JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Midnight Oil frontman Peter Garrett’s 72nd birthday.
Category: post punk
New Audio: Slow Fiction Shares a Furious, Breakneck Ripper
Rising New York-based quintet Slow Fiction — Julia Vassallo (vocals), Paul Knepple (guitar), Joe Skimmons (guitar), Ryan Duffin (bass) and Akiva Henig (drums) — have received attention for a sound that inspired by Sonic Youth and The Jesus Chain and Mary Chain with elements of naughties-era guitar rock paired with contemporary angst.
Their latest single “When” is part of Speedy Wunderground‘s Speedy Singles series. It’s available on all DSPs right now — and will be available on 7″ vinyl with a dub remix B side by the label’s Dan Carey titled “Who Is the Dub.” You’ll be able to purchase the new single and the rest of the singles in the series here.
As for the new single “When” is an urgent, breakneck ripper that’s one-part Walkmen one-part The Jesus and Mary Chain while arguably being one of those most defiant and confrontational songs of their growing catalog while evoking desperate unease.
“I think everyone has had a moment where their expectation of the world, a relationship, the audience they are performing for falls short, and it sends you into a wild spiral downwards,” Slow Fiction’s Julia Vassallo explains. “Losing faith feels so desperate, like falling into a pit of snakes. And the snakes all have faces that seem familiar, and they’re talking, but the words are all garbled. I guess this was trying to get to the bottom of that pit of disillusionment, or maybe get out of it altogether.”
Throwback: Happy 67th Birthday, Will Sergeant!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Echo and the Bunnymen guitarist Will Sergeant’s 67th birthday.
New Video: Boston’s Paper Lady Shares Unhinged “Joe Modern”
Formed back in 2019, the Boston-based indie outfit Paper Lady — Alli Raina (vocals, rhythm guitar), Rowan Martin (lead guitar), Alex Castile (drums) and Taylor Morris (bass) — can trace their origins to their involvement in their Northeast DIY scene. Citing an eclectic array of influences that include Mazzy Star, Broadcast and Jefferson Airplane among others, the Boston-based quartet has crafted a sound that typically blends dreamy textures with grounded storytelling.
Last year, the band wrote and recorded their full-length debut, Idle Fate, during a retreat in a cabin in Upstate New York and at their shared home in Boston. Self-recorded and self-mixed, the album, which is slated for a May 9, 2025 release, explores themes of grief, love and fantastical existentialism while seeing the band push their sound into more experimental territory.
Idle Fate‘s third single “Joe Modern” is an angular and tightly wound up post punk anthem with dreamy shoegazer passages, anchored around angular and whirring blasts of guitar, a throbbing rhythm section paired with remarkably catchy hooks and enormous, bombastic choruses that simultaneously barely holds it together, while showcasing Raina’s feral and unhinged vocal performance.
A thematic outlier on the album, “Joe Modern” draws from real life absurdity: a scamming and scheming realtor. “We kept joking that we should write a song about this guy — and then Rowan brought this wild guitar riff to rehearsal, and the rest just fell into place,” the band’s Alli Raina explains. “The lyrics came to me instantly. It’s the most fun song to play live, and I think it helped us evolve our sound in a huge way.”
Directed by the band’s Rowan Martin, the accompanying video for “Joe Modern” is a blend of surreal, mundane and sinister, as it follows a sad-sad and haunted businessman type through the hallucinatory and dreamlike torments by his boss and a sleep paralysis demon.
New Audio: La Punta Bianca Shares Propulsive and Uneasy “Rito Marziano”
Paris-based synth pop/synthwave duo La Punta Bianca — Francesca Diprima (vocals) and Phillipe Brown (vocals, synths, drum machines) — made a name for themselves in the Parisian alternative and indie scenes with their debut EP, 2019’s Demian. Demain saw the duo quickly and firmly cementing their sound: Diprima and Brown’s dreamy melodies paired with equally dreamy synth-based soundscapes.
Initially released on cassette tape, the EP was so popular that it was then pressed on vinyl twice. The EP’s success across the European synthwave scene enabled the duo to tour across both France and the European Union.
The Parisian duo’s full-length debut, Disquiet continued a run of material rooted in absurdist romanticism and Lynchian strangeness, while drawing from Angelo Badalamenti, John Barry and Leonard Cohen with songs being sometimes dancey, sometimes melodramatic. Lyrics were written and are sung in French, Italian and English throughout. All of this is paired with carefully programmed synth and drum machine-driven arrangements.
