Edge of Arcady

Failstate – Another Ghost

Dipping our little toe into the emo-punk universe feels like an alien endeavour, but when we got our earholes around Failstate’s latest song ‘Another Ghost’ we had no choice but to give it a feature. The initial release from the Newport foursome’s debut EP ‘Sad Truth’ is a perfectly abrasive, visceral rocker. Anthemic, speedy guitars, emphatic vocals and heartbreak clash amongst expertly proficient songwriting, weighty melody and heaps of gritty catharsis.

An essential listen for followers of Funeral For A Friend, Deftones and Reuben, Failstate have already garnered support from the Radio 1 Introducing Rock Show and Kerrang! Radio during their first 6 months of existence and the ‘Sad Truth’ EP looks to catapult them even further after it’s release on 9^th June 2023, featuring caustic scorcher ‘Every Cloud’ and the cautiously reflective ‘Are You Lonely’.

For now, ‘Another Ghost’ was released on 12^th May 2023 and you can find it on all of the streaming services right now. Have a watch of the track’s video below, brilliantly cutting footage of the band along with 1950’s rock’n’roll TV footage:

Fate Of The Sun – BLADE RUNNER BOOGIE

The year is 2023. Having escaped largely unscathed from a worldwide pandemic, western civilisation finds itself again in peril, this time under threat of Satan 2 intercontinental ballistic missile attack from Russia and covert cyber warfare via lustrous social media apps funded by the Chinese government. On ‘BLADE RUNNER BOOGIE’, Fate of the Sun watches perplexed as the nation’s collective wilfully witless response seems to be “another box set, another night, another smoke, I need a light/ we hit the town every Friday night, drink pints till we’re sick and fuck or fight”.

Long-term F.OT.S followers will be aware of this exasperated thread running through his output, ‘BLADE RUNNER BOOGIE’ working as a psyched-up sequel to 2022 anthem ‘BLADE RUNNER 1999’. This iteration boosts apocalyptic soothsaying with fast, fuzzy beats, electronic bone-convulsing bass and eerily insouciant given the gritty subject matter “la-la-la-la”s, providing the masses with the kind of tune they could have a knees up to as their neighbourhoods burn down all about them and they crack open another Stella can. Like an antidote Pied Piper to the ChatGPT hellscape, our vocalist offers up a hopeful “come on, follow me…” but as his words fade out at the track’s end we fear he knows that nothing’s going to get in the way of “Super Sunday, let’s get wasted!”

‘BLADE RUNNER BOOGIE’ was released on 12th May 2023 and is available to stream at all of the usual outlets right now. While you’re here though, you may as well tap below and have a listen on Spotify:

Claud – Every Fucking Time

Chicago singer-songwriter Claud’s first single from their forthcoming second album is a brittle, heartbreaking affair. ‘Every Fucking Time’ sees all of the bedroom-pop playfulness of debut ‘Super Monsters’ stripped away, leaving a slightly more electrified version of their Saddest Factory Records label boss Phoebe Bridger’s ‘Boygenius’ bandmate Julien Baker’s poignant sound.

Tender acoustic guitar, Claud’s exasperated vocals and candid lyrics instil the track with a smidgen of ironic humour and a tonne of punch-in-the-gut sadness, further revealed as the song tells of arguing with a partner about the merits of Regina Spektor and getting let down when they don’t make the effort to arrive at Claud’s gigs before the final song, with the tired and resigned pay-off “but I believe it every fucking time”.

‘Every Fucking Time’ was released on 2nd May 2023. ‘Supermodels’ will be released on 14 July 2023 via Saddest Factory Records and you can pre-order it now. The album track list is below:

1 – Crumbs
2 – Dirt
3 – Every Fucking Time
4 – Wet
5 – Glass Wall
6 – It’s Not About You
7 – Paul Rudd
8 – The Moving On
9 – Climbing Trees
10 – Spare Tire
11 – All Over
12 – Screwdriver

With the single comes the track’s official video, also directed by Claud, that sees the artist team up with comedian pal Grace Kuhlenschmidt and their alter-egos to form their own band – The Every Fucking Time’s. Have a look at the video below:

Vona Vella – Divine

In some ways a radiant sister-song to the record that originally brought Vona Vella to the wider public’s attention – ‘Sun’, the duo have named their new single ‘Divine’ and we’d gladly call it the same. The second single to be taken from their forthcoming self-titled debut LP sees the pair, described in some quarters as Leicestershire’s answer to Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsborough, focus on what they do best, coming up with a blissed-out, heavenly, jazz-style number with gentle vocals, easy strummed guitar and soothing flute.

