Tag: indie rock

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Bliss Abyss Shares Anthemic “star”

Singer/songwriter and musician Peter Wallner has been a fixture of the Bay Area and West Coast music scenes for the past couple of decades: He has spent stints in a number of local and nationally recognized acts, including industrial shoegaze duo Astronomers Anonymous, and anthemic synth punk trio Whisper. While playing in Some Ember, he pioneered a drop-tuned “Lodge Goth” guitar style inspired by Angelo Badalamenti. And under his stage name Peter Lightning, he played in post punk outfit and JOVM mainstay act Wax Idols.

Wallner later joined Heaven’s Club as a keyboardist, which eventually led to him playing guitar with Deafhaven during their extensive 2022 European, UK and Scandinavian tour. Across more than a dozen projects, Wallner has refined a sound that blends atmosphere with urgency and melancholy with melody.

His latest project, Bliss Abyss can trace its origins back to the pandemic. Initially started as a synth pop experiment, the project evolved into its current iteration featuring Wallner (vocals, guitar), Kevin None (bass) and Josh Unger (drums). The project crystallized when Wallner met producer and bassist Joe Finocchio while performing in hardcore punk supergroup Culture Spy. After hearing demos, Finocchio quickly committed to producing an album.

Bliss Abyss’ sound sees the band meshing shoegaeze haze with post punk urgency. The result is sometimes dark and angular, sometimes bright and jangly and always driven by Wallner’s melodic instincts. The project’s forthcoming Joe Finocchio-produced debut album is collection of songs with a unique sonic identity that’s tied together by Wallner’s songwriting voice with each song designed to simultaneously stand on its own, while being park of a larger whole. Wallner’s lyrics are dreamlike confessions where heartbreak and desire unravel in a way that’s intimate yet surreal.

The trio’s debut single “star” is an upbeat, 120 Minutes-era MTV-like anthem that showcases their part jangle pop, part shoegaze sound and their ability to craft a big, catchy hook and chorus. And at its core, the song is rooted in a much-needed bit of hope in our very dark, chaotic moment that reminds the listener that sometimes you just need to manifest your dreams — and then get out there and grab it.

“The song started as a kind of spell, a vision of manifesting a life worth living. It’s meant to spark hope in anyone who’s lost,” the band’s Peter Wallner says. “Picture the life you want, the person you actually are, and don’t let anyone’s bullshit block your light. You’re a star, perfect as you are, made from stardust, burning through the same abyss as everyone else.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: S.C.A.B. Shares Yearning and Nostalgic “LOVE”

Ridgewood, Queens-based indie band and JOVM mainstays S.C.A.B — currently Sean Carmago (vocals, guitar), Cory Best (guitar, backing vocals), Alec Alabado (bass, backing vocals), Evan Eubanks (drums, percussion), Jordan Rich (synth, piano, production) and Sean Brennan (cello) — will be releasing their third album, Somebody In New York Loves You! through Grind Select on November 21, 2025.

The soon-to-be released third album reportedly sees the Ridgewood-based band simultaneously turning inward and stretching wide with the album’s material leaning into vulnerability without retreating into abstraction, drawing from Carmago’s psychedelic-fueled realizations, intimate journal entries and moments of raw emotional rupture.

Much of the album’s material was written in a creative sure following a psychic reading that left Carmago feeling oddly affirmed and fantastical. And as a result, a sense of magical realism and sepia-tinged nostalgia is at the core of the album. At times, the band sounds like huge, like an arena rock band and others, eerily close, like a voice memo you weren’t meant to hear.

With Somebody In New York Loves You!, the Ridgewood-based outfit makes space for contradictions: songs that are personal but big, naive but knowing, imaginative but grounded. After a stretch of false starts, rain-soaked gigs and artistic doubt, the band emerges sounding both clear-headed and ready — while reminding the listener that yes, somebody here in this town does love you.

“LOVE,” Somebody In New York Loves You!‘s third and latest single is a mid-tempo 120 Minutes-era MTV-like sigh of gratitude anchored around shimmering guitars, Carmago’s expressive delivery and the band’s unerring knack for big, shout along worthy hooks and choruses. It’s arguably one of the more direct songs of the soon-to-be released album and of the band’s growing catalog, expressing gratitude for the complicated and odd place New York is, to family — whether biological or chosen, to being unafraid of finding a way to pick yourself up and start over.

“This song is a reminder to myself to get clearer on what I would like to see,” S.C.A.B.’s Sean Carmago says. “The roles we play. The illusion of truth. I had a tiny blue bird when I was young. You had a love, it hurt, now it’s done. Blood is your teacher now. Let go of duality.”

Directed by Sampson Dahl, the accompanying video was shot in his laundromat space on beta film and evokes a warm, nostalgia for Pee Wee’s Playhouse and Gumby with the video being fantastical yet grounded in mundanity and handmade in a way in which you can see the stitching, seams and glue, but done so with a playful, knowing charm.

The Ridgewood-based band will be playing a record release show at 94 Bogart next week.  

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Venice’s Glazyhaze Shares Breakneck “ROMEO”

Venice-based indie outfit Glazyhaze — Irene (vocal, guitar), Lorenzo (guitar), Francesco (drums, programming) and Vsevolod (bass, backing vocals) — quickly established a sound that draws from shoegaze, dream pop and alternative rock with the release of their full-length debut, 2023’s Just Fade Away.

Since the release of Just Fade Away, the band has toured across Europe and the UK, opening for the likes of Trentemøller, Hater, Film School and a lengthy list of others. Building up on a growing profile across Europe and the UK, the band released their Paolo Canaglia-produced sophomore album SONIC earlier this year.

Recorded between Northeast Italy and London, the Italian band’s sophomore album thematically explores the complexities of love through a journey of self-discovery and emotional contrasts. Sonically, the album sees the quartet embracing shoegaze, bedroom pop, post-punk and art rock influences. The band supported the album opening for Soft Cult on their European tour as well as a handful of dates with The Raveonettes, Slow Crush, Lucy Kruger and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. And adding to a growing profile, the band has received airplay on KEXP, Rai Radio 2, FM4 and BBC Radio 6’s Steve Lamacq.

Clocking in at a 2:31, SONIC’s latest single, “ROMEO” is a breakneck gallop of a tune anchored around swirling, reverb and distortion-drenched guitar textures, a propulsive rhythm section that seemingly channels 120 Minutes-era MTV-era alt rock. Much like the period that the song and the band channels, “ROMEO” is underpinned by subtle yet noticeable tension between anger, sweetness and nostalgia.

The new single captures the powerlessness that often comes with loving someone who can’t love themselves — and are unwilling and/or incapable of change. As the band explains, “ROMEO” is a song for those who hide behind stubborn pride, who would be more willing to destroy everything rather than show vulnerability; for those who seemingly live with the appearance of control but burn inside and won’t readily admit it. They add that the song is most importantly, a farewell to the illusion — or delusion — that you can save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: cruush Shares “120 Minutes”-Era MTV-like “Rupert Giles”

Manchester-based indie outfit cruush — Amber Warren (vocals, guitar), Arthur Boyd (guitar), Fotis Kalantzis (drums) and Bruno Evans (bass) — quickly emerged into the national and international scenes with their first three EPs, 2023’s Wishful Thinker and last year’s Ladybird Song and Nice Things Now, All The Time, which saw them quickly establishing a sound that was both forceful and tender, and sincere to the point of snot-crying with layers of indie rock fuzz. Their music has been forged in the drudgery of soul-sucking service jobs, rainy Manchester days and nights.

So far, the British quartet have received coverage from The Independent, NYLON, NME, BrooklynVegan, Dork, DIY Magazine, So Young, The Line of Best Fit, Clash Magazine, Rough Trade and Consequence, as well as airplay from BBC Radio 1′s Jack Saunders, BBC 6 Music‘s Steve Lamacq and Emily Pilbeam, and Radio X’s John Kennedy. And adding to a growing profile nationally, the quartet has shared stages with BDRMM, Pale Blue Eyes, NewDad, GIFT, BASHT and Girl Scout.

In a short period of time, the band’s sound has gone through a shift that has ushered a new era of tightly wound grunge pop rippers. And to further flesh out their evolving sound and approach, they enlisted Norfolk, UK-based Sickroom Studios producer Owen Turner.

Their latest single “Rupert Giles” may arguably be the most 120 Minutes-era MTV alt rock-like song of their growing catalog, as well as one of the more purposely direct. Featuring a classic grunge song structure — alternating quieter verses and rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses paired with layers of guitar fuzz and thunderous drumming, the song’s arrangement serves as lush and dreamy bed for Warren’s plaintive and gorgeous vocal. Yes, for those of you, who are like me, inching towards old, the song will bring about memories of some of the stuff you were listening to back in 1994 — but while being remarkably modern.