Their latest single “RIto Marizano” is a propulsive bit of goth-influenced synthwave/post-punk that’s an unhinged and absurdist anthem, meant to conjure pagan fire rites and celestial gods. Recorded during a residency at Parisian underground club Mains d’Ouevers, the track features Diprima’s feverish Italian falsetto dances and spins around Brown’s supple synth punk bass lines and propulsive polyrhythm. The result is a song that feels a bit like a nightmarish and uneasy flop sweat.
New Video: Activity Shares Brooding and Uneasy “In Another Way”
Acclaimed Brooklyn-based post punk outfit Activity — currently, Grooms‘ Travis Johnson (vocals, guitar), Bri DiGiola (bass), Russian Baths‘ Jess Rees and their newest member The Pains of Being Pure at Heart‘s and Peel Dream Magazine‘s Brian Alvarez — will be releasing their third album, the Jeff Berner-produced A Thousand Years In Another Way on June 6, 2025 through Western Vinyl.
A friend asked why the album captured the strange, heavy feeling of being alive right now better than anything else. “Evil is very real and having its way, and love is also real and hasn’t lost yet,” Activity’s Travis Johnson told the friend — describing the album’s overall tone. The album doesn’t try to explain the strange time we’re living in; it simply feels like it. it’s a mix of violence, alienation, and tenderness, reflecting the surreal, dreamlike — and often nightmarish– rhythm of our daily lives.
The ten-song album sees the Brooklyn-based outfit crafting a blend of experimental rock, electronics and found sounds with a sense of paranoia, desperate flickers of hope and a warped reality. Continuing their ongoing collaboration with Berner, the band manipulated sounds and played with room acoustics to create a feeling that’s disorientating and uneasy — like the air is thick and the walls are listening.
Coming out of a period of increased uncertainty, the Brooklyn-based quartet — then Johnson, Rees and former drummer Steven Levine — pieced the album together from various fragments, including clipped samples, looping guitar lines and spectral melodies. Johnson, Rees and DiGioia share vocal and writing duties, shaping material that feels both deeply personal and strangely alien. Throughout the album, there’s a sense that things could shift or fall apart at any second — nothing says one thing for long.
A Thousand Years In Another Way‘s first single, album opening track “In Another Way” is a brooding and uneasy track that captures the captures an alienated and painfully lonely narrator’s desperate desire to connect with someone while struggling with the chaos and uncertainty within and without.
According to the band’s Johnson, the album’s first single is “a way of letting off a bunch of aggression, rage and resentment at things not being the way they hold be, both personal and global (wishing things were ‘another way’), and feeling completely important about it, except when playing the song.”
Directed by the band’s former dummer Steven Levine, the accompanying video for “In Another Way” is brooding, uneasy, mysterious and deeply indebted to cinema.
The band’s Johnson says of the video “It was shot in a neighborhood hangout, Film Noir Cinema. The owner is a big obscure movie and music guy, and it seemed perfect. Also, one of my favorite movies is Mulholland Drive, and it seemed fun to do a reference to the Club Silencio scene as a nod to David Lynch following his passing.”
New Audio: Copenhagen’s Taxidermy Shares Brooding and Uneasy “Impending”
Copenhagen-based experimental noise/post-punk outfit Taxidermy — Osvald Reinhold (vocals, guitar), Toke Brejning Frederiksen (guitar), Joachim Lorch-Schierning (bass) and Johan Knutz Haavik (drums) — have quickly established a sound that draws from math rock, No Wave, post-hardcore and emo among a list of others.
Thematically, the Danish quartet’s work sees them exploring the unease and disquiet of contemporary existence through delving into the cryptic and disorientating, the claustrophobic and the surreal. Crafting material anchored around unpredictable arrangements, raw and visceral textures, broad dynamic range and intense emotional delivery, the members of the Copenhagen-based outfit actively challenges the listener to confront the discomfort of the unknown.
Last year’s Coin EP featured two singles I wrote about on this site:
- “Rot,” a slow-burning bit of noisy post-punk that evokes the narrator’s sanity fraying at its edges with the song being built around an arrangement of intricate layers of dissonant guitars, swirling feedback and a propulsive rhythm section serving as an uneasy and stormy bed for Reinhold’s desperate wailing. Seemingly channelling Disappears/FACS, Radiohead and The Smile, “Rot” not only captures a narrator who’s drowning in their own vacillating and self-flagellating doubt and hatred, but one who does so in a world that’s mad and cruel to him, as he is to himself.
- “Today” an uneasy and intense slab of post punk-meets noise rock that seemingly pairs angular and fragmented Entertainment-era Gang of Four-like groove with the sort of feedback-driven skronk and squeal reminiscent of Nirvana and Sonic Youth with frenetic and propulsive drumming. Reinhold’s desperately wailing vocal floats uneasy over the hypnotic, machine-like arrangement, seeming to rage against a brutal and unceasingly mad world.