The pure simplicity of the catchy melody is exposed when the track opens with what sounds like a lo-fi demo of singer Izzy Davies performing the song, bolstering the layered production that begins in the chorus with warm keyboards, calm drums and Davies’s sighing vocals. Aside from the gorgeous divinity of the sound, the song is an interplay between Izzy and partner Dan Cunningham, one trying to install euphoria in the other with the bittersweet couplet “Maybe it’s already too late to let you down, but I don’t feel so safe when you’re not around”, Dan lending his sonorous vocals to bring the record to a close. A divine sentiment behind a pure pop tune.

Vona Vella have announced the release of their debut self-titled LP, due out on 28th July 2023. You can pre-order it in a range of coloured vinyls and limited edition sleeves over at the band’s official store. See the track list below:

1. Divine
2. Thought We Were Falling In Love
3. Ariel
4. Intertwined
5. Kim
6. Telephones
7. Stop Running In The Dark
8. I Would Do Anything You Want Me To
9. Anchor
10. Old Girl
11. What We Could Be
12. Roll Into Forever

The song’s music video takes images of the group on tour – onstage, on the bus and eyeing up between-gig snacks. You can view it below:

Mantis – Magnolia

Cowboy-psychedelia. This is apparently a real genre, and we reckon new Cardiff four-piece Mantis need to lay claim to it, as their astoundingly brilliant debut single ‘Magnolia’ perfectly fuses the unlikely sounds of Western and psych-rock, rendering any other way of explaining it inadequate. We reckon there’s a hint of blues-garage in there too. A heady mix, all told.

Latin guitar flourishes are bolstered with out-there poetic lyrics from the off, with the lines “Silver moonbeams from your eyes, well I found that they only came from the sky” delivered in a husky garage rock bark, but then the magnificent weirdness makes way for a chorus built around traditionally pleasing pop harmony, veering bang off again to some intergalactic cosmos of echoey solos and dreamy rhythms.

Mantis formed in 2022 and have been making severe waves in Cardiff and the Welsh music scene ever. ‘Magnolia’ is their first single and an expertly accomplished one at that. It was released on all streaming platforms on 4th May and you can take a listen on Spotify below:

Florence + The Machine – Mermaids

To top off latest astounding album ‘Dance Fever’, Florence + The Machine have kept an absolute ace up their incredibly billowing sleeves with ‘Mermaids’. What starts as a measured, ponderous chant, peppered with drum strikes that sound like an enormous door being earnestly rapped becomes a whole different beast once the portal is flung open to the sound of grand horn blasts and the London songstress performs an act that only she can: turning a vision of drunk and messy, shoeless, young English girls into glorious poetry.

Conjuring up her own memories of rainy nights out and using alcohol to quell the ache of the perpetual outsider, Florence Welch looks back on a potentially misspent youth “not of regret but of missing that cheerful oblivion”, repeating those final two words as an almighty, religious coda. Never has mid-noughties nightlife been better described than in the line “doing shitty drugs and hugging girls that smelt like Britney Spears and coconuts”, juxtaposed with magically mythical imagery of girls as mermaids crawling out of the sea at Brighton Pier “to break that sailor’s heart” over one of Welch’s most powerful anthems yet.

‘Mermaids’ is out to listen to now on all streaming services. It has also been included in a new and boosted version of Florence + The Machine’s latest LP ‘Dance Fever (Complete Edition)’ along with spoken word versions of tracks ‘King’, ‘My Love’ and ‘Cassandra’. We’ve included the ‘Mermaids’ lyric video for you below to have a listen:

The Gulps – Surrender

Ferocious drumming? Check. Distorted guitars? Check. Breakneck speed and brazen euphoria? Double check. The Gulps have slammed us with another slab of melodious gold on latest single ‘Surrender’, further exploring the surly but vicious indie punk spirit of previous single ‘Mirror Mirror’, letting their disco-led tendencies bubble away in the background for a while. Don’t get us wrong, this is still alternative music you can pull mad shapes to, but the rock’n’roll heart beats devilishly strong on this one.

