nominated and known for his work with Sky Ferreira, Japanese Breakfast, and Wild Nothing, ‘Giving the World Away’ is Hatchie’s most thunderous, sprawling work yet. Featuring extensive input from longtime Hatchie collaborator Joe Agius, it takes the celestial, shimmering shoegaze and pop sensibilities of her earlier releases, but with the volume knob cranked up tenfold. Built out with percussion from Beach House drummer James Barone, it’s synthed-out, sonic opulence, a more structured and ornate musicality with traces of ‘90s trip-hop and acid house influences.

Pilbeam initially intended for these songs to go in a higher-energy direction -- she had the distinct vision of a Hatchie show turned dance party, inviting more movement and vibrancy into her live shows. But then, between Covid and the lockdowns in Australia, Pilbeam retreated more into herself, and that introspection and self-discovery served as the true inspiration for the record. Again and again across ‘Giving the World Away,’ she returns to that same theme – dismantling internalized shame and finding gratitude and steadiness, and finally being able to trust herself. Pilbeam grew up the youngest in her family, a self-described “big baby,” but says the last year and a half gave her the space to understand herself better. After years of emotional avoidance, here she excavates her fears fully.

‘Giving the World Away’ is an album about self-confidence, about reclamation, about the strange time in young adulthood where you begin to finally be able to see yourself clearly. Incisive and probing, ‘Giving the World Away’ is the clearest look at Pilbeam yet, and a relic of the power and bravery that spring forth from embracing vulnerability and putting your heart on the line.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Crystalline synths and rolling bass licks permeate the retro-tinged percussion and dreamy echoic vocals, bringing to mind the perfect pop of Tegan & Sara mixed with walls of shoegaze fuzz.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1) Lights On
2) This Enchanted
3) Twin
4) Take My Hand
5) The Rhythm
6) Quicksand
Side B
7) Thinking Of
8) Giving The World Away
9) The Key
10) Don't Leave Me In The Rain
11) Sunday Song
12) Til We Run Out Of Air

BONUS TRACKS On Download Card:
Back Into Your Arms (Hatchie's Version)
Don't Leave Me In The Rain (Demo)
Quicksand (Demo)
The Rhythm (Demo)

Alex Cameron has always been a great storyteller, finding his ways into the depths of the places where not many others are looking, and Oxy Music continues on that trajectory. It’s filled with stories of people who fall outside the system and exist in the grey areas of life. And much like 2017’s Forced Witness, Oxy Music is a work of fiction. In its design - its music, lyrics and tracklist - lies the journey a person can take, if the circumstances present themselves - down the road of heavy drug and alcohol abuse. Initially inspired by Nico Walker’s Cherry, Cameron was spurred into yet another commentary on American Life, this time about the opioid crisis that has taken over the country. Alex says about Oxy Music: “The album is a story, a work of fiction, mostly from the perspective of a man. Starved of meaningful purpose, confused about the state of the world, and in dire need of a reason to live - a person can, and according to the latest statistics, increasingly will, turn to opioids. This is one of those people.”

While Oxy Music could be dark, it’s instead brighter and more buoyant than much of Cameron’s previous work, a shift in mood first seen across 2019’s Miami Memory. It’s told from a place of optimism and through the lens of Cameron, in the way that only he can tell it.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Best Life
2. Sara Jo
3. Prescription Refill
4. Hold The Line
5. Breakdown

SIDE B:
6. K Hole
7. Dead Eyes
8. Cancel Culture (feat. Lloyd Vines)
9. Oky Music (feat. Jason Williamson)

Leftovers, the debut album from Montreal’s Le Ren, stitches together a patchwork of personal songs about different relationships: those we share with mothers, lovers, and friends. Lauren Spear, the artist behind Le Ren, created a physical quilt to mirror the assemblage of stories that comprise her album: a coming-of-age collage that collects over four years of past experiences and finds their present meaning.

Leftovers was originally scheduled to be recorded in LA in early 2020, but the pandemic forced Le Ren to reconsider the kind of album she wanted to make, and how she wanted to make it. Taking the time to revamp old songs and bring the past to bear upon new ones, she distilled years of material into ten tightly executed tracks united by the swooning pluck of her guitar and the crystal clear timbre of her voice. The result is a timeless assemblage of love, heartache, celebration, and lessons hard-learned, written and performed by a musician who has honed the subtleties of her craft.

With its organic yet meticulous folk production and deeply felt lyrics, Leftovers exists outside of trend or time, finding a home among classic icons like Joni Mitchell, Vashti Bunyan, and Karen Dalton, as well as a new class of folk extraordinaires, such as Adrianne Lenker, Jessica Pratt, and Laura Marling. Le Ren writes with a bold clarity that lends her songs the immediate, enduring quality of good stories well-told that, like their album title-namesake, only get better with age. Leftovers is equal parts melancholy, deep love, and levity to lift up the mournful. Le Ren here weaves a rich musical tapestry addressed to loved ones lost, found, and

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: 'Leftovers' is a beautifully written and tender culmination of Lauren Spear's musings on various relationships, filtered through the medium of folky guitar and gorgeously sung vocals.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Take On Me
2. Dyan
3. Was I Not Enough?
4. I Already Love You
5. Who’s Going To Hold Me Next?

SIDE B:
6. Your Cup
7. Annabelle & MaryAnne (feat. Tenci)
8. Willow
9. Friends Are Miracles
10. May Hard Times Pass Us By

Written in the wee hours of the night, the late Richard Swift’s ‘KFC’ is a winding sardonic monologue about a rough night of food poisoning following a quick dinner of fried chicken.

On the track, Swift’s vocal is pitched down and distorted while accompanied by cooing vocal harmonies and drums.

TRACK LISTING

KFC
A Man’s Man

I Know I’m Funny haha is Webster’s most realized manifestation yet of this emotional and musical alchemy. Continuing to bloom from her 2019 breakthrough and Secretly Canadian debut Atlanta Millionaires Club, Webster’s sound draws as much from the lap-steel singer-songwriter pop of the 1970s and teardrop country tunes as it does from the audacious personalities of her city’s rap and R&B community. The album began for Webster with the stirring ballad “In a Good Way,” as in “You make me want to cry in a good way”—an instantclassic Faye Webster one-liner. It’s beguilingly simple, the kind of melody and arrangement that seem to have existed forever. A sense of relief charges the neo-psychedelic pop of “Cheers,” where Webster experiments with an overdriven guitar tone.

She also collaborated, on “Overslept,” with the Japanese artist Mei Ehara, who she calls the biggest influence on her new music. Webster’s music is full of personality. Many of her songs contain bits of girl-group-esque talk-singing, which color her atypical storysongs. Webster says she’s in a growth mindset, pushing herself to learn more, to be more vulnerable. “Growth is really important to me,” she says. “I hope people will relate to my songs, and not just be like ‘this is a good record’ but ‘this makes me feel something. This is making me think differently, this is making me question things.’ I told myself a few years ago that I was going to be more honest in my songwriting, that honesty is the best route to take with music. If I have a voice and people are listening to me, I’m not going to waste it.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Better Distractions
2. Sometimes
3. I Know I’m Funny Haha
4. In A Good Way
5. Kind Of
6. Cheers
7. Both All The Time
8. A Stranger
9. A Dream With A Baseball Player
10. Overslept (feat. Mei Ehara)
11. Half Of Me

Voyager rattles with the live-wire feeling that’s thrummed through all of Rattigan’s previous releases: quavering, scream-itself-hoarse vocals and self-interrogation via song. But here, that bristling, sentimental rock ‘n’ roll cacophony is overlaid with a soundtrack orchestra guiding it along. It’s an odyssey, a grand-sounding journey of self-discovery spread across sixteen tracks. Part ekphrasis, part personal, it’s Rattigan learning new ways to understand his own feelings and identity while inspired by the highly-stylized, striking storytelling of filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock, Lars Von Trier, Terrence Malick, Agnès Varda, and Andrei Tarkovsky.

Voyager, Rattigan’s most mature release to date, is an evolution built on Current Joys’ prolific output since 2013. A Nevada native, Rattigan began Current Joys in Reno, before moving to New York after school and busting his ass working as a production assistant in the film/TV industry. He relocated to Los Angeles in 2016, and the songs that make up Voyager began coming together shortly after. Each piece of Current Joys’ previous discography is wholly built and envisioned by Rattigan, self-recorded and quickly released, quivering with a lonely intensity. Within six months of beginning the project, Current Joys had already released its debut, Wild Heart; by 2018, the sixth Current Joys full length and visual album, A Different Age, was out. All the while, Current Joys’ profile quickly and quietly ascended, selling out venues like LA’s El Rey along with European tours, simultaneously amassing millions of streams of the catalog, and a dedicated following.