“Impending” is the first single from the Danish outfit’s forthcoming EP Let Go. And while further cementing the act’s reputation for crafting brooding post-punk, the song sees the band subtly expanding upon their sound, with the song featuring alternating ethereal and atmospheric verses with the sort of scorching power chord-driven hooks and choruses that would make Steve Albini proud.
The band’s Osvald Reinhold describes the song as “a moment of clarity; a detached, fleeting overview of the limited nature of existence, on the brink of being overtaken once more by oblivion and habitual repetition.”
New Video: Anika Shares Tense and Uneasy “Oxygen”
Acclaimed British-born, Berlin-based singer/songwriter and musician Annika Henderson, best known as Anika will be releasing her fourth album Abyss through Sacred Bones on Friday.
Abyss was born out of the frustration, anger and confusion Henderson feels from existing in our contemporary world. Reportedly much heavier than 2021’s Change, the 10-song album is raw, urgent and fueled by strong emotions, the album’s material takes the acclaimed British-born, Berlin-based artist on a new sonic journey.
The soon-to-be released album was recorded live to tape at Berlin’s legendary Hansa Studios. Recording live and with minimal overdubs was an important decision, Henderson stresses, in order to capture the raw immediacy of the album. Much like previously released material, she wrote the songs herself before fleshing them out with Exploded View‘s Martin Thulin, and then assembled a live band to join the pair in the studio that included Andrea Belfi (drums), Mueran Humanos‘ Tomas Nochteff (bass) and The Pleasure Majenta‘s Lawrence Goodwin (guitar). Studio engineering was done by Nanni Johansson and Frida Claeson Johansson. “I always work with people I respect and admire,” Henderson says. “It’s very genuine in that way.”
The acclaimed British-born, Berlin-based artist consciously sought to make an album that was inherently physical — one that would take the listener out of their heads and back into their body. The physicality of the album and its material is further emphasized by its album cover, which features androgynous bodies from a drawing by a teenage friend of Anika’s. Fittingly, teenage angst plays a part in the album. “These days it feels like you have to have very catered opinions – like language has gone out the window,” Henderson says. “It makes you feel very much like a restricted child again.”
With Abyss, the acclaimed British-born, Berlin-based artist was determined to break free from holding back genuine emotions — even if they might seem uncomfortable or too much. “It’s like I’m doing all the things that I never allowed myself to do,” she says. She hopes this pure emotion will position the listener to fully immerse themselves in the album. “There needs to be room for people to put themselves in this album, and put their own narratives on it,” she says. “This is a space for you.”
“There’s so much going on in the world, and you have to sit there and watch it through a screen that you’ve allowed into your home, like a vampire who had been preying at your door, then immediately digest it, have an opinion, and publicly comment on it,” Henderson continues. “The state of the world just feels like an abyss right now.” With this new album, she wants to create a place where people can feel safe to be themselves, and to unite in their diversity. “Abyss is like a call to action,” she says. “To come and figure it out together.”
In the lead-up to the album’s release, I wrote about two of its previously released singles”
- Album opening track “Hearsay,” a gritty Joy Division– meets-PJ Harvey-like tune, anchored around an angular and driving bass line, stuttering four-on-the-floor and slashing guitars paired with Henderson’s melodic, Nico-like croon. The song hones in on the extreme divisions between the left and right in contemporary society with Anika explaining that “this song is about media moguls – about the power of the media, whether social, tv or beyond – we are as much under its spell as we ever were and some nasties are exploiting it for their own gains. Parasites feeding off the blood of the public — PJ Harvey inspired for sure.”
- “Walk Away,” a surprisingly upbeat 90s alt rock-influenced track that sounds a bit like a synthesis of Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea-era PJ Harvey and Hole/Courtney Love paired with the most unflinchingly honest lyrics of the British-born, German-based artist’s career. The song reveals an artist, who is no longer concerned with how others may think or feel about what she feels she has to say. It’s zero-fucks mode, informed by a world that’s gone to completely to hell anyway. “This song is saying all the things I want to say but am too scared to say or that society doesn’t accept me to say. It is dealing with mental health – the state of poor mental health in these fucked up, divided, isolated, social media, war, pest, rise of the right times,” Anika explains. “It is the deconstruction of the feminine – of topics considered to be private realm.” Henderson cites “the reckless nature of 90s/2000s Hole/Courtney Love records — of not giving a shit — telling it how it is, not scared to offend, not scared to be cancelled. We have also lost the space for healthy debate, for difference of opinion, shutting down those we don’t agree with, removing them from our social networks.”
