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SEE: Ellie Bleach brings the baroque to ‘He Bought Me Nikes’
LONDON singer-songwriter Ellie Bleach taps into the spirit of baroque pop on her latest and very fine self-released single, “He Bought Me Nikes”. With a voice like the finest smokey chocolate, she drapes contralto lyrics that bite over a churchy organ strain, which summons The Dixie Cups’ girl-group classic “Chapel of Love”; mellotrons, and harpsichords. …
Track: Song Sung – The Mind’s Eye
Hazy waves of reverb and chorus soak through the new song from twin sister duo Song Sung to create a dream pop epic that is quite mesmerising. There are Beach Boy harmonies, layers of instrumentation that are sunny and bright despite the achingly melancholic tone and distant, haunting vocals. Of the themes of the song, …
See: A. Swayze and the Ghosts – Cancer, plus album news
Tasmanian stars A. Swayze and the Ghosts have highly impressed us earlier this year with their post punky single ‘Mess of Me‘ released in February. With a US tour unfortunately cancelled as a result of the COBID 19 crisis, the band has just released a fantastically bizarre and creative video for their new theatrical glam …
TRACK: Grizzly Coast invites you to her ‘Party of One’
FOR so many of us, music not only a delight but an escape, a world in which we can live freely and joyously; and this is just as true of the people making it as us fans listening, as Toronto’s Alannah Kavanagh, who records as Grizzly Coast, imparts of her latest single, “End of the …
TRACK: Arca’s ‘Mequetrefe’ is shattered-mirror futurism
XL RECORDINGS’ avant-pop futurist Arca has premiered a new track, “Mequetrefe,” ahead of forthcoming album Kick i, which XL is releasing next Friday, June 26th (with a vinyl press available from July 17th). Draped in stuttering, post-Squarepusher percussive stutter, AFXy cut-up and Arca’s disembodied vocal chanting, treated and filtered into a distant century, it’s out …
TRACK: Long Faces bring the Canterbury vibe on ‘Sail Away’
SOMETIMES the musical DNA of a city seeps into your bones. At first listen the fourth release from London-Leeds-based alt-rock quintet The Long Faces, “Sail Away”, would seem to give no clues. Big, strong, theatrical vocals with a hint of vibrato sit atop complex guitar figures, spiralling away over a twelve-string. That’s until you learn …
SEE: the fine English psych whimsy of Jeremy Tuplin’s ‘Space Folk’
“I BELIEVE in magic / space magic … put on your unicorn jacket, covered in bat ships.”. So exhorts Somerset’s Jeremy Tuplin in the opening lines of his current single, “Space Magic”. So whoah: where are we, exactly, now … ground control? As with the lyrics, the video for the song (which you can watch …
SEE: Ane Brun releases ‘Honey’ ahead of autumn album, UK tour
NORWEGIAN songstress Ane Brun has released the fifth in a series of monthly tracks ahead of an as-yet-untitled eighth studio set. The album is due to be in the racks in time for winter, and will be her first set of original material since 2015’s When I’m Free, and her first longform outing in the …
TRACK: Red River Dialect frontman shares ‘Ballad of Ross Wyld’
DAVID MORRIS, proud Falmothian and singer with Red River Dialect – the six-piece who’ve brought us some of the most vital of British folk-rock over the past decade – has shared a solo sketch. Described by David as “a lockdown love letter to my housemates”, “The Ballad of Ross Wyld” strips back the layered instrumentation …
SEE: Standard Fare’s Emma Kupa returns with folksy gem ‘Nothing At All’
EMMA KUPA has been something of British indiepop’s best-kept secret this past decade. Starting out in North Derbyshire trio Standard Fare, who released two albums of cracking, bouncy guitar pop, coming on like Talulah Gosh’s knowing, insouciant, smokey voiced big sis. A solo mini-album in 2015 was followed by an album with the former front …