fanclubwallet is the project of Canadian Hannah Judge, who productively used time dealing with an illness to create this debut EP. Love, heartache and, of course, boredom are the topics du jour, and her treatment of them is deft and engaging. By the way, the project was named for a Dennis the Menace wallet that belonged to her father.
Hurt Is Boring is out now in digital and cassette formats.
The second reason is that the band has joined the Carpark Records roster, and the label has released an expanded version of Get Bleak. The EP now boasts a robust seven tracks of Duck Ltd.'s indie pop creations. And what creations they are! The themes can be a bit heavy, although leavened with humor, but the jangle pop guitar tones are bright. This updated version further enhances the obvious talent and promise of the original, and is a welcome springtime addition to our soundtracks. Moreover, it is a great reminder of just how good the original release was.
Ducks Ltd. are Evan Lewis and Tom Mcgreevy. Get Bleak is out now in digital and vinyl formats.
Scottish producer and composer Sam Gellaitry has released the digital version of his new EP IV (the vinyl version comes in June), following the three EPs he released between 2015 and 2017. Well regarded as a master beatmaker, Sam steps up to the mic for the first time in this recording, and hits the bullseye vocally as well. IV consists of four tracks focusing on four different emotions. And all of them sparkle and dazzle with musical color. Last month we posted the excellent lead single "Duo" (link), so we will give you two of the other tracks today.
IV is released via Sam's Viewfinder Recording imprint via FFRR Records/Parlophone.
Kaputt are Cal Donnelly (guitar/vocals), Curtis Halling (guitar), Chrissy Barnacle (vocals/sax), Tobias Carmichael (bass), Rikki Will (drums), and Emma Smith (percussion). "Movement Now" / "Another War Talk" is out now via Upset The Rhythm, available in vinyl or 'name your price' digital download.
"Dogshot" is the new single by Melbourne duo Skydeck. The title is Australian sports slang for a late hit when the recipient is distracted or looking in another direction. The song is not about sports, but the title is apt for the actual theme, which is the exploitation of people in the gig economy. The song has a thumping, aggressive beat and angular guitar accents resulting in a cynical, angry vibe.
In conjunction with the release of "Dogshot", Skydeck has announced the August 27 release of new album Coupon. The album will be available in digital and vinyl versions via Dinosaur City Records, Osborne Again, and Kingfisher Bluez (North America).
Skydeck is Dominic Kearton (Pregnancy/Dom Roff) and Mitchum Clemens (Ciggie Witch/Shark Alarm). Their 2019 debut album Eureka Moment was nominated for the Australian Music Prize.
Heaven By The Back Door will be out July 16 via Last Night From Glasgow.
Various links for Wojtek The Bear
We have a carpet burn and we are thrilled about it. Wait -- that didn't come out as we intended. Ahem, starting over: We have a new single from Carpet Burn and we are thrilled about it. The name of the song is "Butterfinger Hands", and you can listen via the amusing video or stream the song via Bandcamp. "Butterfinger Hands" is representative of Carpet Burn's approach to music -- idiosyncratic, humorous, and a bit absurd (and sometimes more than a bit). The single is out now, and is taken from their four-track 7" I Can't Believe It's Not Carpet Burn, which will be available June 18 via Spoilsport Records.
Carpet Burn is Amanda, Kayley, Louis, and Tam, who are members of other Melbourne bands such as Girlatones, Permits, Tam Vantage, Gutter Girls, Blonde Revolver, and Plastic.
Hailing from Norrköping, Sweden, Corduroy is a four-piece dream pop band whose self-titled debut album will be available in a few weeks. It promises to reveal their penchant for reverbed guitars and indie pop melodies. Our first exposure to their music comes via single "NLMN", which the label describes it as "[a] really heavy track that is a perfect soundtrack for running in a lukewarm summer rain, and avoiding a lightning strike in the head." As runners, we are all in for a good soundtrack for running in the warm summer rain. But to our ears this is simply a top quality guitar pop song, sounding like Swedish-dream-pop-meets-'80s/90s-Manchester-guitar-pop. And that is the sound of a sure winner.
Corduroy is Amanda Wallin, Olle Rosén, Martin Boström and Serafim Kristjansson. The album will be released the first week of June via VÅRØ.
The band currently consists of singer songwriter Dusty Anastassiou, who began Dag as a solo project, and Dan Ford and Dave McMillan.
Pedestrian Life is out June 25 via Bedroom Suck Records.
Cave States is a St. Louis-based trio playing literate guitar-based Americana music. On the title track, they take an arresting, kitchen-sink approach to the instrumentation. On "Julie Says", the band starts out with a fully Spectoresque wall of sound - a piano, a drum machine in place of a snare crack that leads into a couple of amplified drum fills that precede each heartfelt vocal chorus. It’s a lengthy track that features a lot of different sonic approaches as it goes on, including a female voice singing wordlessly that takes over the last minute or so of the track. The approach on this song seems calculated to fill it with a lot of emotion. This befits what sounds like a morality play carved out of an argument between two friends that, in retrospect, looms very large to the writer. Here’s the video for “Julie Says”:
Robert Finley is an actual sharecropper’s son, and he has a hell of a story. Fortunately, for our purposes, he also is a hell of a singer. On Sharecropper’s Son, he displays a sort of vocal dexterity that sounds like the result of a lifetime of listening to and singing everything from gospel to country to R&B and guitar rock. I hear echoes of Al Green in the way Finley is unafraid to launch a high falsetto croon (like at the beginning of opening track “Souled Out on You” and most of “Country Boy”).