Abyss‘ third and latest single “Oxygen” continues a run of hook-drivenJoy Division-like post-punk, anchored around Henderson’s haunting, Nico-like croon. Bur unlike its predecessors, “Oxygen” evokes the sensation of being restricted against one’s will and struggling to free themselves; of having one’s rights constantly fucked with and never knowing if your rights will be upheld from day to day or month to month.
“’Oxygen’ is about feeling trapped in your own body, in your own narrative, in your own society, within the norms and expected behaviours of this claustrophobic socially constructed world,” Henderson explains. “It wants to break out of this cage, it wants to breathe, it wants to be in tune with its true self, its true feelings, sensations and desires – without restriction.”
Sonically, the track was “inspired by Breeders and Pixies, the way it creeps in slowly and then crashes with this weird chorus/part that only comes in once,” She adds. “I didn’t want to write things too rigidly, or by the book, more let them flow as they wished.”
The accompanying video continues Anika’s ongoing collaboration with Laura Martinova, who contributes a feverish and at times deeply unsettling visual with a remarkable panache.
New Audio: Dead Pioneers Share An Incisive Ripper
Denver-based punk outfit Dead Pioneers — Josh Rivera (guitar), Abe Brennan (guitar), Shane Zweygardt (drums), Algiers’ Lee Tesche (bass) and acclaimed indigenous visual and performance artist and activist Gregg Deal (vocals) — will be releasing their sophomore album PO$T AMERICAN on April 11, 2025 through Hassle Records.
Deal, who is a member of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, is a visual and performance artist and activist, whose work frequently includes exhaustive and detailed critiques of American colonialism, society, politics, popular culture and history. Through paintings, murals and performance art, Deal critically examines issues within Indian Country such as decolonization, stereotypes and appropriation among others. His work has been exhibited at cultural centers nationally and internationally including at the Smithsonian Institution and the Venice Biennale.
After a 17 year stint living in the Washington, DC area, Deal and his family relocated to Colorado, coinciding with his time as Native Arts Artist-in-Residence at the Denver Art Museum. Dead Pioneers can trace their origins from a 2020 performance piece The Punk Pan-Indian Romantic Comedy, a deeply personal one-man show that explored themes of music, personal experiences and meaningful connections. A grant allowed Deal to expand upon the project, incorporating original music written specifically for the performance.
The Denver-based punks pair a DIY ethos with a mission to champion the rights of marginalized communities, including Indigenous, Black, Brown, Asian, LGBTQ+ folks, as well as workers’ rights. The band’s work sees them boldly and unapologetically confronting the social, political and cultural issues in the United States — a focus that’s central to their identity.
The Denver-based outfit self-released their self-titled full-length debut last fall. Clocking in at 22 minutes, with only one of the album’s 12 songs exceeding three minutes, the album’s material may be a breakneck and furious roar, but it covers a huge amount of ground. The album caught the attention of Hassle Records, who signed the band and then re-released the album.
PO$T AMERICAN‘s material was written last February and records last July. The album forecasts the turmoil of our last Presidential Election and reflects on the fears and disilluionsments of modern life, “The title PO$T AMERICAN reflects a collective disillusionment with the so-called American Dream,” Dead Pioneers’ Gregg Deal explains. “It critiques capitalism, colonialism, and white supremacy while imagining a path toward unity beyond those oppressive systems.”
The album’s material sees the band balancing minute-long punk rock explosions, impassioned explorations of modern-day America and spoken word interludes with the shifts in form and tone not distracting from its central themes. Sonically, the album draws from Rage Against the Machine, Chuck D, Public Enemy, Johnny Cash, IDLES, Black Flag, Rollins Band and Dead Kennedys among others.
Perhaps as a result of the direct influences of its creation, the album manages to eerily presage the mood and state of our country right this moment: The fear, uncertainty, the bitter divisiveness, the racist scapegoating, the gaslighting, the gross incompetence, the oppression, bullshit and buffoonery we’ll face every day for the next four years — or even more.
“What we wrote was relevant politically and socially. We felt good about it, and moved forward in that confidence,” the band says. “It’s sad that scathing statements about fascism, white supremacy and racism in the American political landscape are somehow more relevant just because of an election, but here we are.”
And yet, the overall feeling is one of cautious optimism. “Although we didn’t expect the political relevance to become more relevant, we have no illusions to the American dream, or to where we seem to be going. But we have hope that we can get to a better place for people to have what they need. It is an album that speaks to and for this precise time and place; that perhaps could not exist at any other time. It is an album for now.”