“On a writing retreat to Wales we took a sunrise hike up Penygader. We listened to nothing but Neil Young, Brownhorse, and the Van Halen song ‘Panama,’” the band recalls. “We were sitting by this lake at 6am, with the sun rising, listening to it and all felt well. We knew we had a great song written, we were all sleep deprived and sweaty, the stars were aligning.”

Directed by Zack Arlo, the moody and impressionistic visual for “Rupert Giles” manages to further emphasize the 90s MTV-era vibe of the song.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 54th Birthday, Jonny Greenwood!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Radiohead’s and The Smile’s Jonny Greenwood’s 54th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: London’s deathcrash Shares Heartbroken Yet Anthemic “Triumph”

London-based slowcore/post rock outfit deathcrash — Tiernan Banks (vocals, guitar), Matthew Weinberger (guitar), Patrick Fitzgerald (bass) and Noah Bennett (drums) — have come to prominence as part of a busy and very talented South London scene that includes Black Country, New Road; Jerskin Fendrix, Sorry and Black Midi, while setting themselves apart with a distinctly mysterious energy.

The London-based quartet’s full-length debut, 2022’s 65 minute-long Return was released to praise from Loud and Quiet, who wrote that the album was “an embarrassment of musical riches that is only matched by the depth of evocations that haunt the record.” Building upon a growing profile, 6 months after the release of their debut, the quartet went to the Outer Hebrides to record their sophomore album, 2023’s Less, which was a focused and lean progression of their sound to further critical applause.

Less was followed by a collection of remixes including collaborations with Water From Your Eyes and Mandy, Indiana.

deathcrash’s latest single “Triumph” is the rising British outfit’s first bit of new material in over two years. “Triumph” is a slow-burning, brooding tune featuring the sort of enormous, fuzzy power chords and rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses that seemingly channel 90s grunge paired with an achingly heartbroken vocal delivery and thunderous drumming. At its core is a sense of the regret, loss and uneasy acceptance of adulthood.

“This song is about fighting the urge to drive into oncoming traffic” the band comment. “It marks Patrick’s return to songwriting. It shows that growing up is no ‘triumph’, but an occasionally graceful and occasionally bitter acceptance of who you are now.”

Directed and shot by Patrick Fitzgerald and St.Teilo, the accompanying video for “Triumph” captures a sense of youth being fleeting, of knowing that things can and often will be painful and difficult — and yet there are small moments of being at shows, fucking around with pals, of just being somewhat carefree are the pleasures we need to cherish. This is interspersed with late night scenes of driving.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Frais Dispo Returns with Strutting Yet Meditative “Habitat”

Montréal-based indie rock outfit Frais Dispo — Élie Raymond (guitar, vocals), Antoine Lévesque-Roy (bass), Thomas Bruneau Faubert (trombone, synths), Charles Primeau (guitar) and Antoine Gallois (drums) — is simultaneously a rebrand and a markedly radical direction for its members, who first gained attention across both Quebec and Canada as Foreign Diplomats. As Frais Dispo, the Montréal-based outfit have adopted a much more collaborative songwriting approach with lyrics written and sung completely in French.

2023’s Teinte, the newly rebranded band’s full-length debut and last year’s Les teints du ciel n’ont aucun sens EP found Frais Dispo quickly and firmly establishing a markedly new sonic direction with their sound drawing much more alt-country, folk and indie rock.

Building upon the attention that Teinte and Les tients du ciel n’int aucun sens EP received in the Francophone world, the Montréal-based outfit’s highly-anticipated sophomore album is slated for a 2026 release through Audiogram. The album will feature, the gorgeous, psych country-meets-Laurel Canyon-like “Dire je t’aime au téléphone,” “Mes amis m’haïssent,” and the album’s third and latest single “Habitat.”

Frais Dispo’s forthcoming sophomore album sees the band adopting a more laid-back, spontaneous songwriting approach throughout the entire creative process. The album’s tracks were recorded live to make the songs live and breathe — and to help create a much more organic sound. As “Dire je t’aime au téléphone” ends, you hear a bit of murmured voices, laughter, and a brief sigh and a phone ringing, which gives the listener a sense of being in the studio with the band — and a real warm, imperfect, human element. By working this way, the band wanted to focus more on the emotions at the core of the material rather than the technique, all while capturing the buzzy euphoria of the first studio recordings. 