On Voyager, Rattigan eschews lo-fi home recordings for a full band and recording sessions at Stinson Beach Studios. As a vocalist/drummer in his other band Surf Curse, Rattigan had finally opened up to the possibility of working in a professional studio. But while the audiences and songwriting/recording approaches changed and continue to evolve for Current Joys, the inspiration Rattigan draws from cinema remains a guiding force. Frequently he uses film as a jumping off point for songwriting. Lead single “Amateur” and its video reflects his affinity for the cinematic. The track is piano-heavy, a slow-build of tension, flitting with prettiness. The self-directed video features Rattigan in costume, chaotically driving a retro car.


Rattigan, who stays up all night to perfect the sequencing of his records once they’re recorded, doesn’t set out with a typical aesthetic in mind – instead, it just happens. Performing is his catharsis. Which feels palpable on Voyager; there’s fragments of hours spent watching movies, as well as stories from his own life; there’s overly-caffeinated car rides blasting the Pixies’ Surfer Rosa; there’s inspiration taken from the crooning presence of frontmen like Jeff Buckley, Chris Isaak, and Nick Cave, as evidenced on Rattigan’s cover of the Boys Next Door’s “Shivers.” And there’s the simple, ecstatic energy of getting a bunch of friends in the studio.

It’s all held together by the fervor of Rattigan’s creative process. He believes in the premonitory power of music, and he latches onto the song ideas that strike him in the moment, propelled by an abstract existentialism or burst of feeling more than anything else. It imbues Voyager with an intensity and intimacy – with the sense that you’re getting to hear, all at once, the disparate parts that make a project – or person – into a sprawling, cinematic whole.

TRACK LISTING

1. Dancer In The Dark
2. American Honey
3. Naked
4. Altered States
5. Breaking The Waves
6. Big Star
7. Amateur
8. Rebecca
9. Shivers
10. Something Real
11. Money Making Machine
12. Voyager Pt. 1
13. Calypso
14. The Spirit Or The Curse
15. Vagabond
16. Voyager Pt. 2

serpentwithfeet is not only imagining, but exploring a world wherein Black love is paramount. His new album, DEACON, is “a study rather than a story,” delving into Black, gay love and the tenderness present in the best companionships, romantic or otherwise.

Fully self-actualized and more devoted than ever to personal fulfilment, DEACON highlights his growth as a songwriter, which he credits to taking a more straightforward approach to expression. Spending time with pop songwriters and observing how they traverse language encouraged serpent to take more risks lyrically, resulting in more purity.

Raised by religious parents in Baltimore, serpent’s flair for theatrical themes and gospel sensibilities can be traced to the Black church, a place where the artist had his earliest experiences with glamour and the ornate. Well-executed vocal flourishes and the implementation of a quickening vibrato are just a few of the skills he picked up during his time in a Pentecostal choir. He proudly follows in the tradition of R&B artists whose gifts were helmed in the church, and he approached DEACON with an undeniable passion and reverence for the genre.

In his love for love, serpentwithfeet is offering a look into the soul of a man who articulates his passion in a warmer, gentler way. He’s become wholly confident in his gift and messaging on DEACON, which is to be expected when one gives vent to maturity. Through his music, he allows compassion to be the backbone of his art, as he communes with his most loving self.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: 'Deacon' follows on brilliantly from 2018's 'Soil' but takes all of the shimmering production and and silken soulful instrumentation to the next level. We segue from downbeat hip-hop aesthetic into soulful lounge and deep synthpop without breaking pace. A singular and instantly recognisable talent.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Hyacinth
2. Same Size Shoe
3. Malik
4. Amir
5. Dawn

SIDE B:
6. Sailors’ Superstition
7. Heart Storm (with NAO)
8. Wood Boy
9. Derrick’s Beard
10. Old & Fine
11. Fellowship

The songs mark Anohni’s first new music since the 2019 charity single ‘Karma’, a collaboration with Jade Bell and J. Ralph.

A viscous embrace, a pulsating pouring out, Anohni’s voice is above all else a vessel for political armament. On 2016’s Hopelessness, her voice bombarded with explicit illustration of Obama-era atrocities -- of war crimes, of apocalyptic climate change, of patriarchal violence. Now sharing a dual cover set, she casts a subtler, but no less powerful incantation towards change.

The original tracks dating to 1965, a year marked by the Selma marches, the Watts Rebellion, and the landmark Voting Rights Act, illuminate the eerily parallel struggles of this year. Anohni’s rendition of ‘It’s All Over Now…’ reads as a hopeful, future goodbye to times dominated by oppression. With ‘Be My Husband,” textually woven with marital submission and want for acceptance, she examines our reliance on the very systems that fail us.

In borrowing these songs, Anohni adopts their history along with her contemporary interpretations, respecting the lineage of the people’s movement while calling for its continuance today. “When Biden said ‘Americans don’t want revolution, they want a return to decency,’ he was wrong,” she explained. “We all know deep down that the continuation of our civilizations for much longer will require seismic change.”

TRACK LISTING

1. It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue
2. Be My Husband

Le Ren’s close-to-the-bone, heartbreak folk songs seem, at first, to tap into a shared musical memory. A melody swirls forward and you’re just sure it’s known to the back of your mind; was it in from a movie you saw, some classic mid-60s setpiece? Maybe it’s something you heard as a kid, in the backseat of your mom’s Cutlass, or the shotgun seat of your own. But before you can zero in through the fog, your heart is torn apart by her voice — rich, direct and mellifluous — steering you through these slowburn tunes about real-life loss.

“Discussing songwriting feels the same as when someone asks about your tattoo,” says Lauren Spear, 26, the sole voice and songwriter behind Montreal’s Le Ren. “You’re putting it out there, showing it in public right on your arm. Then, when someone asks you ‘Hey, what’s that tattoo mean?,’ you’re shocked to have to explain it, as it is a choice that feels essential for a particular moment.”

Two years ago, Spear’s ex-boyfriend was killed in a car accident. Since then, she has been struggling with the immeasurable weight of being the sole keeper of their shared memories and in response, translated a sliver of that experience into music. Her EP, Morning & Melancholia, is a mediation on mourning, memory and how to live with the ellipses you’re forever left with in the wake of loss.

The way Le Ren is able to look tragedy directly in its eyes and never let her voice so much as quiver is owed to a few things. Raised on rural Bowen Island, British Columbia, the isolated lifestyle allows for a certain independent dedication to craft that is evident in her performances. Spear has studied folk and bluegrass going back to her early teens, partaking in workshops and festivals all over North America. You can hear in her acumen the gorgeous folk formalism of Canadian heroes Kate and Anna McGerrigle. But it’s not all rigor and acuity that makes Le Ren’s music so stunning. She was also raised on The Holy Trinity of songwriters John Prine, Neil Young and Bob Dylan, and their curious, deadpan and cosmic approach to life’s most brutal swipes also feed Le Ren’s sensibilities. Her lyrical couplets are as simply put as they are devastating. “So here we are at the end of all things // I guess I learned too late // that love can’t be the only reason to stay,” she sings on the closer “Love Can’t Be the Only Reason To Stay”. It’s gut wrenching, but sure-footed. And you can almost hear the slight smile on one side of her mouth as she sings, the knowing smile of someone who knows real pain, knows there’s surely more to come, but who also knows it doesn’t erase life’s humorous, enduring beauty.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Love Can’t Be The Only Reason To Stay
2. How To Begin To Say Goodbye
SIDE B:
4. If I Had Wings
5. The Day I Lose My Mind

Covers have long been an integral part of Whitney's ethos. Ever since the band first formed in a Chicago apartment in 2014, tackling songs by the Everly Brothers, Allen Toussaint, and more played an important part in the songwriting process for their breakthrough 2016 debut Light Upon The Lake. Since then, their takes on NRBQ's "Magnet" and Neil Young's "On the Way Home" have become live staples, an essential and communal part of their sets. Their love for the music that makes up their deepest influences has always been genuine and tangible. Following their acclaimed sophomore 2019 album Forever Turned Around, Whitney have decided to return with a loving tribute to songs that have been formative and lasting to the entire band. Candid is a 10-song collection boasting covers of artists like Kelela, David Byrne, John Denver, SWV , and others but it's also a band challenging themselves to explore more than their musical comfort zone. "This could've been as simple as saying we really love these songs and we love our bandmates and making a covers record just felt right but it truly became an exploration into how we can evolve as a band going forward,” says drummer and singer Julien Ehrlich.