Earlier this year, I wrote about album title track “PO$T AMERICAN,” a bruising ripper that sonically and thematically reminded me of Pearl Jam‘s “WMA” and “Push Me Pull Me” anchored around righteously furious critiques of America and American politics. If you’re a member of a marginalized community — and I guarantee that most of you readers actually are — the song should capture the distress, anger, insult and the bitterness that you feel right this second and will continue to feel for some time.
“We, like many people in our communities, are incensed by the overt and jarring political and social moves of United States Politics,” Deal says. “From the current administration to the administrations before it, there has been a trajectory in this country that has brought us to the critical moment we are all looking at. Our hope in this song is maybe, just maybe, we are saying something you feel too.” He continues, “I wrote this song on White people’s day of Independence, July 4, 2024. I wrote it sitting next to my oldest son while watching fireworks and having a discussion on what this day was supposed to mean. It went into a discussion of everything that was happening at that moment. Little did I know at the exact moment, that the relevant things would escalate, and become more stark. This was written to be scathing, honest, saying the quiet thing out loud. As we look upon the United States political landscape, this is very much how we feel.”
PO$T AMERICAN‘s latest single “The Caucasity,” continues a run of bruising art punk. Featuring propulsive and tribal rhythmic pulse and squiggling, reverb-soaked guitar blasts paired with Deal’s bemused and frustrated spoken word delivery, the song as the Dead Pioneers frontman explains “. . . tells the story of a true moment with a common set of languages and communications by non-Native people. While tongue and cheek, it’s also a true reflection of a marginalized person being asked to justify their actions, if not their entire existence.”
“This piece is the true story of an interaction with a shamelessly bold white college student that turns into a perfect example of the word while also showcasing the hurdles put in front of professional People of Color despite age, education or perceived authority. These are everyday occurrences in public spaces, academia and throughout our lives.”
New Video: Fotoform Shares Lush and Woozy “Grief is a Garden”
Deriving their name from a mid-century, avant-garde photography movement, Seattle-based post punk outfit Fotoform — longtime collaborators and married couple Kim House (bass, vocals, synths) and Geoffrey Cox (guitar), along with Death Cab for Cutie‘s and The Long Winters‘ Michael Schorr (drums) — can trace their origins back to the formation of a previous project, the goth-adjacent dream pop act C’est la Mort, which formed shortly after House and Cox married.
Specializing in what they dubbed “pointy-shoegaze,” C’est la Mort released their full-length debut through their own Dismal Nitch label, as well as various compilation tracks, including a limited split 7 inch with Stars for American Laundromat‘s The Smiths‘ tribute Please Please Please. After a series of lineup changes, House and Cox re-emerged as Fotoform in late 2016.
House and Cox released their Fotoform self-titled debut in 2017. Supported with tours of the West Coast and Europe, the album received airplay and praise both locally and nationally: Album single “I Know You’re Charming” was featured as a KEXP Song of The Day. The self-titled album was voted as one of KEXP Listeners’ Top 90.3 Albums of 2017 and it landed on several year-end lists, including The Big Takeover and Part-Time Punks.
Building upon a growing profile, the band followed up with 2018’s Part-Time Punks EP, which was selected as one of The Big Takeover’s EPs of 2018. Schorr joined the band back in 2019 and by the following year, they released two benefit singles as a newly minted trio “Yves Klein Blue,” which was recored for voter outreach and the Christmas-themed “They Say It’s Always Lonely” to benefit local food banks. Both singles found the trio expanding upon their sound with the addition of synths.
In early 2020, the trio went into the studio with Evan Foster to record the material for their sophomore album, Horizons. Recording sessions were interrupted as a result of COVID-19 pandemic-enforced quarantines and restrictions and continued a year later with Foster and Matt Bayles recording drum parts. The album saw the band pivoting from the towering wall of guitars-driven sound of their previously released work and towards a much more nuanced sound that drew equally from shoegaze, dream pop and post-punk with the band continuing to pair synths with layers of guitars and driving bass lines.
The Seattle-based trio’s third album Grief is a Garden (Forever in Bloom) is slated for an April 18, 2025 release. The album reportedly sees the band’s evolving yet again, with the band further refining their long-held crystalline sound into a lush and introspective soundscape that blends the emotional weight of post-punk with the ethereal beauty of shoegaze with the album’s material increasingly drawing from classic 4AD heyday artists like This Moral Coil, Pale Saints and Lush.
The album’s material thematically touches upon loss, change, heartache, pain and transformation, while tackling the big existential questions. The album, also features some of the band’s most vulnerable and disarmingly honest lyrics of their growing catalog.