A vocoded up Javier Solas growls his most poetic lines yet, “What if love no longer hurts me/ and my feelings spin out of control/ I found a place I was weightless/ eternity will always flow”, to plot the track’s core directive – to “Surrender – I want to be forever young”, every verse and chorus jabbed with spiky, ecstatic guitar blasts, leaving the listener with no choice but to give in, whether they want to or not – and join in The Gulps’ exuberant experience of never-ending youth and a party that never needs to stop.

‘Surrender’ is produced by Tim Wheeler, the legendary frontman of The Gulps’ tour pals and all-round geniuses Ash, and is available to listen to on all streaming platforms now. Take a listen on the Spotify link below:

Evan Williams – The Arsonist

Ladies and gents, we have a new hard-hitting, guitar-wielding minstrel on our hands in the shape of Thanet’s Evan Williams. Only three singles into his career, the singer-songwriter has already shown us a couple wildly differing styles, with latest single ‘The Arsonist’ being his most obvious big tune yet, an incendiary indie rock cyclone in the Jamie T or Alex Turner fashion, Williams’ booming vocals complimenting perfectly constructed jangly guitar work.

The song takes numb feeling to it’s conclusion, hits itself over the head with regretful nostalgia, decries (all too relatable) writer’s block, goes on an ‘anything to feel something’ rampage – “I’m gonna grow myself a mullet so that I fit in in this city, then I’ll throw away my cigarettes, elf bars are so pretty, find the richest guy in freshers week, pay for all his coke, I’ll pretend that I like smoking weed and choke with every toke”, before choosing just to burn their bedroom down.

‘The Arsonist’ was released through Strap Originals on 26th April 2023, is available on all streaming platforms and comes with a great video that sees the sharply dressed performer witness the clip’s female lead succumb to the song’s anxiety and go about smashing the place up and literally lighting her room in flames. You can see the vid for yourself below:

Telgate – Gammon

Like a prowling, mighty, queer-rock beast of prey, Cardiff’s Telgate are out stalking their domain which is this whole entire brexit broken British island of ours, summoning the brutal, raw power of glam rock and heavy riffage rage to bring about some healing. Quivering little ‘Gammon’ snowflakes beware – these LGBT rock stars are hungry for vengeance and thirsty for blood!

A surging call to arms theme song for a revolution, vocalist Casper James delivers a bold incantation of empowerment and victory over their eager, psychedelic tribe of rainbow coloured antifascists over scorching fuzz guitars and persistent drums. If Led Zeppelin had been a riot grrrrl band they would likely only have been able to come up with something half as great as this.

Telgate’s latest single ‘Gammon’ was released on 1st April 2023 and is available on all of the streaming sites to listen to right now. Hear it on Spotify below:

Jen Dixon – Over You

You know those absolutely massive choruses that make the hair on your neck stand on end, like when Coldplay get all rousing and you break out in goosebumps whether you like them or not? Well Jen Dixon’s new single, ‘Over You’, has a monumental chorus like that. But unlike Coldplay, we’re quite certain we like Jen and are very ok with this goosebump attack.

‘Over You’ sees the North East England singer-songwriter deep in ponderance over the end of a relationship during hushed melodious verses before evidently finding a sure sense of a new beginning and hope when the towering chorus chimes in, kindly sharing that hopeful spark with her listeners too. During the bridge, Dixon imparts some unreserved emotion in a short spoken word rap before bringing us back that uplifting guitar and drum chorus one final time.

‘Over You’ was the first single to be released from Jen Dixon’s forthcoming debut EP ‘Less Than A Feeling’ – available to pre-order over on Jen’s website – and came out on all streaming platforms – 7th April 2023. You can have a listen to the track yourself over on Spotify now: