Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: New Age Healers Share Atmospheric, Politically Charged “Moored”

Seattle-based psych rockers/shoegazers New Age Healers will be releasing their fifth album, Blowing Smoke Through the Choir is slated for an August 19, 2026 release. The album is a reportedly an expansive evolution of the shoegaze-psych hybrid they developed and sharpened on 2024’s The Spin Out that sees the band pushing their sound further sonically and structurally while brining new collaborators into their dense, dreamlike orbit, including Film School’s Greg Bertens and Karate Guns & Training‘s Valerie Green.

For the first time in their history, the new album sees frontman Owen Murphy sharing songwriting duties with guitarist Jeramy Koepping, whose ideas form the backbone of four tracks. The addition of vocalist Elisa Notthingham helps to deepen their already immersive sound while threading new textures through their signature swell of ethereal guitars, luminous synth work and muscular rhythm section. “It was amazing to have someone present ideas and get to sing over them,” Murphy says of co-writing with Koepping. 

While the music opens up, the lyric remain characteristically oblique. “These are political songs hidden within love songs,” Murphy explains. “There’s no possible way someone like me can make a record right now and not, in some way, shape, or form have what’s happening in the world affect it thematically.”

The album also marks the band’s first collaboration with producer and mixer John Goodmason, “It was really interesting working with John, because besides being an outrageously great guy and extraordinarily talented, his resume blasts out of the pages,”says Murphy. “He’s the guy that mixed or recorded the likes of Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney, Blonde Redhead, and he’s worked with a local band here called Suzzallo that is incredible. So I was just so grateful that we got to work with him, hear his ideas, and have the opportunity to trust him to help us make something great.”

Thematically, Blowing Smoke Through the Choir is about emotional accumulation — how personal and collective anxieties bleeding into one another. Murphy credits his work producing KEXP’s The Morning Show with John Richards as a major influence on the album. “It’s a different kind of radio show in which John, through music, is communicating emotions of all types, and the audience responds to us, often calling to share birthdays or to tell us of loved one’s passing,” Murphy explains. “It’s incredibly powerful. We’ve been doing this five days a week amidst the last ten years of pure chaos, and all of that experience, probably more than anything, is infused into this record.”

Blowing Smoke Through the Choir‘s latest single “Moored” is a shimmering and slow-burning shoegaze track featuring Murphy’s urgent yet melodic croon beneath skittering drums, swirling and atmospheric guitars. shimmering synths and a supple bass line. Seemingly channeling a blend of Luminous-era The Horrors, A Storm in Heaven-era The Verve and others, “Moored” is ethereal yet grounded, suggesting that we remain tethered to something — whether it’s hope, faith or something less easily named and more difficult to describe.

Murphy explains that the central characters of the song are a bit of a reflection of the voting public, and how over the past decade or so, everyone just wants to throw Molotov cocktails into the system, not caring about the results and without any thought towards the future, ““Like the couple in the song, they’re just along for the ride. And so, the next part of the lyric says, “Leave them out in the sun like you want to burn them,” just let everything burn. And we’ll see what happens, for better or worse.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Julia Jacklin Teams Up with The Maes on Introspective “I Wish”

Acclaimed Melbourne-based singer/songwriter and musician Julia Jacklin will be releasing her highly-anticipated fourth album, the Robert Muiños and Jacklin co-produced, 10-song album  The Gem through 4AD Records digitally and on CD, cassette and vinyl on September 25, 2026. Exclusive color vinyl editions with retailers will include turquoise, green opal, ruby and rose quartz. Pre-order information can be found here.

When Jacklin first moved to Melbourne from Sydney back in 2017, she discovered a little bar on a back street in Collingwood, a suburb just outside of downtown, where bands pushed dining tables to the side and set up in a corner on the floor. She didn’t know anyone in town, but knew she wanted to make the city home, so she started hanging out there, facing herself out of her comfort zone. That pub was named The Gem. 

Eight years later, Jacklin had released three acclaimed albums, 2016’s Don’t Let The Kids Win, 2019’s Crushing and 2022’s PRE PLEASURE — and was looking to write and record her fourth. Her contract with her previous label had ended. She was searching for a manager. And with time on her hands, she decided that she would make her fourth album in Melbourne, something she’d never done before. 