Album title track “Grief is a Garden,’ is a brooding slow-burning tune anchored around shimmering and reverb-drenched guitars, Kim House’s yearning and ethereal delivery paired with a soaring hook and chorus. Sounding a bit like Garlands-era Cocteau Twins and 4AD Records classic heyday period, “Grief is a Garden” sees the band thematically into delving deeply into personal themes of grief, loss, and in time, gradual acceptance.
“The title track to our upcoming album, ‘Grief is a Garden’ reflects on the enduring, ever-evolving nature of grief and how it changes over time,” Fotoform’s Kim House explains. “Grief blooms, decays and nourishes itself, embodying love, beauty, pain and transformation. As we move through life, we accumulate grief, and the song contemplates the evolving nature of our relationship to loss and love, as grief becomes a part of us, forever changing us and informing our new selves as we continue with life after loss.
“My brother Jeff passed away suddenly and unexpectedly at the end of February, right after we released our first single. I am still trying to absorb the devastating reality that he is gone. I never could have imagined I would lose another brother just as we are starting to release songs off our album, which is centered around grief, loss, resilience and healing. The lyric ‘Waves keep crashing, unforeseen, losing someone is never what it seems‘ has been swirling around me as I feel blindsided by the loss of my brother. We’d been planning on talking about grief with the new record, but it’s another thing to suddenly find yourself newly grieving again.
“The longing for answers to life’s unknowable questions is palpable throughout this song, as I’ve wrestled with existential doubts since childhood, questioning everything from the stories I was raised with to the mysteries of life and death itself. ‘Into the ether, we all call out‘ is a reference to the unknowable place we enter when we die – an acknowledgement and a cry for connection.
Loved ones who touch our souls meld with our spirit and never leave us. Tethers to those we’ve lost surround us when we open our hearts. We often feel these connections after we lose someone: a certain song comes on the radio or a shared symbol appears at the most poignant time. Heightened awareness of these synchronicities tethers us to those we’ve lost.
“Grief, so deeply personal yet also universal, is hanging heavy for so many of us these days. We all find ourselves in mourning, whether for loved ones, the erosion of societal values, social injustice, dismantling of democracy, upheaval from natural disasters and the intensifying climate crisis, loss of relationships, former versions of ourselves after injury and disability and anticipatory grief of what’s to come – the list is endless.
Creating this album was a ritual in reflecting on grief, sitting with it, metabolizing, and letting it sink into all the cracks and crevices, fully absorbing grief to understand – and eventually release – some of its tight hold / energy. As I return to this familiar and tender state of fresh sorrow and loss, I take comfort in the knowledge that with time, grief will soften around the edges and the warmth of love will reclaim its position in the foreground.”
Directed by Erik Foster, the accompanying video for “Grief is a Garden” is a lush and woozy fever dream shot in a verdant garden that would have been perfect in an Edgar Allan Poe short story or in a Mary Shelley novel.
New Audio: Hello Cosmos Shares Furious and Urgent “Turn Off The News”
Manchester, UK area-based genre-defying, multimedia collective Hello Cosmos — Kendal Calling Festival founder Ben Robinson (vocals), Ben’s sibling Simon Robinson (drums), Placebo‘s and Lanterns on the Lake‘s Angela Chan (strings, keys) and Deathretro‘s Adrian Ingram (guitar, synths) — released their latest EP, Keep Digging earlier this year.
Written and recorded over a two-year period, the Jamie Lockheart-produced Keep Digging EP is the first of a batch of yet-to-be announced, forthcoming releases from the British outfit, which were created in Leeds-based Greenmount Studio, as well as studios in Manchester, New York, Florida, Los Angeles and Stockport, UK. The EP comes with a bold vision for the band, their Cosmic Glue imprint and their future live show.
Keep Digging EP‘s latest single “Turn Off The News” is also the first official single from the band’s forthcoming sophomore album slated for release next year. “Turn off the news,” begins with dramatic violin screeching before turning into blisteringly furious post-punk ripper anchored around alternating quiet-loud-quiet song structure that features scorching guitar riffage, thunderous drumming and a mosh pit friendly screamo-like hook paired with Ben Robinson’s incisive, politically-charged lyrics. Although rooted in UK political commentary, “Turn Off The News” captures the furious urgency of our moment here in the US with the daily normalization of fascism, lies and bullshit — with most decent people realizing they’ve been conned either by someone or the system as a whole.
The initial recording taking place the day after the UK left the European Union, the British outfit developed from a studio session that reflected the dark, uneasy, doom-laden and intense atmosphere throughout the country’s inner cities with the original working title “The Day After.” As the track progressed during sessions at Greenmount Studios during 2020, the song’s lyrics gradually developed around themes of negative news stories and who they serve, seeing the band tackling media manipulation and bullshit. And the song title’s changed to “Turn Off The News.”
