Featuring Adrianne Lenker, Bat For Lashes, Mathman, Bullion, Panda Bear, Peer Pleasure, Paul Dally, Annika Kilkenny, ABRA, Groupthink, Drahla
See the end of the post for the Spotify playlist featuring more than 10 tracks released this week, which is updated weekly.
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Adrianne Lenker
Fool
The Big Thief singer’s solo material continues to thrill in parallel to the main event, with ‘Fool’ a song that could have easily been an off-cut from the band.
Lenker’s new album Bright Future is out March 22 via 4AD and there are Irish dates this April. ‘Ruined’ was previously released.
Fri 19 – Galway, The Black Box
Sat 20 – Kilkenny, St Canice’s Cathedral
Sun 21 – Dublin, Vicar Street
Stella And The Dreaming
The First Time
Stella Renee Hennessy featured here with ‘You Are Here’ back in 2021, a quietly brilliant first release.
There’s a stunning simplicity to this new song, a heartfelt piano ballad recorded “behind a garage door somewhere, stuffed with duvets and carpet covered frames”.
As for the name change – Stella says “Giving melody a world to live in, surrounded by the drama of keys changing and distorted vocals – is the Dreaming.”
Paul Dally
Angel (Drums)
Paul Dally is an artist form Vashon Island, a small island on Puget Sound between Seattle and Tacoma, Washington which to my knowledge has not been used for a prestigious crime drama.
Dally previously collaborated with Dijon on ‘Moonlit Breakers’ and that’s how I heard his Bon Iver-esque voice (another Dijon collaborator), and there’s a classic but positively American Album-oriented rock vibe to this track with a bit of Alex Cameron.
Peer Pleasure
Rest In Bits
Wexford garage punk band Peer Pleasure bring some slacker pop energy to their latest single ‘Rest In Bits’, a good old-fashioned fuzz-surf Stooges rock band wigout, made for headphones, walking to school and skateparks.
Peer Pleasure are Brandon Murphy, Cein O’Dowd, Erik Murphy, Fiachra Carey, Jack Joyce, Jeff Miller, Joel Pitcher and Joseph O’Gorman.
“Each line of Rest In Bits refers to or reflects on a real-life human being I knew who is now dead. It’s more on the nose than previous offerings but that’s fine. They are in fact dead. Which is pretty on the nose.
Cause of death?
Are you fond?
Would you be fond?
Of the drink.”
Brandon Murphy
‘Rest In Bits’ was recorded live at Hellfire Studios, engineered by Joe McGrath, mixed by Ivan Jackman and mastered by Killian Taylor. An EP is forthcoming.
Bat For Lashes
The Dream Of Delphi
Natasha Khan is back with a new Bat For Lashes album this May 31st.
The title track from her sixth album (first since 2019’s Lost Girls) is an orchestral swirl of a reintroduction, with Khan’s productions always glistening with the possibility of being touched by a smidgen of real magic – “Part pagan invocation, part celestial synth epic”.
The album and song is named after her daughter Delphi, born in California in the locked-down summer of 2020, The Dream of Delphi finds Khan reflecting on early motherhood in her most personal album to date.
The video was shot inthe English countryside, produced in collaboration with creative director and choreographer Alexandra Green and directed by Freddie Leyden, and forms the first chapter of a yet-to-be-announced longform album film.
“This is the manifesto of the album. It’s like a spell being cast. It’s the conjuring, the manifestation, the drawing-down of Delphi from the ether. This is me calling on her soul. It’s about going up into the stars and down into the underworld simultaneously, how celestials and deep guttural sounds can come together, how that reflects the journey I went on. It’s about what happens when you’re stretched physically, mentally, even vaginally! I think it’s just humbled me, too, becoming a mother. It’s made me feel more vulnerable than I’ve ever felt before. But I feel more human, more embodied. I can’t escape life by making beautiful things as much as I did. But there’s sort of a beauty to my mortality now.”
Groupthink & ABRA –
Gold On Me
LA producer Groupthink is a new one for me. It was ABRA’s inclusion on the track that put it on my (Release) Radar.
Groupthink are inspired by late 00s indie-dance music drawing inspiration from iconic acts such as Crystal Castles, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and MGMT, and have previously collaborated with Kennyhoopla. This recent track with Sunday Scaries is undeniably Indie electro sleaze.
Both tracks feature on the upcoming EP Before the Afters.
Drahla
Second Rhythm
Wiry, dark post-punk with art-rock is Drahla’s vibe. The Leeds band will release their second album Angeltape on April 5th and ‘Second Rhythm’ is the second track from the record.
Razor sharp rock.
Mathman
Show Me
Dublin producer Mathman teased the Dublin rave culture-inspired debut album SK83 – The Prequel, and here’s the first song from it.
The album “promises to be an exploration of shared human experience and the exciting intersection between Jungle, Drum & Bass and Breakbeat.”
Annika Kilkenny
Sentences
I was pretty floored by the Annika Kilkenny’s first single ‘Look Mom I Made It’, the Kilkenny singer-songwriter’s confident debut song, and there’s been a few tracks since.
Kilkenny’s bright pop melodies in a songwriting style has caught the ear of Laufey who she supported in London recently.
‘Sentences’ is a simply-formed but elevated song from her early performances online, which she has since learned to accept as a worthy addition to her discography.
One of the first songs she ever shared online, and one of the first songs she ever recorded, Annika revealed “I remember getting the vocal stems back and being so disappointed at how I didn’t sound ‘as good’ on the track as when singing in all of the vids I post on here. That came down to a multitude of factors; nerves, inexperience in a pro-setting and new-ness to it all in general.”
Dreading the thought of releasing the song and getting caught up in how others may view the recording, it was a chance conversation that pushed Annika to re-evaluate what this song meant to herself and others. “An artist I respect told me to view these songs as a freeze frame of where I was at that time in life,” she explains, “and at that time I was an intimidated, newly 19 year old trying to navigate the crazy world that is the music industry… I’d also like to put it out as a reminder to myself that perfection isn’t real. Authenticity always baby!”
Annika Kilkenny:
Spotify / Tik Tok / Instagram / Twitter / Youtube / Linktree
Bullion, Panda Bear
A City’s Never
Bullion is set to release the Affection LP on Ghostly International on April 26th that will feature collaborations with pop and alternative singers.
This latest jaunt featuring Panda Bear, follows up the recent Blood Orange-esque soft pop glow ‘Rare’ featuring Carly Rae Jepsen.
| “A City’s Never” emerged after Noah and Nathan were living in Lisbon at the same time but never actually met – the collaboration was written and completed over DMs. |
Charlotte Adigery also features on the album.
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