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NEWS: Chad Vangaalen announces a March album for Sub Pop; see the properly brilliant animation for ‘Samurai Sword’
HE’S SO much fun, right? Sub Pop’s favourite Albertan singer-songwriter, Chad VanGaalen – he’s made his whimsical home at the Seattle imprint since 2006’s Skelliconnection – has revealed that actually, horticulturally speaking, he’s the World’s Most Stressed Out Gardener; well, actually that would be musically too, since that’s also how his new album will be …
SEE: Lost Horizons feat. Marissa Nadler – ‘Marie’: honeyed sorrow from Bella Union
THE NEW album from Lost Horizons, the project of Cocteau Twins’ Simon Raymonde and Richie Thomas, formerly of 4AD label mates Dif Juz, is a hugely ambitious affair. Not only does every track feature a guest vocalist – of the calibre of John Grant, Dana from Porridge Radio, both Jack and Lily from Penelope Isles, …
SEE: Khruangbin release video for ‘Dearest Alfred’ – and a Knxwledge mix, too
MORDECHAI, Khruangbin’s stunning third album from last summer, set the seal on their position in the music world; a critically adored brew of psych, funk, disco, dub and global influences, it was seriously great. Seriously great. Theyve taken a slight return to one of Mordechai’s most emotive tracks, “Dearest Alfred,” a track we noted our …
NEWS: The Coral announce album no.10, ‘Coral Island’; see ‘Faceless Angel’
ROLLOCKIN’ back in from their fastness on The Wirral, the inestimable The Coral, who’ve brought us so much off-kilter psych-pop joy in our lonely rooms since buccaneering into our world what? Jeez, nearly 21 years ago now – have just announced that they’re back, back, with studio album number ten, Coral Island, which will be …
PREMIERE: Fish and Scale – ‘You Can Call Me LOVE’: swoon for a folk troubadour’s embrace
HAILING from Franconia, in southern Germany, Roland Wälzlein is on a mission to bring us glowing, stirring folk as Fish and Scales – and we’re premiering his first, rather groovy and lovely, single of the year, “You Can Call Me LOVE” here today at Backseat Mafia. As a child of 6, he underwent – and …
NEWS: Bill MacKay and Nathan Bowles announce April album; see the brilliant instrumental bluegrass of ‘Joy Ride’
BILL MACKAY, the Chicago-based guitarist, improviser of note and all-round scion of six strings, sure loves to enter into a two-way conversation with other artists with reliably beautiful results; witness the brace of albums he’s recorded with the freewheelin’ Ryley Walker, Land Of Plenty and Spiderbeetlebee. There was 2019’s darker two-hander with cellist Katinka Klein, …
SEE: The Fernweh – ‘The Wounds Of Love’: an excellent, returning baroque psych banger
THEIR self-titled debut back in 2018 was a bit of a cracker, frankly; they received the love from The Coral guitarist Paul Molloy last year, picking them when we popped round to his (figuratively speaking) and did a Soundtrack Of Our Lives, looking at the music he loves; and lo! they’re back, be glad, with …
See: Sunglasses For Jaws – ‘Walk Me Home’: enter the psychedelic pop world of Frank
DAVID BARDON and Oscar Robertson have been burrowing quietly into the London psych scene since 2017 as the surreally and aptly named Sunglasses For Jaws. By day, they’re a readymade rhythm section for hire, touring the world in the business of fleshing out other people’s sound, But they’re currently more psyched right now (in both …
SEE: Indigo Sparke – ‘Everything Everything’: astonishing spectral folk
IF MARISSA NADLER, Aldous Harding, Joanna Newsom, Vashti Bunyan light up your world with otherworldly folk fire – and if they don’t, then maybe we can’t be friends after all – then you really need to take a seat right this minute, and be astonished by Australian folk artist Indigo Sparke, who’s recently inked on …
NEWS: The Peacers return with March set for Drag City; see ‘Irish Suit’
SIC ALPS were one of those bands which, with the amount of the talent in its ranks, could only burn bright and, like an unstable isotope, emit members to spin off into other musical pursuits, eventually to transform itself in a musical half-life. Tim Hellman went into the ranks of Thee Oh Sees; Mike Donovan …