“The story of this song threads through some dark times for me personally, the UK and the globe,” Hello Cosmos’ Ben Robinson explains. “I always aim to be positive with Hello Cosmos vocals, writing from a place of sadness or negativity is much easier than making a positive statement interesting. But this track was a sign of the times so I went through my darker lyric notes, a lot had been written in the harder moments of lockdown, the 5 o’clock updates from Witty and Borris [sic], the Twitter rabbit holes on info on how PPE contracts had been abused, the whole circus show of Hancock and the media shitshow surrounding UK politics. This is where the title of the track comes from, at that time the news was so unhealthy and was constant, it wasn’t helping people it was beating us down with doom and paranoia constantly, while the media was celebrating having something to run with that had the attention of the world . . .
“Frustrating times all bottled up, so I took every bit of my anger and went into the vocal booth for the first scream I’d done since lockdown happened, I channelled everything I could into that chorus and let it all out, what you hear is the first and only take.”
New Video: Anika Shares Unflinchingly Honest “Walk Away”
Acclaimed British-born, Berlin-based singer/songwriter and musician Annika Henderson, best known as Anika will be releasing her fourth album Abyss through Sacred Bones on April 4, 2025.
Abyss was born out of the frustration, anger and confusion Henderson feels from existing in our contemporary world. Reportedly much heavier than 2021’s Change, the 10-song album is raw, urgent and fueled by strong emotions, the album’s material takes the acclaimed British-born, Berlin-based artist on a new sonic journey.
The forthcoming album was recorded live to tape at Berlin’s legendary Hansa Studios. Recording live and with minimal overdubs was an important decision, Henderson stresses, in order to capture the raw immediacy of the album. Much like previously released material, she wrote the songs herself before fleshing them out with Exploded View‘s Martin Thulin, and then assembled a live band to join the pair in the studio that included Andrea Belfi (drums), Mueran Humanos‘ Tomas Nochteff (bass) and The Pleasure Majenta‘s Lawrence Goodwin (guitar). Studio engineering was done by Nanni Johansson and Frida Claeson Johansson. “I always work with people I respect and admire,” Henderson says. “It’s very genuine in that way.”
The acclaimed British-born, Berlin-based artist consciously sought to make an album that was inherently physical — one that would take the listener out of their heads and back into their body. The physicality of the album and its material is further emphasized by its album cover, which features androgynous bodies from a drawing by a teenage friend of Anika’s. Fittingly, teenage angst plays a part in the album. “These days it feels like you have to have very catered opinions – like language has gone out the window,” Henderson says. “It makes you feel very much like a restricted child again.”
With Abyss, the acclaimed British-born, Berlin-based artist was determined to break free from holding back genuine emotions — even if they might seem uncomfortable or too much. “It’s like I’m doing all the things that I never allowed myself to do,” she says. Anika hopes this pure emotion will position the listener to fully immerse themselves in the album. “There needs to be room for people to put themselves in this album, and put their own narratives on it,” she says. “This is a space for you.”
“There’s so much going on in the world, and you have to sit there and watch it through a screen that you’ve allowed into your home, like a vampire who had been preying at your door, then immediately digest it, have an opinion, and publicly comment on it,” Henderson continues. “The state of the world just feels like an abyss right now.” With this new album, she wants to create a place where people can feel safe to be themselves, and to unite in their diversity. “Abyss is like a call to action,” she says. “To come and figure it out together.”
Last month, I wrote about Abyss‘ lead single and album opening track “Hearsay,” a gritty Joy Division– meets-PJ Harvey-like tune, anchored around an angular and driving bass line, stuttering four-on-the-floor and slashing guitars paired with Henderson’s melodic, Nico-like croon. The song hones in on the extreme divisions between the left and right in contemporary society with Anika explaining that “this song is about media moguls – about the power of the media, whether social, tv or beyond – we are as much under its spell as we ever were and some nasties are exploiting it for their own gains. Parasites feeding off the blood of the public — PJ Harvey inspired for sure.”
Abyss‘ second and latest single “Walk Away” is a surprisingly upbeat 90s alt rock-influenced track that sounds a bit like a synthesis of Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea-era PJ Harvey and the likes of Hole/Courtney Love paired with the most blatant and unflinchingly honest lyrics of the British-born, German-based artist’s career. The song reveals an artist, who is no longer concerned with how others may think or feel about what she feels she has to say. It’s zero-fucks mode, informed by a world that’s gone to completely to hell anyway.