She called up an old drinking buddy Robert Muiños, owner of Rat Shack Studios, which is just above The Gem and brought in her friends Jacob Diamond (guitar), Mimi Gilbert (bass) and Jess Elwood (drums). Recording happened in close quarter, in converted hotel room accommodation upstairs at the pub. Because The Gem was in a residential neighborhood, they couldn’t record late into the night for fear of bothering neighbors and sound bleed was a glorious constant: foot traffic to the hairdressers and lotto parlor next door and loud music from the bands and the kitchen staff downstairs. But if anyone needed a break during the sessions, they would head downstairs and watch a local band play. Jacklin and her friends even played two unannounced shows there to try out the album’s material before recording them. 

They originally thought they’d be able to finish the album in two weeks, like she’d always done previously, but this time that wasn’t the case. In fact, it took nearly a year of tinkering to arrive at something Jacklin could get behind, “The Gem felt like a metaphor for the whole process, because a lot of it did feel like digging. I felt like I was doing it almost in the dark, just trusting I was going to find something,” Jacklin says. While conjuring images of excavation, of reinvention, of trusting your instincts and surrounding yourself with the people and things that make life worthwhile, the album documents the songwriter’s journey back to herself. 

“I want to love and be loved, but I also want to be free. The tension between those two things has been the central question of my life,” says Jacklin. That theme underpins the album’s material. 

The album will include the previously released “Get Away From Me (I Think I’ll Love You)” and the album’s latest single, the album closer “I Wish” feat, Aussie folk sibling duo The Maes. Channeling Crosby, Stills, and Nash, “I Wish” features Jacklin’s gorgeous and expressive vocal and the Elsie and Maggie Rigby’s impeccable harmonies beneath strummed acoustic guitar. The song is an introspective and a bit melancholy note from one’s older, wiser self to their younger self, essentially saying “girl, if you knew then what you know now . . . ” There’s quite a bit of awe, forgiveness and love for the narrator’s younger self, full of the recognition of the things she experienced and survived made her into who she is now.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Lyric Video: BESVÄRJELSEN Shares an Anthemic Power Ballad

Acclaimed Swedish metal outfit BESVÄRJELSEN — currently co-founders Andreas Bajer (guitar) and Staffan Vinrot (guitar), along with Lea Annling Alazam (vocals), and Erik Bäckwell (drums) and Marcus Lindqvist (bass) — can trace their origins back to 2014 when its founding duo started the band based on concept of channeling the spirit and tradition of the Dalarna forests into a contemporary urban context. Dalarna is at the ancient crossroads of Norse and Finnish cultures, where the echoes of runes and gods, shamans and spirits still linger. While drawing heavy inspiration from local lore, mysticism and the dark, old musical traditions of their homeland, the band derives their name from the old Swedish word for “conjuring.”

Though the band’s story has its roots in Norway’s past the present came boldly knocking. Lea Anling Alazam can trace her passion for punk and stoner rock to being a 13 year-old, hanging out at the local skate park. When Bahjer and Vernon met Alazam, they were so impressed by her vocals that they were happy tor relegate their shared vocal duties to a backing role. Alazam, who had grown up with her feet in multiple worlds added a fresh approach by embracing the melodies of the grunge and emo sounds that defined her youth, as well as African and Middle Eastern music and bluesy undertones. They released their first two self-financed and self-released EP’s 2015’s Vullfarsler and 2016’s Exit, which saw the band expand into a quartet with the addition of DOZER‘s and Greenleaf‘s Erik Bäckwell as a full-time member. Both efforts received critical praise and airplay on Swedish national radio — with minimal promotion.

They went on to release their full-length debut 2018’s Vallmo. But their sophomore album, 2022’s Atlas put them on the international metal map: The album received critical praise from the global praise while earning a Swedish Manifestgalan Award for “Metal Album of the Year.””

The Swedish metal outfit’s third album Till Glömskan Ad Oblivionem is slated for an August 28, 2026 release through Magnetic Eye Records. The album derives its title for the Swedish and Latin for “Into Oblivion” and it reportedly sees BESVÄRJELSEN maintaining a long-held punk-infused attitude, but they’ve broadened their sound with the addition of elements of blues, ska, metal, jazz and everything else around and in between, as long as it fit the mood of the song.

Till Glömskan Ad Oblivionem‘s latest single “Drifters on a Quiet Stream” is slow-burning ballad that sees the band balancing bruising, power chord-driven riffs with piano-driven introspective verses and rousingly anthemic, arena rock friendly hooks and choruses. Fittingly, Alazam’s expressive, power house vocal serves as a lifeline in stormy waters. At its core is a much-needed message of resilience — and a reminder that difficult and anxious times are usually temporary setbacks. Tomorrow you can start over.

