Monday, May 21, 2018

What you may have missed: April

Amber Arcades - Simple Song
Annelotte De Graaf's second album European Heartbreak is out on 28th September; the second single is misleadingly titled on some levels, as while the melody may be classic and the song 2:32 there's a lot going on around its sophisticated melancholy

Bad Moves - One Thing
We came across the Washington outfit through recent US tour mates Martha and their crunchy, harmonic classic power-pop isn't far from a sun-dappled version of same

Beach Skulls - That's Not Me
Another PNKSLM dispatch, the hazily lilting chiming guitars sound like they're acquainted with the surf that's nowhere near their north-west base

Body Type - Arrow
Stumbling over each other, rolling flat Australian garage-pop with a flick-knife in its back pocket. Most importantly, one of them is called Cecil

Breakfast Muff - Crocodile
Glasgow-based project from members of a million other bands, from an EP of the same name this is likely their best, a thrusting spiky riff leading into a shoutalong chorus, a surprising waltz-time middle eight, and all done in 131 seconds

Coco Reilly - Define You
The Nashville resident has a country grounding, as per the steel guitar and the rich romanticism, but the vulnerability and the psych touches that come in suggest there's going to be a lot more to her

Daniel Rossen - Deerslayer
Rossen has quietly been responsible for most of our favourite Grizzly Bear moments (and Department of Eagles too), and his one-off Record Store Day release develops his kaleidoscopic chops further as it transfers from stately piano ballad to sludgy classic rock shapes

DRINKS - Real Outside
Cate Le Bon and Tim Presley pick up where they left off, a wonky idiosyncratic walking skeleton of a song the arrangement of which brings whole new meaning to the term 'angular'

A Festival, A Parade - Cold Shower
The Newcastle band have put out a few good singles over the last couple of years but it feels like they're sharpening up for the big move, all razorwire riffs and coiled spring tension gradually nudging the volume and ire up

Forth Wanderers - Ages Ago
Chiming and intimate, they make the kind of miniature self-doubt guitar-pop entropies Kristen Hersh used to specialise in

Gabi Garbutt - Lady Matador
Taking soul-punk back from the hands of Goldblade, sometime Libertines and Frank Turner support channels that ramshackle sound with brass section power and uplifting ragged glory

Grawl!x - Appendix B
The third of James Machin's trilogy of albums on the grief cycle sees him emerge slowly into the light, guided by stately piano and strident strings with electronics coming in and out of focus behind and Haiku Salut somewhere in the background

Jessica Risker - I See You Among The Stars
Title track from the Chicago singer-songwriter's tremendous album of starkly captivating, psych-touching gossamer acid-folk of a Vashti Bunyan stripe

Juliana Daugherty - Player
More exquisite songwriting (like Risker a product of the Western Vinyl label) that takes its psych-folk lead somewhere else, metronomically backed yearning in hope

Kermes - Casting The Creatures
Leicester queer-punks' We Choose Pretty Names is an album-long howl at identities cast out from the world and attempting to reclaim the self, with ragged hooks and aggressive melodies as choice of weapon

The Lucid Dream - SX1000
In which the longserving progenitors of face-melting kosmiche psych, went and made a thunderous wash of an acid house record, Roland 303 and everything

Melody's Echo Chamber - Breathe In, Breathe Out
Melody Prochet's second album was supposed to have been released last year and was previewed by one of the year's best tracks but hospitalisation put that on hold; back to fitness she picks up where she left off with Technicolour psych-pop that shifts and melds all over the place melodically. Yes, it does end like that

Moon Racer - New Crush
Very much home-made lo-fi in sound, this, a dreamy blurry lament a la Au Revoir Simone for things out of reach

Murderhouse - HMV Tweets
British emo isn't dead, it just remembered its conscience. Murderhouse are from Brighton, the title isn't really explained, and in its invocation of panic attacks and paranoia it leaves a welter of a mark

Nest Egg - DMTIV
Time for this month's long ones, the first nearly eight minutes of exploratory relentless Spacemen 3 kosmiche from the North Carolinans' kinetic album Nothingness Is Not A Curse

Oliver Coates - Charlev
And slightly longer still... while you don't necessarily reach for the 'Arthur Russell' button just because of Coates' classical cellist credentials, the shuffling, accentuated space electro-disco fits neatly alongside his experimental synthpop leanings

Scottibrains - Sustained Threat
Speedy Wunderground had been off our radar for a while, but Dan Carey's most recent release saw him return to the Kraut wig-out outlet formed with Boxed In's Oli Bayston for a track that builds and releases monoliths of psych assault

Sea Pinks - Run & Run
The Belfast duo with another song made for this weather, bouncy, classy indie about the coming of summer making everything feel freer

Sudan Archives - Nont For Sale
LA's Brittney Parks has had some attention for her earpricking combination of R&B, electronic loops and inventive violin parts, delivered fully formed here. Not dissimilar to what Marques Toliver was doing a good few years ago now, but with her own cool noise

TVAM - Psychic Data
Wiganer Joe Oxley has been developing his VHS electro paranoia over recent years and his insistent latest transmission shifts from electronic eddys to washed out dreaminess through to something almost magisterial but still highly unsettling/unsettled

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