“This song is saying all the things I want to say but am too scared to say or that society doesn’t accept me to say. It is dealing with mental health – the state of poor mental health in these fucked up, divided, isolated, social media, war, pest, rise of the right times,” Anika explains. “It is the deconstruction of the feminine – of topics considered to be private realm.”
Henderson cites “the reckless nature of 90s/2000s Hole/Courtney Love records — of not giving a shit — telling it how it is, not scared to offend, not scared to be cancelled. We have also lost the space for healthy debate, for difference of opinion, shutting down those we don’t agree with, removing them from our social networks.”
Directed by Laura Martinova, the accompanying video was shot in and around a former brothel in Berlin and “plays with the socially constructed ideas of femininity, of sexuality, of sexual restriction and confronts them,” Henderson explains. “The character is quite sufficient by herself, sexually and socially liberated – and also a bit of a mess, destroying the prim and proper idea of how a good wifey should be. She is a hedonist, she lets herself go, she shows anger, she shows being drunk, she seems to enjoy dusting the pictures of the naked ladies very much, she is independent and breaking out of all the bars imposed by the patriarchy. The guy in the video never finds her, never even gets close, doesn’t in the slightest disrupt her life, he continues to look but she seems to always be a step ahead.”
New Audio: Forgotten Garden Shares Broodingly Atmospheric “Five Minutes”
Split between Scotland and Portugal, Forgotten Garden — Portuguese-based Inês Rebelo (vocals) and Danny Elliott (guitar, keys and production), accompanied by guests — formed back in 2019 and quickly established a brooding goth-tinged sound with elements of post-punk inspired by The Cure, Joy Division and The Doors while Rebelo cites Florence Welch, Lana Del Rey, Chelsea Wolfe, Weyes Blood, Kelsey Lu and Warpaint as influences on her vocal styling.
The duo’s debut EP, the four-song Broken Pieces thematically focused on a the breakdown of a relationship and received praise from Angry Baby back in 2021. Last year’s sophomore EP In Memoriam thematically touched on death, loss and grief and received praise from The Indie Grid, who called the EP “a thing of fragile and transient beauty.”
The Portuguese-Scottish duo’s latest single is the slow-burning torch song “Five Minutes.” Anchored around a broodingly atmospheric arrangement of ethereal synths paired with a sinuous bass line, jazz-like drum patterns, “Five Minutes” perfectly showcases Rebelo’s gorgeous delivery which expresses longing and heartache within the turn of a phrase.
The duo explains that “Five Minutes” is a sad and poignant song that tells the story of a couple who immediately fall for each other and mistakenly believe that their connection will last forever. “However, slowly and almost imperceptibly over time they drift apart as their love wanes. This leads the main character in the song to wonder how they drifted apart as she wistfully looks back on their life together,” the duo explain.
Throwback: Happy Belated 68th Birthday, Cindy Wilson!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms belatedly celebrates Cindy Wilson’s 68th birthday.
Lyric Video: Bambara Shares Atmospheric and Brooding “Face of Love”
JOVM mainstays Bambara — twin brothers Reid Bateh (lead vocals, guitar) and Blaze Bateh (drums), and William Brookshire (bass) — will be releasing their highly-anticipated Graham Sutton-produced fourth album, Birthmarks through Wharf Cat Records on March 14, 2025.
Birthmarks is reportedly a wild, musically adventurous collection of songs that follows a host of lost characters caught in a cycle of love, violence and rebirth. The result is material that may arguably be their most apocalyptic and poignant.
Earlier this month, I wrote about “Letters from Sing Sing,” a story and forceful rager, anchored around swirling shoegazer-like textures, Blaze Bateh’s thunderous, mathematically precise rhythmic patterns, Brookshire’s angular post-punk bass grooves serving as a lush yet tense and uneasy bed for Reid Bateh’s sonorous baritone.
The album’s final pre-release single “Face of Love” is a decided change in sonic direction for the trio: The brooding and atmospheric twilight-like track seems inspired by Cocteau Twins , Massive Attack, Portishead and the like featuring boom-bap beats, twinkly harp from LEYA’s Marilu Donovan, guest vocals from Madeline Johnston (Midwife) paired with Reid Bateh’s sing-speaking delivery detailing a story about a man at a diner, who encounters a server that reminds him of someone from his past.
“The story begins when a server at a diner reminds a man of a woman from his past,” Bambara’s Reid Bateh says. “Inspiration for the music came from listening to Cocteau Twins songs reversed and slowed down. It features guest lead vocals from Madeline Johnston (Midwife), backing vocals by Jen Monroe and harp played by Marilu Donovan (LEYA).”