Martha Skye Murphy is both a rookie and a veteran, as “Um” is her first proper album but far from her introduction to making music. She has EPs, singles, collaborations, and an electronic opera (Postcards Home) dating back to 2016, and her impressive résumé goes back even further than that; she sang on a Nick Cave song that sound-tracked the opening credits of John Hillcoat’s The Proposition when she was just nine years old. (She again collaborated with Cave in her teens when she sang on 2013’s “Push the Sky Away.)
Meaning shifts throughout Martha Skye Murphy’s debut album ‘Um’ with songs that meld moments of baroque beauty with crashes of electronic noise, employing textures that are by turns organic and artificial, hi-fi and lo-fi. Collaborations with the likes of Claire Rousay and Roy Montgomery are finely intertwined with the fruits of rigorous studio sessions with producer Ethan P. Flynn.
Lyrically Murphy conjures images inspired by everything from Ancient Roman hand-binding torture to a Fred and Ginger tap routine. A deep sense of longing and echoes of lost, distant memory haunt the record. On the album, the artist says she wanted “the listener to feel disoriented, erotically charged by the intimacy of a bedroom, then catapulted into a desert.”
After making the “Waiting Around” EP with multi-instrumentalist Laura Wolf as Lilts last year, John Ross returned to his main project, Wild Pink, and signed with Fire Talk Records in early 2024. To celebrate, they released the three-song EP Strawberry Eraser, and christened the accomplishment with “Air Drumming Fix You,” a pairing of diner jukebox-gentle drum machines and synthesizers with cresting saxophone scales and a spumante pedal steel—all while Ross sings about “shitting my pants in a VR world,” “baby breath” and someone, as the title aptly suggests, air-drumming Coldplay’s “Fix You.” Through vignettes of quick humour, however, come sharp lines that’ll gut you on the spot. “I guess the good life didn’t look like you thought it might” is going to be a lyric that sticks with me for a good while, especially, maybe forever. Too, “Unconscious Pilot” is another reverb-heavy slice of alt-folk that mangles itself into sublime, bulky distortion. It’s not as melodic as “Air Drumming Fix You,” but it doesn’t need to be—the fortune is all in the gloomy chords and cavernous singing from Ross. “What if the soul is real?” he ponders. “And it gets lost on the way to the next deal? What a nightmare, knowing you’re out there dead and scared and there ain’t a thing I can do.” Most of us didn’t know that an all-time great record like “Dulling the Horns” was on the horizon, but it was nice to live in “Strawberry Eraser” for a while—letting ourselves be enraptured by fluttering saxophones and weighty guitars, as if a jazz ensemble accidentally stumbled into a noise-band’s rehearsal. It all culminates in a storm of flanged strumming, as John Ross declares: “I hope it’s nothing.”
Though Wild Pink are known for their collaborations — among which include Julien Baker, Ryley Walker, Jasmin WIlliams, Ratboys’ Julia Steiner, and J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr.— “Strawberry Eraser”, a new EP and first for Fire Talk showcases Ross unadorned and singular, reinforcing him as “a truly gifted songwriter, one able to contain vast vistas within single songs” (Under the Radar). With spaced-out synths and saxophone, it conjures open and unexplored terrains, a natural extension of Wild Pink’s “vast and swooning” (The FADER) sound.
Rain Parade’s seminal debut album, “Emergency Third Rail Power Trip”, is set to receive a deluxe 2xLP reissue. Originally emerging from the late 70s and early 80s Los Angeles scene known as the ‘Paisley Underground,’ the band’s music blended Californian and UK psychedelic rock influences with a punk/DIY edge. The album, originally released in 1983, quickly gained international recognition for its distinctive sound, with standout tracks sung by core members Matt Piucci and Steven Roback.
This deluxe edition of “Emergency Third Rail Power Trip2 includes the original ten-track album on the first LP, alongside a bonus LP filled with demos and live recordings, offering fans an even deeper dive into Rain Parade’s early work. Tracks like ‘Talking In My Sleep’ and ‘Look Both Ways’ remain timeless, showcasing the band’s ability to merge dreamy psychedelia with raw energy. Rain Parade’s influence on 80s and 90s guitar-driven music is undeniable, with artists like Ride’s Andy Bell citing them as a major inspiration. This reissue, coupled with their upcoming UK and European tour, reaffirms the band’s enduring legacy in the psychedelic rock landscape.
Nine years on from the release of his seminal Grammy, Brit, Ivor Novello and Mercury Music Prize-nominated debut album “In Colour“, musician, DJ and producer Jamie xx announces his long-awaited second album “In Waves”.
Jamie xx has been nothing if not patient. His first new album since 2015’s masterwork “In Colour” has been a long time coming, with numerous festival appearances, one-off singles, co-productions, and life experiences arriving along the way. Though it reveals a more expansive sound than his earlier work, “In Waves” also feels like a belated response to the pandemic. The urgency and ecstasy of the dancefloor is unavoidable, and with lively samples and widescreen collabs from the likes of Honey Dijon, Robyn, The Avalanches, and his xx bandmates, “In Waves” is a passionate, vivd request to treat each other right and revel in the freedom of dance.
Across 12 tracks including “Baddy On The Floor”, his joyous summer collaboration with club culture icon Honey Dijon, Jamie xx replicates the emotional crescendos and thrilling volatility of an almost mystical night out and features further collaborations amongst others Panda Bear, Oona Doherty and his The xx bandmates Romy and Oliver Sim. Created over a four year period ushered in by his much-loved 2020 Essential Mix and peppered with periods of self-reflection, a global pandemic, the blinking re-emergence into the strobe light and a newly discovered love of surfing as escapism, it’s an album that’s on course to eclipse the heights of its globally acclaimed predecessor.
This is the album that finally made me love Clairo. This record has so much character, so much love put into the production and song writing. I didn’t catch her on tour, the stage design and production for the shows was some of the coolest and most understated ever . Claire Cottrill and her team created an unforgettable little world around this album and it’s been a delight to return to over and over again.
American indie-pop luminary Clairo returns with third album, “Charm”, co-produced by Clairo and Leon Michels (of The Dap-Kings and El Michels Affair). Evoking balmy summer evenings and tête-à-têtes in plush conversation pits, “Charm” is a collection of warm, 70’s-inspired grooves that move lithely between jazz, psychedelic folk and soul.
“Charm” is an incredibly warm, refreshing, and just genuinely sweet album thanks to the standout production from Leon Michels. Michels brings huge 60s and 70s inspired instrumentation to the table, elevating Cottrill’s songwriting to the level it probably deserves to be on. There’s clearly so much fun and experimentation that happened in the studio peppered all over Charm. “Juna” and “Add Up My Love” are two personal standouts, but I really don’t think the album has any skips.
Is it their best? Not exactly. But it’s Duster, I’ve been obsessed with this band for over a decade at this point. So much so that I dug for every precious demo and unfinished record I could. Duster’s mostly untitled “Christmas Dust” and found a hand-scrawled forgotten cassette “On The Dodge.” I’ve scoured the internet for every Duster-adjacent music project I could find.
Now in 2024, Duster is a smash cult hit band; a household name for a certain slightly-disaffected Gen-Z TikTok user. And you know what? Duster rules. They absolutely deserve the success they’ve garnered, even if it feels like a total algorithmic fluke. Seeing them again last month was maybe even more surreal than the first time. At 31, I felt like one of the oldest people there, dumbfounded by people cheering and taking out their phones en masse to film the blisteringly loud “Echo, Bravo” from Stratosphere.
Right. “In Dreams”. Duster very suddenly dropped their fifth album this year (their third since reuniting, “Remote Echoes2 doesn’t count, those are old demos recompiled). What can I say? It’s more Duster. Which means it’s among one of the best albums to come out this year.
This record still so underrated. “Under Sound” easily wins ‘best bass guitar tone of the year’ from me. Every track on this thing is just so relentlessly heavy and crunchy in the best possible way. but the way the drums cut through such tone-heavy guitar and bass production feels like such an accomplishment.
I’ve been completely obsessed with this record for the past few days. While it might appear on the surface like a straight-forward emo-tinged alt-rock record, “Under Sound” is an incredibly focused and groove-packed endeavor. The production is stellar, featuring one of the most perfectly mixed snare-drums I’ve heard on a fuzzy rock album in a long time. It might sound arbitrary to point out, but making sure the drums crack through the massive guitar and bass tone on a record like this is a true accomplishment.
There’s clearly so much love and inspiration packed into “Under Sound” that I keep picking up on each listen. The opening riff of “Further From My Start” could slot into Deftones’ 2003 self-titled record just as easily as the title track could fit into Codeine’s “Frigid Stars” from ’91 (albeit with some slowing down, of course). All of this is just to say that Prize Horse doesn’t quite wear their influences on their sleeves as much as they reconstruct their influences into alt-rock couture.
All songs written and performed by Prize Horse Guitar/Vocals – Jake Beitel Drums – Jon Brenner Bass – Olivia Johnson
Earlier this year, New York’s Babehoven opening up for Greg Mendez in Chicago. Their vocalist (and main songwriter) Maya Bon came on stage, and in a raspy whisper, delivered the tragic news that she had lost her voice the previous day. She apologized profusely, and said that they’d try to perform a few songs, but she couldn’t sing a full show on her own. Then she made an unexpected offer to the crowd: if anyone was feeling brave, they could come up and sing a Babehoven song of their choice while the band backed them, karaoke style. No one wanted to go up at first, but after a couple of songs with Chicago local Hemlock filling in, someone from the crowd mustered up the courage to try. A young woman, maybe in her early 20s, shyly attempted to sing, a little off key.
The whole crowd clapped and cheered her on. A couple more folks came up to sing additional songs, and then finally opener Mia Joy joined, along with Greg Mendez himself, to wrap up the set. It was a funny, weird, sincere show full of kindness and encouragement from the Chicago crowd and fellow performers, and ended up being one of the most memorable shows I went to this year.
“Water’s Here In You” is not only a reminder of that touching memory, but a beautiful folk-tinged soft rock album to boot. It’s a lovely record.
Honeyglaze’s second album, “Real Deal”, and first for Fat Possum, feels like their coming of age moment. The band have taken the foundations laid on their critically acclaimed debut (via Dan Carey’s SpeedyWunderground) and focused it into a mammoth record. Produced by by Claudius Mittendorfer (Parquet Courts, Interpol, Sorry), “Real Deal” is an album about being plunged back into normal life, acceptance, self assurance, searching for connection and finding comfort in chaos. Singles, ‘Don’t’, ‘Cold Caller’, ‘Pretty Girls’ and ‘Ghost’ are each, in their own right, the most exciting Honeyglaze songs to date.
“Real Deal” arrives like a sigh at the end of a big feeling. It’s a translation of white knuckles, grinding teeth and fingernails bitten raw: the inner turbulence that wrestles with a calm exterior. You might sit in the corner with your drink, try to lose yourself for hours in front of a screen – but for their second album, Honeyglaze confront it all, digging their fingernails under the scabs. Confrontation and confidence; intensity and catharsis – these are the hard-earned rewards of a band who are ready to reintroduce themselves.
“It was quite reactionary,” reflects vocalist and guitarist Anouska Sokolow. “Musically, we were reacting to the first album thinking, ‘How can we do better?’” Emerging from South London with bassist Tim Curtis and drummer Yuri Shibuichi who completed the picture by illustrating the tensions of her inner world, Honeyglaze grew in a strange time, warped by the pandemic. Brought to light by Dan Carey’s scene-defining label Speedy Wunderground, their 2022 self-titled debut album captured Sokolow’s coming-of-age. Fraught with arresting sincerity and deadpan wit, she announced herself as a singular songwriter who dared to share the parts of ourselves we’d rather hide: creative inadequacy, the fortress built around a closely-guarded heart, and the bad haircuts and bleach-jobs born from unsettled identity.
Written in the awkward limbo between adolescence and adulthood, Honeyglaze felt themselves outgrowing their debut even as they were making it. But from this creative boredom with a sound which fit like a t-shirt two sizes too small, there began a time of radical growth. The foundations of “Real Deal” were laid in the post-tour hangover, from the unwelcome interruption of the real world and the realities of surviving within it as artists. Sokolow had been contending with a break-up and moving homes; the record was written not in a studio but within the four, trusted walls of her bedroom. During this period of upheaval, she says, “I really think this album was one of the most consistent things in my life.” The band would meet every Wednesday to rehearse and evolve their new material, enjoying the luxury of time to delve into their parts and follow their instincts without intervention.
Lyrically, much of their debut record was written by Sokolow without the intention of it reaching anyone’s ears. “Real Deal“, however, was made to be heard. It’s serious, this time: the band climb into the ring, gloves up. Recorded with Grammy-nominated producer Claudius Mittendorfer (Parquet Courts, Sorry, Interpol) at a residential studio in the countryside, they were afforded the space – both literally and mentally – to explore new dimensions to their sound on their own terms.
The record, released by the taste-making label Fat Possum, is a translation of the urgency of their live performance. Armed with the experience of a tour under their belts, Shibuichi’s percussion is detonated like explosives on opening track “Hide”, landing like a sucker punch, while Curtis’ bass sections coil the tension to make the chorus feel phenomenally cathartic. “We wanted to express dark feelings not just lyrically, but as a band, through dynamics, distortion, shock and emotion,” explains Curtis. “You want to get all of this out in your music, but you can’t when the songs are too ‘nice’.”
When you dream, there’s an idea that everyone in the dream is you. The storytelling on “Real Deal” is a departure from the flushed, self-consciousness of their debut to usher in a matured self-awareness. Sokolow writes through a lens of character and costume, exploring people’s minds through vignettes like a presiding narrator – but through this hall of mirrors, she is still the real image.
“Cold Caller” leans into the specifics of fiction while revealing something painfully true about the nature of loneliness and disconnection. Over a meandering rhythm, Sokolow’s narrator becomes infatuated with a cold caller and their false interest. She sings, twisted in polite agony: “I’ll do anything I’m told / Just to know I’m not alone.” Curtis shares of the song, “It’s funny, because it’s a complete dynamic reversal: the last person you’d usually want attention from is a cold caller. Can you imagine how lonely someone must feel if you aren’t getting enough from them? Wishful thinking and delusion determine your reality more than you’d think.”
The band’s command of storytelling also lies with their musical volatility. A rhythm might lull you into a daydream before a whiplash-inducing switch; Sokolow’s voice eases into gentle surrender before being swept by a tide of anxiety. “Drink, I drink my drink”, she sings with deceptive cheerfulness on ‘Pretty Girls’, a self-soothing mantra to get through a social setting where you feel like an imposter. A suppressed confession rises to the surface, sliding down the scale: “But alcohol makes me feel sad, I want nothing to do with that…” Then, an interruption: “Slip, for a second I slip” – the music hangs in suspension, and while you wait for the pieces to fall, a familiar nausea curdles in the pit of your stomach.
There is deliberate tonal shift in the middle as you turn from Side A to Side B. The dam bursts with “Don’t”, a masterwork in tension and release (which, as an attentive listener will realise, draws from the melody of “Bills” by Destiny’s Child). There is a new emotion here, a new sound: rage. Against a backdrop of Shibuichi’s drums which rain down like hellfire and serrated guitars, Sokolow’s conversational delivery takes on a kind of quiet menace. She issues a calm warning, before the tension snaps; the pacing bass is silenced as she boils over into collar-grabbing fury: “Don’t raise your voice and interrupt me when I’m speaking / I’m a person too you know I’ve got things to say I’ve got fucking feelings.”
But what lies beyond this exorcism is relief. Side B takes hold with cinematic instinct, the satisfaction of the calm after you’ve weathered the storm. Wading through murky depths of distortion, “TV” captures the fracture between our reality and warring inward feelings – a contradiction Honeyglaze have always recognised and been faithful to. Sokolow wrote the track after finding comfort in her housemate who would always watch terrestrial TV. “I always envied her confidence to do nothing but sit and watch Grand Designs and not feel guilty about it,” she shares. “My mind races with everything I should be doing: working more, creating more, and I wished I could just watch it with her.” Such is the nature of overthinking: two might appear to be sitting quietly, watching television – but maybe no one is watching television at all.
“Real Deal” captures the essence of Honeyglaze, if only for a moment. Recorded live, it chases those fleeting moments and attempts to bottle those bolts of lightning. Though they are ever-evolving, what is immovable about the legacy of the record is that it feels like a stride forward in maturity. The secret? Acceptance. The grace that can be found in slipping through the cracks and surrendering to it.
their album “Real Deal”, out on Fat Possum September 20th.
The Fat Angel Sings 