Recorded in January and February of 2020 over multiple sessions at Treehouse Studios in Chicago and Flora Recording and Playback in Portland , Candid finally sees the full touring band in a recording studio together. " This is the first time we really saw what the live iteration of Whitney sounds like in a studio. It was a really celebratory vibe and everyone in the room fed off each other's energy," says guitarist Max Kakacek. It's the band's best reflection so far of their triumphant live show as most of these renditions were recorded live. Featuring keyboardist Malcolm Brown, bassist Josiah Marshall, trumpeter Will Miller, as well as guitarists Print Chouteau and Ziyad Asrar, the entire live unit is firing at all cylinders thanks to its tight-knit and road-tested relationship.

Their chemistry exudes throughout the tracklist but it's especially apparent when they open up the dynamic to their friends, like Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee joining John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads." On the cover of the classic, Ehrlich and Crutchfield's voices merge for a joyous harmony over the chorus. Over eight days at Treehouse Studios, the band would show up in the morning, learn a song together, and choose an instrument, leading to a freewheeling and adventurous atmosphere. Their renditions of SWV's '90s R&B heater "Rain" or David Byrne and Brian Eno's 2008 track "Strange Overtones" prove this, as they stretch Whitney into new musical directions. "We love these songs and all have an emotional connection to each one, but we really wanted to see if we could take the skeleton of each track and approach it in a way that felt new. We didn't want to recreate what any of these artists already did," says Kakacek. This is most evident on Candid opener "Bank Head," which tackles the sparse and hypnotic electronic single by Kelela. Ehrlich adds, “ It's something we've never done before and probably a direction that we want to explore in our future albums” he continues, “ We knew we couldn't beat these songwriters at their own game. Instead, we wanted to find songs that were great at their core and could be reimagined.”

At its core, Candid is a celebration of both the songs Whitney has adored throughout its formation and the band's evolving bond through years of relentless touring and an enduring friendship. "One thing we realized is how these songwriters could make amazing songs with so much simplicity. Taking these skeletons and working with this incredible material means we're keeping our chops and staying tight as a band," says Ehrlich. The LP is a sincere snapshot of their evolving and eclectic tastes that's imbued with a wholly inviting charm. It's Whitney at their most unvarnished and inventive but most importantly, it's a heartfelt tribute to the songwriters who've helped them most.

-Josh Terry
May 4, 2020
Chicago, IL

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Whitney return once again, this time with a soaring suite of covers all done in their inimitable style. Perfectly balanced falsetto, beautifully tender instrumentation and a great take on these classic tunes.

TRACK LISTING

1. Bank Head (Kelela)
2. A.M.:A.M. (Damien Jurado)
3. Country Roads Ft. Waxahatchee (John Denver)
4. High On A Rocky Ledge (Moondog)
5. Something Happen (Jack Arel)
6. Strange Overtones (David Byrne And Brian Eno)
7. Hammond Song (The Roches)
8. Crying, Laughing, Loving, Lying (Labi Siffre)
9. Rain (SWV)
10. Rainbows And Ridges (Blaze Foley)

Sometime in 2006 or 2007, Jason Molina moved from the midwest to London. Separated from his bandmates and friends and never one for idleness, Molina explored his new home with fervor. Sometimes he’d head out on foot, often with no destination in mind. Other times, he’d pick a random tube stop and find his way back home. He’d pick up on arcane trivia about London’s rich history, and if the historical factoids weren’t available — or weren’t quite to his liking — Molina was quite comfortable conjuring his own history. His adoration of The Great American Tall Tales like John Henry and Paul Bunyan’s blue ox Babe stretched across the Atlantic, where he created his own personal Tall Tales. And when he learned of the London Wall’s seven gates (itself a misconception), Molina went ahead and called it eight, carving out a gate just for himself. The eighth gate was Molina’s way into London, a gate only passable in the mind.

Fast forward to 2008, Molina set off on an experimental solo tour through Europe. While in Northern Italy, Molina claimed to have been bitten by a rare, poisonous spider. A debilitating bout of illness ensued. “I was in the hospital here in London,” Molina wrote in a letter. “Saw six doctors and a Dr. House-type guy. They are all mystified by it, but I am allowed to be at home, where I am taking a dozen scary Hantavirus type pills a day that are all to supposedly help — but they make me feel like shit.” There is no record of a single doctor visit, not any prescription record for these medications. It is entirely plausible there was no spider and that whatever was keeping him indoors during this time was entirely self-induced. While at home, he of course wrote songs.

Molina also claimed that during this time, he fed several bright green parrots that would gather in his yard. While often associated with a greyscale sensibility, Molina was oft-clad in a Hawaiian shirt and had, at least in part, selected the name Songs: Ohia for his first project as a nod to Hawaii’s ‘Ohi’a lehua flower. Which is all to say, the tropical element the parakeets brought to those sick days delighted Molina. He made short, crude field recordings of them with his trusty four-track. Only once Molina was officially on the mend and re-exploring the streets of London would he learn that those parrots had their own fabled tale. Back in the 60s, Jimi Hendrix — in a moment of psychedelic clarity — released his pair of lime green ring-necked parakeets from their cage, setting them free into the London sky. Now, their decendents are spotted regularly around certain parts of the city. Or so we’re told.

Eight Gates is the last collection of solo studio recordings Molina made before he passed from complications related to alcoholism in 2013. Recorded in London around the time of the supposed spider bite and Jimi’s supposed parakeets, some of the songs (“Whispered Away,” “Thistle Blue”) are fully-realized — dark, moody textures that call to mind his earlier work on The Lioness. Knowing what we know about those parakeets and their peppered presence on the recordings, one can’t help but think of that colorful tree of birds on Talk Talk’s classic Laughing Stock, certainly a spiritual guide for much of the set. Other songs (“She Says,” “The Crossroads and The Emptiness”) lay in a more unfinished states, acoustic takes that call to mind Molina’s Let Me Go Let Me Go Let Me Go, and still tethered to Molina’s humorous studio banter. You remember how young Molina was, and how weighty this art was for such a young man. On the closer, “The Crossroads and The Emptiness,” Molina snaps at the engineer before tearing into a song in which he sings of his birthday (December 30), a palm reading and the great emptiness with which he always wrestled. It is a perfect closer and, in many ways, the eighth gate incarnate: mythical, passable only in the mind, built for himself and partway imaginary but shared, thankfully, with us.

TRACK LISTING

1. Whisper Away
2. Shadow Answers The Wall
3. The Mission’s End
4. Old Worry
5. She Says
6. Fire On The Rail
7. Be Told The Truth
8. Thistle Blue
9. The Crossroad + The Emptiness

After completing his previous projects Postcards (where he wrote 52 songs in 52 weeks) and Ghostwriting (where he offered his songwriting to tell other peoples stories), Jens Lekman came up with a new idea. He asked fellow Swedish songwriter Annika Norlin (Hello Saferide, Säkert!) to join him.

The idea was that throughout the year of 2018, the two of them would correspond through music. Each month, one of them would write a song and the next month, the other one would reply. Before starting, they did some research on famous letter writing in literature. They were struck by how you usually have to be dead and declared a genius for your correspondence to be published. That’s sad, they thought, and decided this would be great to do while they were still alive.

The rules were simple:

- One letter each month throughout the year - in total, six songs for Jens and six for Annika.

- Only one instrument could be used for each song. This was to help them focus on the songs/letters instead of the production. Correspondence gave Jens and Annika an outlet for more spontaneous ideas, and they decided to stay under the radar by only releasing the songs on the Correspondence website, and a Spotify playlist. Most of the time they forgot that anyone else could hear the songs, and they turned out very personal. But looking back at 2018, maybe most of the personal things they wrote about - exhaustion, longing for human connection, harassment, climate change anxiety - summed up 2018 at a larger level as well.

As the project came to an end, Jens and Annika listened through the songs and felt pleased with the results. An epistolary novel in the form of twelve folksongs. Jens wrote string arrangements for half of the songs and brought in violinist Ellen Hjalmarsson and cellist Petra Lundin. For the first time since the digital release, their correspondence will be released on vinyl.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Who Really Needs Who
2. Showering In Public
3. Forever Young, Forever Beautiful

SIDE B:
4. Hibernation
5. Not Because It’s Easy, Because It’s Hard
6. Joining A Cult

SIDE C:
7. Revenge Of The Nerds
8. Failure
9. Cosmetics Store

SIDE D:
10. Election Day
11. On The Edge Of Time
12. Silent Night

Porridge Radio grew out of Dana Margolin’s bedroom, where she started making music in private. Living in the seaside town of Brighton, she recorded songs and slowly started playing them at open mic nights to rooms of old men who stared at her quietly as she screamed in their faces. Though she eventually grew out of them, for Margolin these open mic nights unlocked a love of performing and songwriting, as well as a new way to express herself. She decided to form a band through which to channel it all, and be noisier while she was at it – so Porridge Radio was born.

Inspired by interpersonal relationships, her environment - in particular the sea - and her growing friendships with her new bandmates (bassist Maddie Ryall, keyboardist Georgie Stott, and drummer Sam Yardley) Margolin’s distinctive, indie-pop-butmake-it-existentialist style soon started to crystallise. Quickly, the band self-released a load of demos and a garden-shed-recorded collection on Memorials of Distinction, while tireless touring cemented their firm reputation as one of UK DIY’s most beloved and compelling live bands.

As the band’s sound – bright pop-rock instrumentation blended with Margolin’s tender, open-ended lyrics – has developed and refined, Porridge Radio have also received enthusiastic radio airplay on the BBC, Radio X and more. Now, they are taking that development a step further, as they put out their label debut, Every Bad.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1. Born Confused
2. Sweet
3. Don't Ask Me Twice
4. Long Nephews

SIDE B
1. Pop Song
2. Give/Take
3. Lilac
4. Circling
5. (Something)
6. Homecoming Song

Cherry Glazerr releases a 7” single with exclusive remixes by Reggie Watts and tUnE-yArDs via Secretly Canadian, in support of their upcoming appearance on The Late Late Show With James Corden.

TRACK LISTING

Daddi (Reggie Watts Remix)
Self-Explained (tUne- YArDs Remix)

Alex Cameron’s newest and most musically expansive LP, the glistening Miami Memory, takes a surprising turn. Cameron’s flair for narrative and character are still on full display; yet Miami Memory’s most frequent narrator is, for the first time, Cameron himself—singing with stunning candor of his three-year relationship with his girlfriend.

“When you listen to these songs, and you’re waiting for the twist, or the joke, or any kind of discomfort, I can assure you none of those things were there when I wrote them,” says Cameron. “These are true stories, of actual events. Specific but never esoteric. And graphic but never offensive. Miami Memory is the story of a couple balancing sex with contemporary family values...It’s my gift to my girlfriend, a symbol to hoist on the totem of love.”

Though remnants of his synth-driven earlier work sneak in to unsettle the tone, the bulk of Miami Memory, produced by Jonathan Rado (Weyes Blood, Father John Misty) and recorded and mixed by Marta Salogni (Björk, Kelela), revels in the emotional overdrive of classic dad rock, its warm, anthemic songs driven by bass, guitar, sax, and layers of Vegas wedding chapel-ish organ.

Cameron’s dad rock funhouse of an album ultimately twists and subverts the genre: it recalls classics the white male ego has historically visited for its regular adrenaline injection, and morphs them into a singular “stepdad” rock that largely turns its lens away from the dads, celebrating the demise of old norms of gender and power. In his depiction of his relationship, Cameron reveals a striking honesty about love and sex in a time where a palpable fleetingness hangs over everything from relationships to human life on this planet—but also where constricting mores have deteriorated enough to let “family life,” in all its morphing forms, exist outside of social obligation. With arresting straightforwardness, Cameron now sings as himself, paying tribute

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Huge stadium-rock choruses and growling synths provide a glitzy and sturdy backdrop for Cameron's soaring vocals and robust 80's-tinged pomp. Huge, overblown, and great fun all round.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Stepdad
2. Miami Memory
3. Far From Born Again
4. Gaslight
5. Bad For The Boy

SIDE B:
6. End Is Nigh
7. PC With Me
8. Divorce
9. Other Ladies
10. Too Far

Forever Turned Around came together over several sessions across the country. Though Julien Ehrlich is Whitney’s lead singing drummer while Max Kakacek is the lead guitarist, when writing, both transcend their roles to piece together each offering lyrically and compositionally. “The way it ends up working is one of us comes up with a basic idea for a song and the other person serves as the foil to complicate that idea. We ask, ‘What can we change to make it more interesting?’” says Kakacek. Challenging each other is the core of their songwriting partnership.

It’s these risks and experiments that make Forever Turned Around a triumph. Take opener “Giving Up,” which started from a stream-ofconscious revelation when Ehrlich improvised the chorus while Kakacek played Wurlitzer. What began as a nod to Neil Young’s Live at Massey Hall 1971 in an afternoon turned into a heart-rending and relatable song about the ups and downs of long-term relationships. Over twinkling piano, Ehrlich sings, “Though we started losing touch / I’ve been hanging on because / You’re the only one I love.” He explains, “In a relationship, you don’t stay at the same level at all times. You go through weeks where you’re closed off.”

After a session with producers Bradley Cook (Hand Habits, Hiss Golden Messenger) and Jonathan Rado (Weyes Blood, Father John Misty) helped color in the arrangements, the album truly revealed itself when they reunited with original rhythm guitarist Ziyad Asrar in his basement Chicago studio—the same place where they hashed out much of their critically acclaimed 2016 debut, Light Upon The Lake. “Getting down there was so important because we’ve always used that basement for music. The comfort and familiarity mattered but having Ziyad be a buffer between us was so helpful,” says Ehrlich. With Asrar, songs like “Song For Ty” and “Forever Turned Around” effortlessly came together.

Restlessness is at the heart of Whitney’s resonant and stunning sophomore album Forever Turned Around. As Ehrlich and Kakacek realized life can change almost instantly. Priorities shift, relationships evolve, home can become far away, and even when luck momentarily works out, there’s still that underlying search for something better. Happiness can be fleeting but this album proves that even when it feels like time is turning on its head and there’s either a moment of clarity or crippling doubt, there’s still beauty in figuring it all out.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Whitney are absolutely unmistakable. After their 2016 outing 'Light Upon The Lake', i'm pretty sure i'd recognise those vocals anywhere. Stunning upbeat jangles, soulful progressions and smooth-as-silk percussion throughout.

TRACK LISTING

1. Giving Up
2. Used To Be Lonely
3. Before I Know It
4. Song For Ty
5. Valleys (My Love)
6. Rhododendron
7. My Life Alone
8. Day & Night
9. Friend Of Mine
10. Forever Turned Around

Stella Donnelly is a proud, self-proclaimed shit-stirrer. On lead single “Old Man,” the biting opener of her electrifying debut album, ‘Beware of the Dogs,’ she targets the song’s titular creep, “Oh are you scared of me old man or are you scared of what I’ll do? You grabbed me with an open hand. The world is grabbing back at you.” When something needs to be said, whether it’s to an abusive man, a terrible boss, or a clueless significant other, the 26-year old Fremantle, Western Australia-based musician is fearless in telling it like it is. Delivered entirely with a sarcastic wink and a full heart, ‘Beware of the Dogs’ proves across 13 lifeaffirming songs the power in sticking up for yourself, your friends, and what’s right.

The album showcases an artist totally in command of her voice, able to wield her inviting charm and razor-sharp wit into authentically raw songs. It’s a resounding statement of purpose in recent memory and most importantly, it’s a portrait of Donnelly taking charge. She says, “this album made me feel like I was back in the driver’s seat. It was really liberating and grounding to realize that no one can fuck with this except me.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There certainly is a coherent thread running between a lot of the music coming from Australia nowadays, not in terms of sound necessarily, but the attitude and pacing of the music. 'Beware Of The Dogs' epitomises that effortless cool without ever feeling like it's too loose. tightly woven melodies and strummed guitars form the perfect backdrop to the wry political meanderings and stunning vocals peppered over the top. This really is a killer LP, and one that is sure to appear in my top-10 come the end of year.

TRACK LISTING

1. Old Man
2. Mosquito
3. Season's Greetings
4. Allergies
5. Tricks
6. Boys Will Be Boys
7. Lunch
8. Bistro
9. Die
10. Beware Of The Dogs
11. U Owe Me
12. Watching Telly
13. Face It

It was a great Swiftian irony that the shining moment of realization that is ‘Ground Trouble Jaw’ first saw its release as a modest, digital-only EP in 2008. Here Secretly Canadian right that wrong and pair it with 2011’s ‘Walt Wolfman’ EP, very much a spiritual twin of ‘Ground Trouble Jaw’. Walt Wolfman’’s blown-out, basement R&B speaker-shredders are not for the faint of heart. Highlight of the set, ‘MG 33’ is a raw and ghostly trance, a blast of kinetic energy and that jazz apple smoke blown right in your face. The quasi-title track ‘Walt Whitman’ is a cryptic salute to Whitman, whose American lineage of primal, urgent art can be traced to include Kerouac and Ray Johnson, Bo Diddley and Beefheart - right on through to Swift himself. He was an outsiderpop wanderkind who could do more with one worn, old mic than most men could with a high-end studio, taking ‘the holy moment’ and making it eternal.

TRACK LISTING

Would You
Lady Luck
The Bully
The Original Thought
A Song For Milton
Feher Whitman
MG 333
Laugh It Up
Zombie Boogie
Out & About
Drakula (Hey Man!)
St. Michael

‘Where Neon Goes To Die’ explores a complex relationship full of highs and lows. From sultry pop to heart aching ballads, the album retells Clark’s travels through the city’s nocturnal fantasyland through hooky, R&B-infused synth pop - file alongside Prince and Frank Ocean - that (maybe ironically) could fill the floors at the same clubs he’s singing about. Of course, when Clark writes about his city he’s really writing about himself.

‘Where Neon Goes To Die’ retells Clark’s travels through the Miami’s nocturnal fantasyland. At its core, it is the story of a musician casting aside the distractions of his youth and discovering not only a new level of maturity but a new level to his talents.

After a string of mixtapes and EPs and his 2015 debut album ‘The Lonely Roller’, Clark is making music more confidently than he ever has before, sliding effortlessly between effervescent future disco on ‘Feel This Way’ to purple-tinged slow-burn soul on ‘Easy Fall’, a duet with Gavin Turek.

TRACK LISTING

Maria, Under The Moon
Feel This Way
Easy Fall
On And On
Found
Did I Hurt U
Evil Woman
Days Like This
War
What Can I Do

Serpentwithfeet is an experimental R&B / gospel vocalist and performance artist whose growing body of work is rooted in dueling obsessions with the ephemeral and the everlasting – key components of his artistic journey from a childhood stint as a choirboy in Baltimore through his time at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where he studied vocal performance before relocating to New York City. "Soil" is a return to the sensibilities and wide-eyed curiosity of his musical youth before symmetry and sterile soundscapes ruled the roost. With the release of "Soil" the chameleonic Serpentwithfeet (born Josiah Wise) rediscovers and ultimately returns to the unhinged version of himself he was sure he had outgrown.

On "Soil", Serpentwithfeet trades glossolalia and peacocking showmanship for intricately layered harmonies, a sumptuous bottom register that appears for the first time to challenge his fluttering tenor, and ballsy sonic experimentation encouraged by Gately, whose talent he describes as 'making voices sound like elephants and elephants sound like car engines.' Together they develop an unctuous sound that suggests billowing clouds and the dense, plodding stomp of 12-bar blues. Once concerned with perfect execution of gospel runs and dishing up a gossamer falsetto, Serpentwithfeet is out of balance and reveling in the concept of mess on "Soil". Particularly, what it means to part ways with sterility and the urge to uncoil himself in order to occupy more space. "Soil" is the moment at which he unfolds himself with zero intention of closing back up.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Tender synthy ballads, simmering jazzy influence and reticent gothic turns all form together on Serpentwithfeet's newest outing, at once soulful and bracing, before launching into reticent and delicate urban beats. Stunning stuff.

TRACK LISTING

1. Whisper
2. Messy
3. Wrong Tree
4. Fragrant
5. Mourning Song
6. Cherubim
7. Seedless
8. Invoice
9. Waft
10. Slow Syrip
11. Bless Ur Heart

Like previous albums, The Horizon Just Laughed started with a dream – though that’s where things change, as they often do. It is Damien Jurado’s first self-produced album in a 20+ year career, more personal and more rooted than even his Maraqopa trilogy, as though after so much time on the road he’s stumbled upon his home.

The album feels like a beautiful collage — its narrative pieced together through letters and postcards, with each part contributing to its greater whole, and providing snapshots of ones journey to find a sense of place and connection to a changing world.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Jurado just goes from strength to strength, and this continues that trajectory. Beautiful production mixed with his singular songwriting ability make for a spellbinding and nuanced ride.

TRACK LISTING

1. Allocate
2. Dear Thomas Wolfe
3. Percy Faith
4. Over Rainbows And Rainier
5. The Last Great Washington State
6. Cindy Lee
7. 1973
8. Marvin Kaplan
9. Lou-Jean
10. Florence-Jean
11. Random Fearless

Makeness drops his debut album, "Loud Patterns" on the Secretely Canadian labe. Crafting tracks which make a virtue of disparate influences, Kyle Molleson manages to pull off something difficult: songs which have been tirelessly worked on, although sound loose-limbed and to-the-point.

"Loud Patterns" is noticeably indebted to house and techno; there are 4/4 rhythms, and a no-nonsense directness that harks back to the Detroit pioneers. Channeling avant-garde experimentalism and an outsider’s interest in pop, Kyle embraces the distance between those two poles.

Cosmic Slop, an underground institution in Leeds, was another touchstone. As Kyle recalls,'That place was definitely an awakening in terms of dance music.' It boasts a hand-built, peerless soundsystem, a near-pitch black dancefloor and a music policy that ranges from Dilla instrumentals to Detroit house. It takes dance music away from regimented structure, fashion and trends and into a freeform world of creative, one which Kyle thoroughly embraces.

"Loud Patterns" arrives after a series of releases that have established his particular, in-between approach to dance-minded music. He put out two EPs on Manchester-based imprint Handsome Dad, a one-off single with Adult Jazz and self-released Temple Works EP; Whities also released a limited-edition white label of a Minor Science dub of one of his tracks.

Containing single, “Stepping Out Of Sync" - 'for me is about losing a little bit of a grip on reality,' says Kyle. 'There’s a big nod to the world of pop music in the track and I wanted to reflect that in the video too. Josha and Felix, who directed the video, came up with this great time splicing technique using a custom 3-camera rig. The idea was to use the technique as a character in the video to add a sense of detachment from reality and subtly invert the upbeat aspect of the music. I had also been talking to my friend Maddie who is a brilliant dancer about working on some choreography for the video. These aspects seemed to come together perfectly when Josha and Felix started sending ideas across. I think the video really captures the range of emotions that exist in the track, it’s upbeat and positive aspect alongside a layer of dissonance and confusion that lies under the surface.'. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Loud Patterns
2. Fire Behind The 2 Louis
3. Who Am I To Follow Love
4. Stepping Out Of Sync
5. Gold Star
6. The Bass Rock
7. Day Old Death
8. Rough Moss
9. Our Embrace
10. 14 Drops
11. Motorcycle Idling

Joey Dosik didn’t set out to make a conceptual mini album about basketball. It was his first love before music and some of his earliest memories are of attending Lakers games but he’d never thought to look to the sport for inspiration. However, when Joey blew out his knee during his regular pick-up game and had to undergo reconstructive ACL surgery, he found himself confined to the couch, watching a lot of television and waiting to resume his normal life. He gravitated toward basketball and when he started recording again he found it seeping into his writing. The result is ‘Game Winner’, a brisk, emotive collection of songs loosely inspired by the language and lore of the game.

Joey is an inveterate collaborator who has worked extensively with the likes of Vulfpeck, Nikka Costa and Miguel Atwood Ferguson and who is a vital part of an LA scene that updates vintage sounds into a more contemporary context. ‘Game Winner’ was a different project with a different process; the lion’s share of the release was recorded solo in Joey’s home studio.

The common thread in the six songs - as well as the four bonus tracks - is musicality and song craft: the two pillars of Joey’s sound. “The most important thing is the song,” explains Joey. “Songwriting won’t go out of style.” It’s that approach, one that thinks beyond style, that gives the title track its magic. Minimal and almost languid, ‘Game Winner’ has a confidence that’s hard to place in time, an ease that meets a buzzer-beater just as well as it meets a Sunday morning. Basketball may have been Joey’s first love but the sport is also the perfect metaphor for where he’s ended up musically, always striving to stay timely and timeless, to bring deep, foundational elements in sync with innovation and imagination.

‘Game Winner’ was originally released in 2016; this re-release features bonus tracks.

TRACK LISTING

The Night Before…
Game Winner
Running Away
…The Big Game
Competitive Streak
Game Winner Remix
Northridge Park (Bonus Track)
Game Winner By The JD’s (Bonus Track)
Running Away (Stripped Mix) (Bonus Track)
Gentle Giant (Bonus Track)

Across three studio albums, the Swedish singer/songwriter and musician has proven not only his flair for telling very personal stories with a sharp self-awareness, but also his skill for balancing depth of emotional expression with droll and often self-deprecating detail. It’s a winning pop combination.

His fourth, Life Will See You Now is a typical Lekman album in several ways: sly humor is key to its heartfelt nature; it inverts pop’s writing norm by making songs with sad concerns sound happy and songs with a happy subject sound sad; and it plays with notions of identity and the self.

But, as the title suggests, it also represents a significant move forward, as if across a threshold. I Know What Love Isn’t (2012) was informed by a painful relationship breakdown that pitched its author into something of a crisis and so necessarily put him at its center, using a muted sound palette.

But Life Will See You Now is the more expansive, upbeat sound of a revitalized Lekman, who is just one of many characters in his new stories about the magic and messiness of different kinds of relationships. It’s also the result of deliberate steps he took to create this fresh sound.

Lekman experiments with different kinds of rhythms – disco, calypso, samba and bossa nova all get a bespoke twirl in the spotlight – and so he called on producer Ewan Pearson (M83, The Chemical Brothers, Goldfrapp) to help realize his new songs.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Twee outsider-pop pieces, silken strings and shimmering guitars, topped by Lekman's brilliantly emotive vocals. Groovy, with meaningful melodies, constantly evolving chord progressions and a unique pop sensibility makes this stand out as one of the great voices of our time.

TRACK LISTING

1. To Know Your Mission
2. Evening Prayer
3. Hotwire The Ferris Wheel
4. What’s That Perfume That You Wear?
5. Our First Fight
6. Wedding In Finistère
7. How We Met, The Long Version
8. How Can I Tell Him
9. Postcard #17
10. Dandelion Seed

Over the weekend of August 21-22, 2010, not long after Damien Jurado and Richard Swift first collaborated to produce Damien’s 2010 record, ‘Saint Bartlett’, the pair hunkered down with a 4- track recorder and one Coles 4038 ribbon microphone to record a collection of cover songs that run the gamut from John Denver to Chubby Checker to Kraftwerk.

The timing was perfect. On ‘Other People’s Songs Volume One’ one can see the scaffolding of what would become a creative turning point for the pair - later seen with the release of Damien Jurado’s ‘Maraqopa’, the first record in his Maraqopa trilogy - less than two years later. The opening drum hits of ‘Be Not So Fearful’, the falsetto vocals of ‘Sweetness’ and the Spaghetti-Western swing of ‘Radioactivity’ are, by now, hallmarks of the Jurado / Swift sound but ‘Other People’s Songs Volume One’ is a transitional fossil, a marking of the pair’s collaborative evolution.

This is the first time ‘Other People’s Songs Volume One’ is available on CD and LP.

TRACK LISTING

Be Not So Fearful
Hello Sunshine
Sweetness
Sincere Replies
If The Sun Stops Shinin’
Follow Me
Outside MyWindow
Radioactivity
Crazy Like A Fox

The sound of Ono and Lennon validating their love as something impenetrable and timeless. It’s when we, the listener, begin to fully understand that the scope of their recording efforts was much more than a recording collaboration and something closer to a performative documentary, a declaration of “Our life and our love is our art - every nitty, gritty part of it.”

TRACK LISTING

Cambridge 1969
No Bed For Beatle John
Baby’s Heartbeat
Two Minutes Silence
Radio Play

'My name is Alex Cameron and I won't waste your time. When you're talking about me and my business partner, Roy Molloy, you're talking about the online cowboys in the wild-west days of the World Wide Web. And if you want to know what we're really about just look at all the things you wish you'd done differently. All the things you stopped yourself from doing on account of the fear of failure, or rejection. Weigh that up against your ambitions. Think about your work ethic. We're reclaiming failure as an act of progress. An act of learning. Something to celebrate.

A word's meaning can change depending on who utters the thing; and so we present characters - shapes are morphed and stories are delivered. This is a collection of 4-minute tales written to provide you with insight into the inner workings of failed ambitions and self-destruction. Unedited, uncensored, and without inhibition. I've learned to reveal what I want to unlearn. I cast a light on the darkness and in doing so understand love and compassion. Fear is to be confronted, and to learn strictly requires failure - over and over. Celebrate failure with Jumping The Shark.'

TRACK LISTING

1 Happy Ending
2 Gone South
3 Real Bad Lookin
4 The Comeback
5 She's Mine
6 Internet
7 Mongrel
8 Take Care Of Business

Whitney make casually melancholic music that combines the wounded drawl of Townes Van Zandt, the rambunctious energy of Jim Ford, the stoned affability of Bobby Charles, the American otherworldliness of The Band, and the slack groove of early Pavement. Their debut, Light Upon the Lake, is due in June on Secretly Canadian, and it marks the culmination of a short, but incredibly intense, creative period for the band. Formed from the core of guitarist Max Kakacek and singing drummer Julien Ehrlich, to say that Whitney is more than the sum of its parts would be a criminal understatement. The band itself is something bigger, something visionary, something neither of them could have accomplished alone.

Ehrlich had been a member of Unknown Mortal Orchestra, but left to play drums for the Smith Westerns, where he met guitarist Kakacek. That group burned brightly but briefly, disbanding in 2014 and leaving its members adrift. Brief solo careers and side-projects abounded, but nothing clicked. Making everything seem all the more fraught: both of them were going through especially painful breakups almost simultaneously, the kind that inspire a million songs, and they emerged emotionally bruised and lonelier than ever.

Whitney was born from a series of laidback early-morning songwriting sessions during one of the harshest winters in Chicago history, after Ehrlich and Kakacek reconnected - first as roommates splitting rent in a small Chicago apartment and later as musical collaborators passing the guitar and the lyrics sheet back and forth. “We approached it as just a fun thing to do. We never wanted to force ourselves to write a song. It just happened very organically. And we were smiling the whole time, even though some of the songs are pretty sad.” The duo wrote frankly about the break-ups they were enduring and the breakdowns they were trying to avoid. Each served as the other’s most brutal critic and most sympathetic confessor, a sounding board for the hard truths that were finding their way into new songs like “No Woman” and “Follow,” a eulogy for Ehrlich’s grandfather.

In exorcising their demons they conjured something else, something much more benign—a third presence, another personality in the music, which they gave the name Whitney. They left it singular to emphasize its isolation and loneliness. Whitney is named after Whitney, a muse they created as a songwriting conduit—a phantom third member of the band. Says Kakacek, “We were both writing as this one character, and whenever we were stuck, we’d ask, ‘What would Whitney do in this situation?’ We personified the band name into this person, and that helped a lot. We wrote the record as though one person were playing everything. We purposefully didn’t add a lot of parts and didn’t bother making everything perfect, because the character we had in mind wouldn’t do that.”

In those imperfections lies the music’s humanity. Whilst they demoed and toured the new songs, they became more aware of the perfect imperfections of the songs, and needing to strike the right balance, eventually making the trek out to California, where they recorded with Foxygen frontman and longtime friend, Jonathan Rado. They slept in tents in Rado’s backyard, ate the same breakfast every morning at the same diner in the remote, desolate and completely un-rock n roll San Fernando Valley, whilst they dreamt of Laurel Canyon, or maybe The Band’s hideout in Malibu, or Neil Young’s ranch in Topanga Canyon.

The analog recording methods, the same as used by their forebearers, allowed them to concentrate on the songs themselves and create moments that would be powerful and unrepeatable. “Tape forces you to get a take down,” says Kakacek. “We didn’t have enough tracks to record ten takes of a guitar part and choose the best one later. Whatever we put down is all we had. That really makes you as a musician focus on the performance.” The sessions were loose, with room for improvisation and new ideas, as the band expanded from that central duo into a dynamic sextet (septet if you count their trusty soundman). And that’s what you hear – Whitney is the sound of that songwriting duo expanding their group and delivering the sound of a band at their freest, their loosest, their giddiest.

Classic and modern at the same time, they revel in concrete details, evocative turns of phrase, and thorny emotions that don’t have exact names. These ten songs on Light Upon the Lake sound like they could have been written at any time in the last fifty years. Ehrlich and Kakacek emerge as imaginative and insightful songwriting partners, impressive in their scope and restraint as they mold classic rock lyricism into new and personal shapes without sound revivalist or retro. Whitney arrive as a fully formed gang of outsiders, their album rich in the musical history of the classic bands of the 60s and 70s who, like Whitney, were greater than the sum of their parts. “I’m searching for those golden days.” sings Ehrlich, with a subtle ripple of something that sounds like hope, on the track “Golden Days”. It’s a song that defines Whitney as a band. “There’s a lot of true feeling behind these songs,” says Ehrlich. “We wanted them to have a part of our personalities in them. We wanted the songs to have soul.”

TRACK LISTING

1 No Woman
2 The Falls
3 Golden Days
4 Dave's Song
5 Light Upon The Lake
6 No Matter Where We Go
7 On My Own
8 Red Moon
9 Polly
10 Follow

Miami by way of Fayetteville and Little Rock, Steven A Clark’s raw, confessional singing and personal stories pair with pulsing synthesizers and rhythms that hang in the air like a glowing grid of roadside neon. It’s a means for the soft-spoken artist to process all the drama in his head. 

On songs such as ‘Not You’, he flips a brutally honest breakup tale and draws emotions and empathy from being on the ‘right’ side of the conversation. 

The title track uses a slinky, sensual beat to create a perfect backdrop to tell the story of a weekend-long tryst in Vegas. For a man of few words, his unadorned and uncomplicated lyrics hit home. 

“… a heroic underdog of the specific, delivering diarylike lyrics detailed enough to provide a loaded portrait of a young man in transition.” - SPIN

TRACK LISTING

Lonely Roller
Trouble Baby
Not You
Can’t Have
Bounty Time
Machine
Floral Print
Part Two
She’s In Love
Young, Wild, Free

Brand new UK signings for Secretly Canadian, Woman’s Hour, release their new 7” single.

Woman’s Hour are already one of the most blogged and talked about bands of 2014, having spent 2013 touring and building a solid UK fanbase with their first two singles.

The band have just opened for Anna Calvi on a string of shows and are soon to be seen playing with Metronomy, as well as a run of their own.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Gorgeous, pulsing, 80's mix of chunky electronics and subtle guitars with a big, sad female vocal. Subtly epic and really rather good!

Lost In The Dream is the third album by Philadelphia band The War On Drugs, but in many ways, it feels like the first. Around the release of the 2011 breakthrough Slave Ambient, Adam Granduciel spent the bulk of two years on the road, touring through progressively larger rock clubs, festival stages and late-night television slots. As these dozen songs shifted and grew beyond what they'd been in the studio, The War on Drugs became a bona fide rock 'n' roll band.

That essence drives Lost In The Dream, a 10-song set produced by Granduciel and longtime engineer Jeff Zeigler. In the past, Granduciel built the core of songs largely by himself. But these tunes were played and recorded by the group that had solidified so much on the road: Dave Hartley, (his favorite bassist in the world), who had played a bit on The War on Drugs' 2008 debut Wagonwheel Blues, and pianist Robbie Bennett, a multi-instrumentalist who contributed to Slave Ambient. This unit spent eight months bouncing between a half-dozen different studios that stretched from the mountains of North Carolina to the boroughs of New York City. Only then did Granduciel--the proudly self-professed gearhead, and unrepentant perfectionist--add and subtract, invite guests and retrofit pieces. He sculpted these songs into a musical rescue mission, through and then beyond personal despair and anxiety. Lost In The Dream represents the trials of the trip and the triumphs of its destination.

"I wanted there to be a singular voice, but I wanted it to be a project of great friends. Everyone in the band cares about it so much," he says. "That is the crux of it--growing up, dealing with life, having close friends, helping each other get by. That is what the record's all about."

As such, these tunes reveal a careful and thrilling reinvention of the sound that's become The War on Drugs' trademark. The signature meld of long tones and scattershot layers still stands, with phantom drum machines and organ lines dotting the musical middle distance all across Lost In The Dream. Note the way the keys whisper against the guitar's growl as the tempestuous "An Ocean in Between the Waves" approaches pentecostal heat. Hear how, when a sharp and hard riff cuts into the inescapable chorus of "Red Eyes," synthetic strings and baritone saxophone shape a soft, infinite bed beneath it.

But there's a newfound directness to these tunes, too. Granduciel's voice steps out from behind its typical web of effects--louder now, with more experiences to share and more steel from having survived them. He sounds less like a prismatic reflection of a rock bandleader, more like the emboldened actualization of that idea. With its crisp, unencumbered delivery, "Eyes to the Wind" becomes the album's centerpiece and the group's new anthem. This is Granduciel's to-date triumph and the exact moment where Lost In The Dream moves from a tale of confusion to one of resolve. Throughout most of the record, grips loosen and senses fail, memories are mourned and expectations are abandoned. But after the Rolling Thunder lift of "Eyes to the Wind," Granduciel finds new contentment and direction. Anguish sublimates into deliverance. Backed by his bros, Granduciel becomes a preacher in a new pulpit.

TRACK LISTING

1. Under The Pressure
2. Red Eyes
3. Suffering
4. An Ocean In Between The Waves
5. Disappearing
6. Eyes To The Wind
7. The Haunting Idle
8. Burning
9. Lost In The Dream
10. In Reverse

The singer / songwriter of Here We Go Magic releases his new solo album. In 2008, Luke Temple made what would become the first Here We Go Magic album, forming the band and releasing the self-titled debut in 2009. Since Here We Go Magic’s 2012 release, ‘A Different Ship’, Luke has returned to his original solo ideas.

‘Good Mood Fool’ is an extension of the first self titled Here We Go Magic record. It was recorded with the same sense of freedom and joy. The meat of the record finds Luke taking a sharp turn in order to keep himself interested.

First single ‘Katie’ is a prime slice of mid 80s intelligent pop, almost ‘So’-era Peter Gabriel in its rhythms and sound. Meanwhile, ‘Florida’ is a blue eyed soul hit, a lazy sunny evening of summer beauty.

‘Good Mood Fool’ draws from myriad influences, from the hushed soulful wail of Curtis Mayfield to the dense harmonies of Gill Evans and the Bulgarian Women’s Choir. It is meant to be clear in production and in content, hiding nothing.

TRACK LISTING

Hard Working Hand
Katie
Florida
Those Kids
Jessica Brown Findlay
Sue
Terrified Witness
Love Won’t Receive
Hardest Working Self Made Mexican

Dungeonesse, the pop project of Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak, Flock Of Dimes) and Jon Ehrens (White Life), release their self-titled debut album on Secretly Canadian.

Born of a mutual admiration for Top 40 and R&B and the mechanics of what makes a hit song, the Baltimore natives and longtime friends Wasner and Ehrens began putting jams together remotely. Ehrens would send tracks from LA to Wasner on tour, and they’d bounce ideas back and forth.

The charming strength of the resulting Dungeonesse rests in the dichotomy formed by of a bold re-introduction of the beautiful imperfections of the human voice into a landscape of what is an increasingly mechanized process of music making. The fun resides in the listen.

TRACK LISTING

Shucks
Drive You Crazy
Show You
Private Party
Nightlight
This Could Be Home (ft TT The Artist)
Wake Me Up
Cadiallac (ft DDm)
Anywhere You Are
Soon

Montreal’s Suuns spent the winter and spring of 2012 writing and recording ‘Images Du Futur’. Their sessions were concurrent with the Quebec student protests that started in February of 2012 and continued through September of this year. Set against a backdrop lead singer Ben Shemie calls “a climate of excitement, hope and frustration,” Suuns aimed for an expansion of the musical ideas on their critically acclaimed first record, ‘Zeroes, QC’.

‘Images Du Futur’ builds upon the intensity of their debut, but often does so through new textures and subtler dynamic manoeuvring. Album standout ‘Edie’s Dream’ begins with a single bassline repeated from which layers build and rise - first drums, then a wash of white noise; echoes of guitar, then chanted vocals. The song’s clever shifts are jazz-touched and delicate, almost subliminal. It all makes for a stark, skeletal boogie - more an astral projection than a song. ‘Edie’s Dream’ exemplifies the restraint of which Suuns is capable and works to make the unhinged moments all the more devastating.

Lauded by Pitchfork and NME - the former saying “few bands this young are operating on quite this scale, and fewer still have the brass - and the patience - to pull off a big, glitzy, complex record like ‘Zeroes, QC’”, and the latter declaring them 2011’s Best New Band - Suuns have deepened their approach, using minimalist techniques to create maximalist works.

Produced once again by Jace Lasek from Besnard Lakes. Shemie says of the process, “As a band we were trying to look at our music from further and further away, seeing more details in the picture as we expanded the landscape.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: The sophomore release from Suuns builds on their excellent debut with a restrained and minimal intensity that threatens to boil over with washes of unhinged noise, but rarely does. A brooding classic!

TRACK LISTING

1. Powers Of Ten
2. 2020
3. Minor Work
4. Mirror Mirror
5. Edie's Dream
6. Sunspot
7. Bambi
8. Holocene City
9. Images Du Futur
10. Music Won’t Save You

Nightlands is the solo project of The War On Drugs’ bassist and multi-instrumentalist Dave Hartley, and ‘Oak Island’ is the follow-up to his 2010 Secretly Canadian debut ‘Forget The Mantra’.

Each distorted, silver-voiced melody is wrapped in the sounds of 70s AM gold - plucked acoustic guitars, trumpets, dulcimers and hand percussion. In using these pop touchstones, the songs become something close to memories, the faded feelings that tide in and out of you when conjuring the past.

Harley is a major player and sideman in Philadelphia’s Fishtown scene that has produced The War On Drugs, Kurt Vile, Purling Hiss.