“‘Drifters on a Quiet Stream’ had the working title ‘Elton’ as Elton John was one of the musical inspirations for this song”, the band’s Erik Båckwell reveals. “The intro and main riff was originally intended to be a part of another song. When I got our former bass player Johan to listen to the riff, he rather advised me to create a completely new song from this part. I am really glad now that I did that.”

Lea Amling Alazam adds, “This track explores the ever-present companion of the self – the voice that follows you through life, both to comfort and to critique”, the vocalist explains. “It is the quiet presence on your shoulder. When writing those lyrics, I revisited an old notebook and found a phrase I had once scribbled down: ‘…my ghost and I’. I’m not sure where I first came across this idea, but it stayed with me. It felt like a beautiful and honest way to describe living alongside your own anxiety, and I knew from the start that I wanted to build something around it.”

The lyric video visualizer employs forest imagery, further emphasizing what they’ve dubbed “forest rock” their tongue-in-cheek answer to desert rock — but this forest features some dark, unsettling flowers and plants.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: TV Priest Shares Broodingly Atmospheric “Love Song (A Good Kind of Weapon)”

TV Priest — currently, Charlie Drinkwater (vocals) and Alex Sporgis (guitar) — will be releasing their third album Cartoons on November 5, 2026 through AMK/Kartel Music Group. With their first two album’s 2021’s Uppers and 2022’s My Other People, the British punk outfit have stood out as a probing, curious group with a talent for wrapping their arms around the existential, and connecting the disconnected.

Cartoons however, emerges from the wreckage of self-reckoning, with the band finding new ways of being — and writing music from a different starting point. The result is an album of material with shades of REM, Radiohead, The National and Foals. The fire and philosophizing of their previously released work is still there, but accompanied by a bigger sprawl of gentler instrumentation, including piano, fiddle, birdsong recordings sampled, then ruptured and pieced back together again to explore “the intersection between digtalism and nature.” As they began to complete rework their sound, everything was on the table.

The band’s Charlie Drinkwater says of the album, “Cartoons is a record about confusion. About the small, daily unspooling of the worlds we thought we knew, and the strange new ones being born in their slipstream. About heroes and villains and the increasingly thin and trembling line between them. About surveillance and sanctuary, and where, exactly, a person is allowed to disappear. About me, and sometimes about you.

“Cartoons began in slowing down. Alex Sprogis and I wrote it over two quiet years, and somewhere in that time we stopped guarding our front door. We let the room get crowded with collaborators, friends, and a wider cast of players. The songs grew louder and stranger and more tender for it. It is the most communal thing we’ve ever made, and the most exposed.

“It is also, somehow, our most direct record and our most expansive. The songs come for you quicker now; the choruses are not embarrassed to mean what they say. But underneath, the ground has shifted. American alt rock leans against electronic production. Alex’s guitars run into programmed drums, organic field recordings, digital data samples, and a low end that takes cues from dance production. And for the first time, I stopped being afraid to sing; to carry a melody out in the open, unguarded, without the old reflex to undercut or hide something. There is hiss and choir, machine and breath.

“If we used to point the lens outward, this time we turned it back on ourselves. Cartoons is more personally political: a record about how I try, and very often fail, to move through late capitalism, work, family, love and the long weather of my own interior. There is anger in it, but also tenderness; and grief that has stopped lying to itself. Not resolution. Just company, out in the noisy world.”

Cartoons will include the previously released “The Mud Never Dries,” and the album’s second and latest single “Love Song (A Good Kind of Weapon).” “Love Song (A Good Kind of Weapon)” is a mediative, slow-burning song that seemingly channels Radiohead and The National with the song built around a gorgeous string arrangement, broodingly atmospheric and swirling electronics, what sounds like twinkling and darting synths beneath Drinkwater’s yearning baritone croon. Arguably one of the most unabashedly and unashamedly candid and vulnerable songs of the band’s catalog, “Love Song” is a both a contented sigh and earnest expression of gratitude, full of the recognition that love is often complicated, frustrating yet always deeply rewarding; that love is what makes us whole and sustains us in the most difficult, brutal times of our lives — and when everything is desperate, shitty and in flames.

