The Latest
Laura Veirs has shared “Pulse”, the latest single from her self-made fourteenth album “Temple Songs”, out 14th August. It builds from nylon-string guitar and bare vocals into bold electric guitar and ‘Filthy’ Lucre’s saxophone, ending on a dissonant duet. The Twixx Williams-directed video sets it in a home gym, with cake, silly string and a nod to Veirs’s weightlifting.
SML have shared a live video of “The Drums”, the A-side of their new album “Spontaneous Music Live” on International Anthem. Filmed by Charlie Weinmann at Zebulon in LA, it captures one of two side-length improvisations recorded uncut to analogue tape — the band working through an idea in real time, with nowhere to hide.
Emily Portman shares a live video of “Fox’s Song”, a track from her album “Dominion of Spells”, filmed at Moonko in Sheffield. Inspired by a Siberian folk tale, it casts its narrator as a shape-shifting woman-fox, exploring feminism, midlife change and the pull towards a wilder form of life. Portman (voice, banjo) is joined by Louis Campbell and Lucy Revis.
This week’s Monday Morning Brew playlist is an extra-long one, featuring Minna, who hails from the Scottish Borders and is new to KLOF Mag, plus Captain Beefheart, Zach Romeo, Esther Rose, Sham, Huw Marc Bennett, Ed Askew, Hana Stretton, The Kossoy Sisters, Frankie Archer, Sessa, The Brudi Brothers and more.
Our latest Off the Shelf guest is Johnny Bell, whose album “Mountain States” expands mountain music beyond Appalachia to the Rocky Mountains of the American West. From a vintage western revolver lamp to a family heirloom lap steel and banjo finger picks, his ten objects sit close to the music — and the high desert home — that shaped them.
Laura Cannell launches her new monthly Sound Hoard series with “Echoes of a Swan Bone Flute”, out now on Brawl Records, and accompanied by a Simon Nunn film. Inspired by swan-bone flutes from the 13th–15th centuries displayed at Norwich Castle, she performs on overbow and octave violin, bass recorder and synths.
Félicia Atkinson’s “Sans Visage” reimagines the score to Georges Franju’s 1960 horror “Les Yeux Sans Visage” — a perfect assignment for a master of creepy-beautiful soundscapes. Built around piano and studio electronics and dedicated to Gisèle Pelicot, it’s a perfect example of how experimental music can bridge the gaps presented by time, genre and gender… Its spectral beauty is lingering and at times uncomfortable, but never less than enthralling.
BaBa ZuLa announce new album, out 25 September via Glitterbeat — thirty years on and still untamed. Lead single “Kutsal Zeytin Halayı”, a sunbaked motorik trance arriving with a visualiser that celebrates the olive tree as a sacred symbol — “We see nature under constant pressure. We want to stand on the side of those who defend it.”
Myer U Clark’s “Tinderbox” is astonishingly accomplished for a debut, recalling the late-’60s Canterbury scene of Kevin Ayers, Robert Wyatt and Caravan. There’s a clarity of vision, matched by adroit musicianship and a singular conception of songwriting — a formidable first album on Broadside Hacks.
Johanna Samuels shares “Blue vs. Pinkerton”, the new single from “Sorry, Kid”. Built around a teenage debate over Weezer’s “Blue Album” and “Pinkerton”, the song grew from a prompt to capture a time and place; Samuels chose her high-school years. Recorded to tape with Jonathan Rado, the album lands August 14th.
@ [AT] have announced “Autosmile”, their second album and first for 4AD, out 16 October. The folk-pop duo of Victoria Rose and Stone Filipczak share the near seven-minute title track today as the lead single, turning a mysterious breakup into questions of demonology as harmonies and acoustic passages build against tambourine, guiro and blistering guitar leads.
On “Ten Signs”, Dan Haywood and Harvey Lord trade dizzyingly poetic lines across an album whose rhythm is particularly striking — both languorous and uptight. Spring birds twitter through the recordings; a casual charm runs throughout. Their guitar work is soulful and unpredictable, with instrumental breaks laddering between sections in a way that would have M.C. Escher shaking his head in baffled admiration.
Styrofoam Winos are the antidote to supergroups, and “Any River” is ragged but literate Americana, tall tales told in a drunken drawl, lo-fi sensibilities and high ideals. But what the Winos can also do, as Lenderman has said, is boogie. Influences are wide and subsumed with impressive ease, always underpinned by a rootedness in the traditions of country music. Everything seems to flow.
Jeffrey Silverstein has announced “Doggone”, his new album out 23rd October via Full Time Hobby, and shared lead single and video “Out of Tune” with guest vocals from Devendra Banhart. Loner-folk meets cosmic country and kraut-laden choogle, it finds the New Jersey native fully rooted in his Portland community — immovable, intentional, and most of all, at peace.
Family Stereo, the alias of singer-songwriter Blake Watt, has shared “DLR,” the propulsive third single from debut album “The Thread,” out 31st July via Bella Union. Led by lush piano, lap steel and xylophone, it wraps an upbeat melody around reflective lyrics about growing up, and arrives with a video in which Watt is kidnapped and taken on a personal odyssey.
Jules Reidy announces “Clerestory,” out September 25 via Thrill Jockey. The follow-up to “Ghost/Spirit” pairs two contrasting sides: “Shadow Symmetric,” a string quartet realised with the celebrated JACK Quartet, and “Clerestory Windows,” which refracts the same material through a solo lens. A harmonic world built from a tone and its shadow.