“Habitat,” which features a sample of a Polish song, ambient sounds and vocals is arguably the most groovy, most exploratory and most jam-like song that the band has released from the album to date. Anchored around a strutting groove, a looping guitar figure and a four-on-the-four-like drum pattern, before ending in a cacophony of chiming guitars and feedback, “Habitat” features the band’s Élie Raymond singing lyrics that thematically touch on the idea of settling down and settling in, of the need for security, a desire for mundanity and repetition — while making references to Micheal DeForge’s graphic novel Birds of Maine.

The song came about spontaneously at the end of their sophomore album’s writing process, when the band believed that they had completed the album. They worked from a guitar riff that Charles Primeau created with Raymond, Gallois, Lévesque-Roy and Bruneau Faubert improvising around those initial chords, managing to layer parts over one another. “We’ve been playing together for a long time, we always manage to find a symbiosis,” explains Élie Raymond.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Animal Scream Shares Broodingly Eerie “I’m A Spirit”

2023’s Heartbroke Motel saw the Pittsburgh-based duo Animal Scream —  Chad Monticue and Josh Sickels — pushing their noir-ish, cinematic sound in new directions while drawing from eclectic influences like  David Lynch, MF DOOM and 60s reggae.

The duo’s latest single “I Am A Spirit” is a brooding and eerie tune, anchored around Voodoo-like percussion, bursts of twinkling keys and atmospheric textures. While being perfect for spooky season, “I Am A Spirit” may arguably be the most cinematic song the Pittsburgh-based duo has written or released to date.

“‘I’m A Spirit’ is about a confused entity suddenly realizing it doesn’t belong in this world and attempts its escape to another place, but fears it may be trapped in between if it doesn’t make it in time,” the band’s Chad Monticue says.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstay Genesis Owusu Returns with Punchy “DEATH CULT ZOMBIE”

Acclaimed, multi-ARIA Award-winning Ghanian-born, Canberra-based JOVM mainstay Genesis Owusu‘s sophomore album 2023’s STRUGGLER was an exploration of the chaos and absurdity of life, our ability to endure and how to get through it all.

The album’s material was deeply inspired by a close friend hitting the brink and coming through the other side, and questions of life and beauty that he found himself contemplating during readings of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis. 

Recorded between the States and Australia, STRUGGLER‘s producers traversed several different musical genres — and includes Jason Evigan, who has worked with RUFUS DU SOL and SZA; Mikey Freedom Hart, who worked on Jon Batiste’s 2021 Grammy of the Year Album, We Are; Sol Was, who worked on Beyoncé’s Renaissance; and Owusu’s long-time collaborators and producers Andrew Klippel and Dave Hammer.

Earlier this year, the acclaimed JOVM mainstay released “PIRATE RADIO,” the first bit of material since the release of his sophomore album, which I hope means a new album is on the horizon. But in the meantime, Owusu shares the fittingly Halloween-themed “DEATH CULT ZOMBIE.” Anchored around a punchy, hook-driven punk rock-meets-Brit pop arrangement, the acclaimed Aussie’s punchy in-your-face vocal delivers observations on the deeply entrenched thought indoctrination, divisive global conversations and absurd circular logic of our mad, mad, mad world — with song scathingly mocking Christian Nationalists, Donald Trump and his MAGA death cult. The song points out that we’re in a figurative zombie apocalypse, and the lemmings are blindly jumping off the cliff . . .

“For most people, the shaking up of what they consider to be true is too scary and inconvenient. Once you’ve picked your truth, you live by it staunchly despite whatever pesky ‘facts’ and ‘logic’ get in the way,” Genesis Owusu explains. “Pride won’t let you be wrong, fear won’t let you be free, dogma won’t let you be aware. The delusion is more comfortable. But the longer you sit in that delusion, the faster the zombification spreads through your body like a plague; like a scourge. Gotta be brave enough to break from the cult.”