“Love motivated us to form the band, yet we’d never written a song exploring romantic love or addressed it as a statement of love to our partners. This was a response to that: a shedding of any artifice and an expression of desire,” Charlie Drinkwater explains. “We wanted to explore how love is both domestic and extraordinary. It’s in the washing up done without asking, or the flowers bought on the way home from work but it’s also in the grand gestures, the late-night conversations, or the personal wonder when you learn something new about someone despite all those years together. And, after all, love is a weapon for righteous change and goodness. It’s a statement of resistance when the current world’s mood music seems to be hatred and violence (or at least we are led to believe).”

The accompanying video is a collection of surreal imagery including Drinkwater walking through a field with a heart-shaped balloon Other times, he’s on a landline phone with a long extension cord baring his soul on the phone, as well as the band’s core duo in a bare studio space.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 83rd Birthday, Christine McVie!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 83rd anniversary of Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard Share Glitchy and Club Friendly “Level 5”

Wildly prolific Melbourne-based JOVM mainstays King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard — Stu Mackenzie (vocals, guitar), Ambrose Kenny-Smith (harmonica, vocals, keys), Cook Craig (guitar, vocals), Joey Walker (guitar, vocals), Lucas Harwood (bass) and Michael Cavanaugh (drums) — have a long-held reputation for being restlessly creative and never standing still musically, exploring everything from prog-tinged thrash metal, primitive synth-rock, down-home jam rock and on recent releases feel-good symphonic rock.

The Aussie outfit’s remarkable 28th album Alien Metal follows on from 2023’s The Silver Cord — and grew out of last year’s “rave shows,” in which traditional instruments were abandoned, with the band gathering around an expansive modular synthesizer setup they named “Nathan,” each member making their own manipulations to create a mind-altering whole. And what initially began as an experiment soon became an obsession, inspiring what may arguably be one of the band’s most ambitious albums to date. “It completely rewired my brain,” Gizz’s Stu Mackenzie says, having discovered the possibilities of the Eiurorack synthesizer format on the recommendation of bandmate and self-confessed “techno head of the group” Joey Walker. “I was like, ‘I’m going to forget everything I know about music and relearn it all from scratch.”

The album was far from straightforward to make. Over the course of several years, the band scrapped countless recordings and abandoned entire creative directions while searching for the album’s identity. “We’ve never scrapped so much material as we have for this album,” Mackenzie says. “Entire albums, entire universes that were formulated, created, recorded, deleted and started again.”

The breakthrough finally arrived during a late night, improvisatory jam session that went over an hour. That spontaneous jam became the foundation for the entire record with every track on Alien Metal evolving from the same source performance. The result is a seamless, constantly shifting journey through techno, hardcore, house and jungle influences, filtered through King Gizzard’s unmistakable psychedelic lens. Pulsing rhythms, distorted textures and unexpected twists collide across material that’s at once futuristic and uniquely their own. “It sounds so crunchy, but also beautiful,” says Mackenzie.

“Alien Metal goes really hard, but it also goes to really interesting places,” adds Joey Walker. “And it feels unique – it feels like us, still.”

Alien Metal‘s first single “Level 5” sees Mackenzie’s heavily vocodered vocals beneath a mind-bending bit of industrial techno featuring glistening and glitchy synth textures paired with skittering, machine gun staccato beats that showcases how hard the band’s material typically goes while arguably being the most club friendly song they’ve released to date.

Directed by Hayden Somerville, the accompanying video places the viewer in a dystopian hellscape in which a collection of scientists perform a weird experiment on a humanoid mutant to hilariously weird effect. Not to spoil things too much, but it involves an autopsy and a connection to a modular synthesizer.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Nashville’s Hannah Cole Shares Bruising, “120 Minutes”-era MTV-like “MMA”

Covington, LA-born, Nashville-based artist Hannah Cole can trace the origins of her career to her childhood: She began writing songs and singing at six, despite the fact that there wasn’t much of a music scene in her hometown. After relocating to Nashville in 2019 for school, Cole was exposed to new sounds and possibilities — and given the permission to dream big. Much like Bully and Soccer Mommy, Cole found a way to merge a taste for heavier sounds with a studied sense of songwriting craftsmanship, juxtaposing brushing, distorted guitar with a cool, honey sweetened vocals and a punchy, melodic hooks.

Cole has released two EPs, 2023’s Big Bite and 2024’s Glisten. But her highly-anticipated full-length debut, the 10-song Switchbacks is reportedly a marked step in the Covington-born, Nashville-based artist’s development while showcasing her unique blend of style and technique. Slated for a September 4, 2026 release through Tight Knit, the album was recorded by Cole and her longtime collaborator and partner Joseph Kuhn in their home studio between 2024 and 2025, playing nearly every instrument. Aided by mixer Sonny Diperri, Switchbacks features a much wider and dense sonic palette than Cole’s previous releases with the material’s massive, cathartic splashes of sound specifically constructed with the live show in mind. Sonically, the album can be described as a blend of shoegaze and alternative rock with infectious pop melodies and strains of 90s nostalgia.

Thematically, the album’s material is a commentary on the pursuit of success and how to protect the pure joy and love that lives at our core. “Success is a moment that comes and goes,” Cole concludes, “but I think the joy and experience that comes with making music is something I can take with me forever.”

Switchbacks‘ lead single “MMA” features bruising wall of sound riffs and swirling shoegazer textures and thunderous drumming beneath Cole’s honeyed delivery, punchy melodic hooks and enormous choruses. Channeling Whip-Smart-era Liz Phair, L7‘s “Pretend We”re Dead,” and Siamese Dream-era Smashing Pumpkins, the song is a razor sharp take on the gamble of success, exploring the ugly side of the music industry through the image of Las Vegas: while being the so-called fight capital of the world, a rich and glamorous city with a seedy underbelly, surrounded by a void of sand.

After reading Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays, which Didion explores the scummy underbelly of 1970s Hollywood, Cole began thinking about Nashville, often referred to “Nashveagas,” ”Reflecting on her experience in the industry, Cole says, “I’ve taught myself how to live outside of reality, how to put on a show.”

Fittingly, the video draws from 120 Minutes-era MTV and features edited footage of skateboarders wiping out hard, rodeos, people getting arrested and dreamily shot closeups of Cole among other imagery, It’s a fever dream that captures the strangeness of contemporary America.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: The Valery Trails Shares Hard-Charging and Introspective “Fragment Hanging 2026”

Last year’s Winter Palace saw the Brisbane-based outfit The Valery Trails — currently Andrew Bower (vocals, guitar, keys), Sean Bower (bass), Dan McNaulty (drums, percussion), Screamfeeder’s Tim Steward (guitar) and Skye Staniford (vocals) — continuing their trademark jangle and crunch while exploring some diverse styles and genres, including synth pop-stylings, horn-driven retro flavors and some straightforward rock.

This year has been busy for the Aussie JOVM mainstays: The Valery Trails side project Soviet Dust released their self-titled debut EP earlier this year. And the band will follow up last year’s Winter Palace with the forthcoming Down on Buffalo Speedway EP. Down on Buffalo Speedway sees the Aussie quintet resisting, re-imagining and recording or remixing a selection of tunes from 2014’s Buffalo Speedway. “Buffalo Speedway was an early high-water mark for the band, with a number of songs becoming setlist staples,” The Valery Trails’ Andrew Bower says, “With the current extended lineup including Tim Steward and Skye Staniford, the songs have evolved over the years, so the idea to re-record some tracks with the current lineup and reflecting the band’s current live sound has been in the back of our minds for a while.”

“The new tracks benefited from having creative input from the current extended lineup of the band, and the freedom to experiment that came from working in my own studio,” Bower adds. “We were able to try things without being ‘on the clock.’ I don’t think the remixes would have happened if we were working in a traditional method of booking time in a studio.”

The EP will feature the previously released “Waiting 2026,” which wasn’t originally a single or a focus track on Buffalo Speedway but has been a fixture in the band’s setlist for some years, and “Fragment Hanging 2026.” The Down on Buffalo Speedway EP rendition of “Fragment Hanging” is a hard-charging mix of jangle pop, alt country and rock that channels Wilco, Flying Nun Records and the like, anchored by earnest, lived-in lyricism and loose, live-on-the-floor performances.

The song’s overarching themes are familiar, if you’ve lived a full, messy life — in particular, the sense of regret and shame over a relationship that failed and your part in it, and the lingering desire to have done more or to have done something different. But you live and learn through both heartbreak and disaster.