TRACK LISTING

Time & Peace
So Far So Long
You're My Baby
Nico
So It Goes
Born To Love
I Fell In Love With A Feeling
Rolling Down The Hill
Other Peoples Pockets
Looking For Rain

Longtime friends and Baltimore compatriots Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak, Flock of Dimes) and Jon Ehrens (White Life, Art Department) are expanding their work together into a new pop music venture: Dungeonesse. Born of a mutual admiration for Top 40 and R&B and the mechanics of what makes a hit song, the duo and longtime friends began putting jams together remotely. Ehrens would send tracks from LA to Wasner on tour, and they'd bounce ideas back and forth. The resulting songs are part party machine programming, and part homage to the great tradition of R&B vocals which retain an experimental and playful inner beauty while leading the charge to a dance floor of abundantly inclusive and carefree spirits.

As a first taste of great things to come, Secretly Canadian is proud to announce "Drive You Crazy," the first single from the band.

Jens Lekman returns with his first full length album in 5 years, and it’s more than worth the wait. A melodic sensibility mixed with personal, insightful lyrics and a sparer palette of instruments, he takes inspiration from a break-up, a sweltering Melbourne summer, time spent in the US, etc.

Without a doubt his finest collection of songs to date, the album is already picking up incredible attention and is sure to bring him a vast array of new fans. ‘I Know What Love Isn’t’ is the story of the grey areas of love that you have to excavate and explore, using the method of exclusion, to find out what love is.

This single (single no. 4) features two new songs from the Gothenburg duo.

“Even when smoked out or slowed down, [the band] still teems with energy and both Kastlander and Benon, chameleons that they are, blend into snippets of song just as well as they shift gears between genres” - Pitchfork

TRACK LISTING

Beautiful Life
Burn

The debut EP from New York City’s Exitmusic (Aleksa Palladino and Devon Church).

Both chillingly beautiful and melodic, whilst creepily sparse and disembodied. Ethereal dark pop similar to Beach House, Sigur Ros and Portishead.

This EP will be released exclusively to independent stores only in advance of a full release in November.

"The January EP"s six songs complete the songwriting cycle that Here We Go Magic began in an upstate New York farm house upon the commencement of their critically-acclaimed sophomore album "Pigeons".

The band's signature mix of swirling guitars, Krautrock grooves, pulsing synths, and hushed chants provide a foundation for these otherworldly songs.

"Hands In The Sky" is a ghostly number that showcases vocalist Luke Temple's lyrical pedigree.

At the centre of the mini album lies a dichotomy between eerie folk sounds and driving art rock. The jangly back-and-forth between the guitars of Michael Bloch and Temple form the backbone to "Song In Three", the yin to "Pigeon"s standout "Collector"s yang.

"The January EP" was produced by Jen Turner and recorded live to analog tape in a band-built living room studio.

In Summer of 2009, Gothenburg, Sweden’s jj quietly released one of the year's most critically acclaimed albums. This album, "JJ Nº 2", was the group’s debut full-length ("JJ Nº 1" was their first single).

jj create pop, R&B and Balearic dub from the ghosts of lost lovers. Their music is both carefree without carelessness, and self-aware without being self-conscious. With it, they build an ice bridge arching from Gothenburg into the heart of the UK music world, and everywhere in between.

'A gorgeous ode to chemically-assisted euphoria, or an effective, shimmering simulation for those who keep their intoxications on the legal side' - Pitchfork.

TRACK LISTING

1. Things Will Never Be The Same Again
2. From Africa To Malaga
3. Ecstasy
4. Are You Still In Vallda
5. My Love
6. Intermezzo
7. My Hopes And Dreams
8. Masterplan
9. Me & Dean

"Saint Bartlett" opens up with a grandiosity yet unheard on a Damien Jurado album. It strips away the many layers of paint from the house down the street where we know Jurado has occupied for the last decade. The new coat is exhilarating. It makes the whole neighbourhood shine. It's a modest grandiosity; still homegrown. The mellotron swells, heavenly handclaps ring in stereo and big drums create a sky for the songs to fly in. And the words. Words spring forth from within the volcano of Jurado, full of hope. There's so much hope, in fact, that album opener "Cloudy Shoes" turns into a call-and-response with himself, as though it were a dialogue between two halves of himself.

'I wish that I could float up from the ground / I will never know what that's like'

Heavy stuff. Richard Swift's Spector-esque production is spot-on. He ferries Jurado across the river, where the metamorphosis occurs. He then ferries him back, and it is through Swift's lens that we see Jurado not as a folk singer, but as a mystic - somewhere between Van Morrison, Scott Walker and Wayne Coyne. "Saint Bartlett" was made entirely at Swift's National Freedom studio in Oregon, in just under a week with only Jurado and Swift as the performers.

Originally the one-man project of multifaceted musician and songwriter Scott Reitherman, Throw Me The Statue (TMTS) has since expanded to a quartet with drummer Jarred Grimes, and multi-instrumentalists Aaron Goldman and Charlie Smith. This album is produced by TMTS and Phil Ek (The Shins, Built To Spill, Band Of Horses), and while the band retains much of the lo-fi bliss found on their critically acclaimed debut "Moonbeams", Phil Ek's mixing of "Creaturesque" brings the band's maximalist pop sensibilities to new heights. Perhaps more sonically upbeat than its predecessor, its details are at times painted in both optimistic and sobering tones. Reitherman's scattershot poetics touch on an array of ideas, it's oppressive American machisimo and suburbanite sexuality. It's soft drugs and convertible cars. It's the struggle for higher expectations within the mess of modern life, and when wrapped up in the structures of TMTS' sure-handed tunes it's an all too delicious combination.

About halfway through Magnolia Electric Co.'s latest long player, "Josephine", there is a noticeable shift in weight. It's a release of some sort - the kind that comes when you give up holding back the tears. It's a heavy kind of freedom coming to the forefront, an empowering sadness. And when chief Electrician Jason Molina delivers the line 'an hour glass... filled with tears and twilight from a friend's dying day', the mood becomes clear. The band is back on its heels, yes, but they are going to fight back in the only way they know how. Molina's concept album is an honest-to-God effort on the part of Magnolia Electric Co. to pay tribute to the life and spirit of fallen bassist Evan Farrell (R.I.P. December 2007), as the ideas for "Josephine" were being pieced together. Molina said each tune is a good faith attempt to make real Evan's hopes for the record. And in doing so, Evan's spirit becomes part of the concept. The loss of "Josephine" becomes the loss of Evan. Molina's familiar lyrical allegories are still in tact. But here, in what is no doubt the strongest set of songs Molina has written since the inception of Magnolia Electric Co., those classic themes take on new meanings. Molina has approached the universal loneliness before, but never in such a focused, directed manner as found on "Josephine". Molina, Magnolia Electric Co. and legendary recording engineer Steve Albini have put it all to heart. Evan Farrell, Jason Molina and the band are on different journeys now - but maybe somehow, somewhere parallel. This is heartbreak at ten paces, to be sure.

TRACK LISTING

1. O! Grace
2. The Rock Of Ages
3. Josephine
4. Shenandoah
5. Whip Poor Will
6. Song For Willie
7. Hope Dies Last
8. The Handing Down
9. Map Of The Falling Sky
10. Little Sad Eyes
11. Heartbreak At Ten Paces
12. Knoxville Girl
13. Shiloh
14. An Arrow In The Gale

A band willing to keep their pallet open to almost any influence – Hi-Life guitars, countered with New Wave wash, from U2 to The Feelies. It could be Phil Spector's mid-70s lost recordings inspired by the depth of second-line drum bands from New Orleans; an album filled with anthems.

Richard Swift is one of the most critically acclaimed artists of the last few years. On this new double album he turns his hand to a completely different genre and mood: a 20 song exploration into Richard Swift's alter ego; delivering acid garage rock classics. This was recorded on down time between tours – a chance for Richard to delve into his hugely varied musical collection. Drawing on Link Wray, Howlin' Wolf, Little Richard and others, this is an album drenched in classic reverb and knee-high boogie blues.

For "We Like It Wild", their fourth proper full-length, the band ventured to the wooded Indiana hills of Monroe County. With alternating lead guitars, the band recalls the urban paranoia of Television and the forlorn southern gothic of Derek & The Dominoes with Barth's fey Donovan-esque voice sounding as though it's coming from across the Atlantic. All the while they maintain the urgent bounce of early REM.

Reissue of the debut album from these New Jersey oddballs. Deeply rooted in American folk and gospel music, the Famile offers a twisted hybrid of early Talking Heads, Carter Family, Half Japanese and the Shaggs.

Racebannon craft a sordid tale of woe, depression, excitement, accolade, fear, rise, fall, alpha and omega through a five part aural aria of the pleasures and pain of the rock'n'roll lifestyle. Tracks often go from a funeral dirge to defiant and pompous to a spaced out overdose. One for fans of The Melvins, Icarus Line and Jesus Lizard.

Fantastic mellow mini album from this band who've been compared with Buffalo Springfield through to Richard Hell, Alex Chilton and The Replacements.

Sprawling 8 track album from Songs:Ohia.