But he’s got the sense to know when, and the talent to be able, to drop down into an guttural growl where the material calls for it. And on a lot of the songs here, he simply stands in front and sings like a rock and roll frontman in an R&B-inspired guitar rock band, only coming from Finley, lines like “working from can ‘til can’t” have a particular resonance that you don’t expect to hear from someone singing in 2021. And, again, he is a terrific vocalist and has the charisma and showmanship to lead a rock band.
As hard as it may be to believe, listening to him sing, he only took it up as a profession in his 60’s after military service and a lengthy career as a skilled carpenter, when due to a bout with glaucoma, he became legally blind. Finley has enjoyed the ability to get his stories out in the world: “One of the things I love about music is that, when I was a boy growing up in the South, nobody wanted to hear what I had to say or what I thought about anything. But when I started putting it in songs, people listened."
Here’s the title track, “Sharecropper’s Son”:
Melby are Matilda Wiezell (vocals), Are Engen Steinsholm (back-up vocals, guitar), David Jehrlander (bass) and Teo Jernkvist (drums). "Concorde" is out now via Stockholm's Rama Lama Records.
The new album is titled Assuaged, and is due July 5th via Emotional Response Records.
Lionel Boy is Hawaii native, Long Beach resident, Lionel Deguzman. He previously was half of indie pop band Tigers in the Sky. Lionel Boy is out now via Innovative Leisure.
"Tae the Poets" is a romping, stomping sing-along featuring Connelly as George MacKay Brown that brings a smile to my lips every time I listen. The accompanying video shouldn't be missed. It was filmed on location at Chicago's GMan Tavern. While I have lived in Chicago in the past, I never have been to that establishment. I now am feeling a sense of loss about that.
The Birthday Poems will be released June 15 via Jnana Records (Ontario, Canada).
Dream pop from Texas? You bet your boots and spurs. Austin's Semihelix dishes out hyper melodic and, on the two songs featured here, up tempo dream pop that have us eagerly anticipating their summer album release. And so you can appreciate our enthusiasm, here are the two singles from the album: The newly released title track "Recoil" and the previously shared "New Destination".
Semihelix is Geannie Friedman (guitar/vocals), Kevin Martin (bass), and Valdemar Barrera (drums). Recoil will be released by Mariel Recording Company.
The Power of Rocks is an entertaining collection of stories cobbled together from observations of people, places and conversations. Consider it a buffet lunch of social snapshots, which seems appropriate as its creators are Scottish band Buffet Lunch. Eschewing a uniform mode of expression, the band adorns their compositions with a variety of distinctive rhythms, bursts of guitar and some more off kilter touches. The listeners know that they are in for a wide array of music in the first four songs. Album opener "Red Apple Happiness" boasts a carnival atmosphere (and a welcome sax accompaniment), while the following two tracks are intensely focused on the beat. The title track arrives as the fourth song and is a more relaxed, melodic and hook-filled offering. And so it goes, with entertaining (but not always linear lyrics), loads of energy and deft musicianship. The emphasis with this band, and in this album, is fun. And if the power of rocks is that it provides fun, I'm going to go collect myself some more rocks. My soundtrack while so engaged? The Power of Rocks, of course.
Buffet Lunch are Perry O'Bray (vocals/keys/guitar), Neil Robinson, (bass), John Muir (lead guitar), and Luke Moran (drums). The Power of Rocks is out now via Upset The Rhythm.
Mope City are Amaya Lang, Matt Neville Shaun Donovan, and Nick Johnson. Within The Walls is out now via Tenth Court.
Bosna is a duo comprised of Prison Pete IV and Sticky Lenz. They’ve got a hypnotic sound, with the vocals, drum beats and rhythm guitar on a similar level and pace, and some plucked guitar lines as accents. It’s a bit reminiscent of Jesus & Mary Chain, with a little bit of a late-night jazz feel thrown in. Here is the song, which is part of an album due out this summer on Vienna-based label Numavi Records:
"Melted Car" (feat. Karina Gill)
"Hey There Flower"
"Ode to Little Bird" (feat. Alexis Harper)
"September Skies" (feat. Karina Gill)
Tangled Shoelaces were sibling Stephen, Lucy and Martin Mackerres, and their neighbor Leigh Nelson on drums.
In the course of seven songs, one an interlude and one labeled an outro, Kendra Sells takes the listener on an exhilarating trip, and true to the title, it is all in your head. The one constant throughout the EP is her sinuous, fantastic voice. She is able to contort the vocals to fit all types of music - for example, the psychedelic soul of lead track “Your Cut”, a song that has plenty of musical twists:
