Growing up rarely feels like a clean ascent. More often, it resembles falling into something before understanding its depth, trying to remain agreeable while the ground quietly shifts beneath you. And on his new release ‘Diving’, Northern Virginia artist Aidan Leclaire turns that instability into a seven-track album that begins withContinue Reading
Cale Anderson’s Y’emaya (We All Come from the Goddess)’ is an unusual record, but its eccentricity is supported by a clear sense of purpose. Across twelve tracks, the Victoria-based songwriter and producer brings together spiritual reflection, romantic language and electronic experimentation in a form that feels highly personal, even when its ideasContinue Reading
Country music has always been closely tied to place. Its strongest records tend to emerge from landscapes the songwriter understands instinctively, where weather, work and community shape not only the imagery but also the emotional character of the songs. While on ‘Northern State of Mind’, Rob Bellamy & The Rebel Hearts draw thatContinue Reading
For Brennan Gilmore, the phrase “My Name Is Daniel Leek” first appeared in 2009, written on the wall of a refugee shelter in Jonglei, South Sudan. Its author was unknown. The life behind it remained inaccessible. Yet the fragment endured, carrying the weight of someone’s need to be remembered, recognised or simplyContinue Reading
What survives a relationship after the relationship itself has ended? What remains of a city once you have moved away? And how accurately can anyone describe a childhood when that childhood has been filtered through decades of later experience? These are the questions that seem to hover over ‘Rovine’, the newContinue Reading
Adrielle Bow Belle’s ‘Freeze’ is an album built around difficult questions rather than definitive statements. Across seven connected pieces, the New York artist considers how fear affects memory, language and behaviour, moving between personal experience and wider social concerns without attempting to resolve the tensions she uncovers. The decision to arrange theContinue Reading
Mortal Prophets have rarely remained within one style for long. After the more atmospheric direction of their recent material, John Beckmann shifts course again on ‘Ain’t No Fool’, a compact collection drawing from post-punk, garage-rock, psychedelia and downtown art-rock. The album contains fifteen songs, none extending beyond three minutes. This brevity becomesContinue Reading
After twelve albums, Stephen Jacques has developed a clear understanding of the landscapes that suit his writing. His songs tend to work best in places where movement, memory and uncertainty meet, and on ‘Les Surfeurs de Santa Cruz’, the Charlottesville songwriter turns towards California’s coastline for a collection shaped by openContinue Reading
On their third album ‘Trash Island’, Montreal’s The Plastic Waste Band imagine humanity confined to a floating mass of plastic after the rest of the planet has become uninhabitable. It’s a deliberately exaggerated premise, but one that gives the group a useful framework through which to examine ecological anxiety, collectiveContinue Reading
There is a point in every electronic artist’s evolution where sound stops feeling like something assembled and starts feeling like something lived. And on his debut album ‘Holdin’ On’, Arky Waters reaches that point with striking confidence, delivering a record that feels inseparable from crowded rooms, restless nights and the communal electricity ofContinue Reading