“This one is a deep cut from the Buffalo Speedway album, and one we’ve never played live,” Bower shares. “”The first verse is literally one of the most autobiographical things I’ve ever written. I’m not exactly sure how this led to the second verse introspective musings about how I messed up a relationship though… there’s something about the oppressive atmosphere of a Brisbane summer night that can prompt such melancholy trains of thought.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 69th Birthday, Peter Murphy!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Peter Murphy’s 69th birthday.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: The Doomed Shares Punchy, 80s-Inspired “Page 1”

The Doomed is a mysterious and emerging post-punk outfit, who released their self-titled debut EP today. The EP’s latest single “Page 1” is a hooky bit of punchy 80s-styled post-punk, anchored around shimmering and angular […]

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: sundayclub Shares Shimmering and Broodingly Conflicted “Corydon Ave (To Meet You)”

Winnipeg-based indie duo sundayclub — Courtney and Nikki — have quickly cemented a sound and approach that blends hazy indie pop and dreamy textures with unfiltered storytelling. The result is material that’s much like blurry photograph, grainy yet glowing, fleeting yet full of feeling and life. 

The duo’s nine-song, self-titled, full-length debut saw its official release today through Paper Bag Records. Their debut is deeply informed by the stillness of rural Manitoba, where the duo started the band as a way of processing the very strange limbo of early adulthood — that feeling of being caught between who you once were and who you’re slowly becoming. Fittingly, the album is rooted in place: in a romanticized, re-examined Winnipeg with its hard edges softened in the way that memory often soften things. Thematically, the album touches upon growing up, growing apart and growing into your own skin. 

The album includes the previously released “Camera Shy,” “Blue Wave,” and the album’s latest single “Corydon Ave (To Meet You).” “Corydon Ave (To Meet You)” is a shimmering tune that’s simultaneously brooding, tense, full of barely contained longing, and rousingly anthemic while capturing a narrator, who’s conflicted, guilt-ridden and obsessed with someone — and the narrator just can’t quite figure out what to do or if what they want from this person is even possible. You can sense the desire to tell the

“Corydon Ave (To Meet You)” can trace its origins to the neighborhood where the band’s Nikki grew up — Winnipeg’s Corydon, a culturally rich pocket of the city that Courtney came to know through him. Spending time there, she found herself unexpectedly and intensely struck by a new acquaintance, who happened to be from the same neighborhood.

“Along with being struck with the beauty of it, I became impossibly and unexpectedly struck by a new acquaintance who also happened to be from the area,” Courtney explains. “Realizing the intense feelings and infatuation that quickly developed, the song took a deeply personal turn. It became an opportunity to create this world in which the two of us could be together, despite it being so fragile in reality.”

At the time, Courtney was navigating her sexuality, and what followed was complicated, consuming guilt-ridden and heady. The song became a way to hold all of it. “I was starting to explore my sexuality around this time and so there were also a lot of confusing, guilt-ridden feelings that came with it as well,” Courtney adds. “The relationship felt almost hedonistic at times because it felt so forbidden and self-indulgent and yet felt like something I wasn’t supposed to want or enjoy. It was a constant gauging of mine and her physical and emotional boundaries and I found myself wrestling between wanting to preserve and yet cross them at the same time.”

The gorgeously shot visual captures the narrator’s feverish, barely contained desire for her love interest in the subtle and often confusing “did that mean what I desperately hope it means?” moments of our lives, when we love someone and aren’t sure if it’s reciprocated and are afraid to take a bold chance. And if you’re queer or exploring what your sexuality is, that moment can invite a crushing fear — of being outed against your will or worse.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Brooklyn’s Marigny Shares Bruising “The Still”

Brooklyn-based post punk/heavy goth rock outfit Marigny blends coldwave textures, heavy analog distortion and dark atmospheres to craft material that’s simultaneously intimate and volatile. Their sound is intentionally analog and physical — loud, low end, corroded textures, cassette tape-like saturation and tension that feels more like a live room recording than a clean, polished digital mix. Thematically, the band’s work explores grief, obsession, addiction, masculinity and spiritual decay through a modern Afro-gothic lens.

The Brooklyn-based outfit’s debut single “The Still” is a bruising and gritty blend of post-punk, industrial, drakwave, New Wave and goth that showcases their ability to craft a punchy, hook-driven and rousingly anthemic song that’s rooted in raw, soulful emotion.

“My whole life has been defined by the feeling that I’m missing something,” says Marigny. “For nearly a decade, this prevented me from making music that I believed in. But I’ve finally found the language I’ve needed to put that pain into art. ‘The Still’ was the first step, and I’m very excited for the future of this project.”