Directed by Issac Brown, the accompanying video for “DEATH CULT ZOMBIE” follows the acclaimed JOVM mainstay desperately trying to escape a collection of Thriller-meets-Internet troll-like zombies — with a fitting spooky season twist.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Denmark’s Catcase Shares Brooding “Technicolored Eyes”

Initially, founded by Danish singer/songwriter and guitarist Lasse B. Beck, who also split time in Syringe and The Love Coffin, as a bedroom project that’s the culmination of years of tormented sensitivity, frustration and self-reflection, Catcase expanded to a full band last year with the addition of Beck’s brother Niclas Berg Christiansen, a member of Shiver Less and The Road to Suicide; Deadpan‘s and Sanderson & the Charabancs‘ Max Cosiner; Chopper‘s Josephine Alicia; Jane’s and Chopper’s Jason Lee Cameron; and Leizure’s, Tugboat‘s and Sanderson & the Charabancs’ Mathias Gørtz, who were enlisted to flesh out Beck’s artistic vision.

Sonically, the band draws from an eclectic array of influences: Australasian post-punk, sophistipop, jangle pop and dream pop with nods to Spiritualized, The Go-Betweens, Rowland S. Howard, Xiu Xiu, Prefab Sprout and My Bloody Valentine. And yet, the Danish sextet claims kinship with contemporaries like Strange Ranger, Bleary Eyed and Nyxy Nyx among others.

Slated for a February 20, 2026 release through Pink Cotton Candy Records, the band’s Kristian Alexander-produced full-length debut, As It Reels was recorded earlier this year at Copenhagen‘s Royal Danish Academy of Music. As It Reels‘ first single “Technicolored Eyes” is an eerie and brooding bit of art rock that channels Priest = Aura-era The Church with subtle dream pop and grunge-inspired flourishes that showcases the band’s ability to craft a rousingly anthemic hook and chorus, while being anchored earnest, lived-in songwriting.

Lyrically, the song evokes a liminal state familiar to my fellow night owls out there: The often lonely trip home after a night out of hijinks and adventures as the sun rises. And if you’re as familiar with it as I am, that trip home is throbbing mass of impressions, informed by nostalgia, loneliness, drunkenness.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Hallucinophonics Shares Brooding and Cinematic “Haze of Time”

British indie outfit Hallucinophonics exists as the crossroads of consciousness and sound, creating immersive, psychedelic soundscapes that defy and blend the boundaries between reality and dreams. Drawing inspiration from Pink Floyd, Tame Impala and others, they attempt to create music that’s both an artistic statement and a transformative experience.

Ranging from space rock anthems to introspective, nocturnal transmissions, the British indie outfit weaves ethereal textures, progressive song structures and hypnotic rhythms while their material explores themes of evolving consciousness and existential discovery.

Their latest single “Haze of Time” may arguably be the most New Wave and goth-like tune of their growing catalog. Channeling Heaven Up Here-era Echo and The Bunnymen and The Cure, “Haze of Time” features angular, driving bass lines, jangling and swirling guitars serving as a broodingly eerie and cinematic bed for yearning, achingly plaintive vocal. The song seemingly evokes the feel and vibe of spooky season with an uncanny specificity.

The accompanying video follows a denim-clad young woman expressively dancing in a graffiti alley — but as the video progresses, it suggests that the line between sanity and insanity is very thin.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: The Orielles Share Expansive “Three Halves”

Acclaimed, Manchester, UK-based JOVM mainstays The Orielles — Esmé Dee Hand-Halford (bass, vocals), Sidonie Dee Hand-Halford (drums, vocals) and Henry Carlyle Wade (guitar, vocals) — will be releasing their fourth album, the Joel Anthony Patchett-produced Only You Left through Heavenly Recordings on March 13, 2026.

Recorded last summer in two locations — the Greek Island of Hydra and Hamburg — the forthcoming, 11-song Only You Left reportedly sees the band consolidating the bold experimentation of 2022’s Tableau with the more stripped-back, song-driven approach of their earlier releases, channeling a return to the familiar. “There’s nothing more trad than a three-piece,” quips Henry, in reference to the band’s decision to return to their roots as a trio.

Now, as you may remember, the JOVM mainstays, which originally started out in Halifax gained attention both nationally and internationally with the release of their full-length debut, 2018’s Silver Dollar Moment, which will celebrate its eighth birthday this upcoming February. “These things come in like seven year cycles. So we’ve come in like a full circle back to a familiar place, just as different people,” the band says.

As for the foundations of the forthcoming album, the band’s Henry Carlyle Wade says “You’ve got to die and be reborn between albums.” “It comes naturally, the band’s Esmé Hand-Halford adds, “it’s not something we consciously do.” Interestingly through this process of creative renewal, the JOVM mainstays have managed to weather a pandemic, the fickleness of a trend-driven music industry and somehow emerge with something that’s familiar yet completely different.

According to Wade, the first ideas for the new album can be traced back to May 2023: Esmé Hand-Halford had purchased a freeze pedal, which allowed her to play around with sustained notes on her guitar. These heavy drones would later form the background of album tracks “Wasp” and “Three Halves.” 

In breaks between tours, the bands began to meet up and record their practice room sessions, later analyzing the voice notes with a granular attention to detail. “We recorded everything on our phones, every snippet,” explains Henry. “We went so deep into what each song needed or what we wanted to hear from it.”

While the Tableau sessions were semi-improvisational and partially written in the recording studio, Only You Left was fleshed out through a series of intense writing sessions between May 2023 and last summer. Each of the album’s 11 songs were meticulously refined and became its own distinctive work. “It almost felt really novel for us to be writing as a three-piece and really, really crafting these songs,” the band’s Esmé Hand-Halford recalls. “But Tableau gave us that confidence to know we could go into a studio and pull things together in that setting under the time pressure.”

Producer and engineer Joel Anthony Patchett, whom Esmé Hand-Halford dubs the honorary fourth member of the band, has had a massive influence on the album’s sound and approach. “Joel brings an extra level of interpretation and deep listening,” Henry Carlyle Wade says, “and it’s always exciting to explore that.” Sidonie Hand-Halford adds, “He’s constantly talking us through every step of what he’s doing and getting really, really involved with that process as well. And we’re just kind of learning together and making these mistakes and discovering things together.”

Only You Left‘s first single “Three Halves” derives its title when Wade stitched together three recordings on Ableton and needed a working title. What began as a temporary placeholder soon became a theme for Esmé Hand-Halford to riff on, a metaphor for the trio and their deeply shared connection.

At points noisy and driving and dreamlike and mediative in others, “Three Halves” is an expansive study in contrasts that’s experimental yet accessible while anchored by the razor sharp hooks that the Manchester-based outfit had been known for.

“Citing ideas that we took interest in during the early stages of writing the new record, ‘Three Halves’ flips between its absurd contrasts as the name suggests,” the band says. “Built upon a soundscape of droning organs, guitar, and cello it floats between noise and emptiness, precision, and catharsis, welcoming each half leads into the next.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Ulrika Spacek Shares Eerily Atmospheric “Build a box Then Break It”

Formed back in 2014, London-based art rock outfit Ulrika Spacek — founding members Rhys Edwards (vocals, guitar) and Rhys Williams (guitar) , alongside Joseph Stone (guitar, keys), Callum Brown (drums), Syd Kemp (bass) — can trace their origins back to a night the band’s founding duo spent in Berlin, where the pair conceptualized the project around their mutually held passions and influences — in particular, Television, Pavement, Sonic Youth and krautrock.

Upon the duo’s return to the UK, they began working on the material that would eventually comprise their full-length debut, 2016’s The Album Paranoia, which featured album tracks “She’s A Cult,” and “Strawberry Glue.”

Since then, the project which started out as a duo, expanded to quintet with the addition of Stone, Callum, Brown and Kemp – and then released 2017’s critically applauded sophomore album, Modern English Decoration, an album that saw the band pushing their sound into a more textured territory. Their third and latest album, last year’s Compact Trauma channeled the anxiety and dislocation of the modernize age through a prismatic haze of guitars, loops and elliptical lyrics.

The British art rock outfit’s highly-anticipated fourth album EXPO is slated for a February 6, 2026 release through Full Time Hobby. Unlike its predecessors, which looked within EXPO reportedly holds a mirror up to the world and captures a warped reflection. The material was deeply informed by the band’s most recent American tour and was written while the band’s Rhys Edwards was awaiting the birth of his daughter, and started to wonder what kind of future world she’d inherit.

Although their foundations have long been in art rock, they’ve been increasingly drawing from electronic elements. But as a band, they’re interested in the glitchy space that exists between the two. And as a result, their most recent work reckons with human warmth and digital isolation, while being welcoming and alienating, exploring the uneasy tension of modern life as we know it. “Our music has always been a collage – a bit patchwork, sonically – but what makes this album a landmark for us is that we went one step further and made our own sound bank and essentially sampled ourselves,” the band says.

The band creates their own doppelgängers in a world of almost-real, where the band appears as if they’re in a funhouse hall of mirrors. Digital drums are sampled and layered over real drums and the like, creating an eerie, spectral vibe. Sonically, album’s material grapples with the organic and the digital while dancing across musical languages.

EXPO‘s first single “Build a Box Then Break It” serves a de-facto album mission statement that sees the band actively pushing their sound into a new, liminal space. Seemingly channeling Geoff Barrow‘s work with Portishead and Beak>, Radiohead‘s Amnesiac and The Orielles‘ The Goyt Method EP, “Build a Box Then Break It,” features sampled upon sampled breakbeats, eerily atmospheric synths and squiggling guitars serving as a broodingly uneasy bed for Rhys Edwards’ plaintive and uncannily Thom Yorke-like delivery. The new single evokes our fractured experience of reality, reflected not through our eyes but through various screens.

The accompanying video was edited by Low Limit Vision and features live footage shot by Pedro Soler interspersed with title cards, math equations and other ephemeral imagery.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Talking Violet Shares Cathartic “Destroy”

https://youtu.be/5Jt6dWTGDno?si=ktqvo-4Q0wYmC4Ll

Windsor, ON-based quartet Talking Violet — Jillian Goyeau (vocals, guitar), Jayden Turnbull (guitar, vocals), Jeremie Brosseau (drums) and Dylan Iannicello (bass) — have quickly developed and established a sound that sees the Canadian outfit seamlessly blending elements of shoegaze, grunge and dream pop into what they’ve dubbed “dreamo.” Thematically, their work touches upon how we wrestle with the grief of personal change — especially in personal experiences. 

Earlier this year, I wrote about their Justin Meli-produced, Will Yip-mastered “In Your Mind,” a track that seemed to channel The Sundays and Tallies while capturing a very specific sense of loving someone through pain and uncertainty and not quite knowing what to do – or if there was anything you could do.

Their latest sgbnle “Destroy” continues a run of material that channels 120 Minutes-era MTV alt-rock while being anchored in earnestness and deeply lived in personal experience. Unlike its immediate predecessor, “Destroy” thematically and lyrically turns inward, offering a subtly uneasy sense of closure and acceptance. Although that relationship or chapter in your life has ended, their ghost lingers in your life — some longer than others.

“Destroy is about closing a chapter in my life where I experienced a lot of change which I talked a lot about throughout our Everything At Once record,” the band’s Jillian Goyeau says. “Before moving on I kinda needed to say goodbye, so that’s what Destroy does. It’s me finally accepting that people can both love you and hurt you at the same time and vice versa. You can love someone even when they aren’t meant to be in your life anymore.”

The Canadian band’s latest single continues the emotional thread of their latest album Everything At Once, drawing from the grief and heartache of interpersonal change. ” “These tracks draw on a lot of grief of change, most specifically, the grief of relationship changes in our lives,” Goyeau explains. “I was going through changes that I now see as necessary but were incredibly painful at the time. It made me realize how much I had depended on my relationships with others for my identity. I had to slowly relearn who I was—and spent the next few years healing my people-pleasing baseline. It’s still something I work on every day.”

Directed by Gavin Michael Booth the gorgeously shot video for “Destroy” features the members of the band smashing things to pieces — in a way that’s rousingly cathartic.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: London’s Oliver Beardmore Teams Up with Brooklyn’s Punchlove on a Yearning “120 Minutes”-era MTV-like Single

Rising London-based singer/songwriter Oliver Beardmore has built up a reputation as a highly sought-after opener, playing alongside Gia Ford, Junodream, Late Night Drive Home and Steven Mason. The London-based artist has also played a number of sold-out headlining sets across the UK. And adding to a growing profile, Beardmore has received airplay from BBC Radio 1 and BBC Introducing.

The rising British artist’s latest single, the Beardmore and Xav Sinden co-produced “Ammonite” is a 120 Minutes-era MTV-like, wistful slow-burn, anchored around Beardmore’s yearning falsetto that slowly builds up into a stormy and textured climax played by Brooklyn-based shoegazers Punchlove. Sonically channeling The Bends-era Radiohead, “Ammonite,” manages to convey an uneasy push and pull of self-flagellation and blame in a dysfunctional relationship between two equally dysfunctional, hurt people.

“The song is about being drawn to people who share the same insecurities or flaws. We project our issues onto each other, but that weight often causes hurt that no one else is really to blame for,” Beardmore says. “There’s freedom in no longer searching for your flaws in someone else, and relief in calling off that search. In the end, you can hurt yourself more than anyone else ever could – but there’s something almost hedonistic in giving yourself away to someone who’ll let you.”