Existentialism and the post-punk genre go hand in hand. What better way to express the emptiness and therefore fullness of existence than through visceral and abrasive musical soundscapes and thought provoking lyrics free from the usual critical boundaries of other media? Taking full advantage, Grave Goods have grasped the medium of post-punk by it’s wilful wrists and on new single ‘Source’ have used it to explore the depths of Jean Paul Sartre’s philosophy, depths they’re due to dive further into on forthcoming debut LP ‘Tuesday. Nothing Exists’.
For now then, ‘Source’ sees the band who feature members of PINS, Girls Names and September Girls consider, with robotic, austere vocals, the flow of nature, following it back to the point of genesis that it came from, an expedition underpinned with piercingly angular guitars and shuddering bass, before shrugging leaps and bounds of mental gymnastics off with a casually simple “I don’t care”.
Cardiff five piece Himalayashave managed to pick up massive momentum over the past few years with a string of gut-punchingly brooding rock numbers culminating in 2020’s delicious ‘We Love To Hate’. Latest single ‘Alone’ sees the lads firing on all cylinders yet again, as it’s a gloriously sleazy sounding leviathan of a tune right from the opening machine gun blast of riffage.
The guitars are as hard as the guitars on a Himalayas track have ever been (which is incredibly fucking hard) with several gleefully satisfying solos and singer Mike Griffiths commits some nightmarishly creepy lyrics over ear-drum destroying musical craftsmanship. If you want your rock’n’roll to scare you a bit whilst making your ears bleed beads of pure ecstatic joy, ‘Alone’ is the track you want to put on right now.
‘Alone’ was released on 29th July 2022. The video sees the band playing for their lives in front of a hoard of grabbing shadows, visuals as ominously foreboding as the song itself. You can take a look for yourself below:
The title may sound apathetic as fuck but actually Baby Queen is being punk as hell with new single ‘Nobody Really Cares’ aloofly smashing through walls and walls of self-consciousness and fear of looking silly to say nobody’s really paying attention to what you’re doing anyway so you may as well do whatever the hell you like.
The song leaps between grunge-flecked dirty pop-punk guitar breaks, rapped verses and sung chorus hooks, to deliver the timeless and revolutionary message to do whatever it is you will, even if that’s crashing daddy’s car, getting kicked out of bars, “sabotage your two months sober, spend a weekend on your sofa”, because when all’s said and done – everyone’s more interested in their self. A freeing message indeed.
‘Nobody Really Cares’ was released on 4th July 2022 and you can watch the single’s video below:
Canary are an alt-pop duo from Nashville, Tennessee – Vocalist Kat Leverenz and Guitarist Zach Dennis, and their second single ‘i used to write you love songs’ is an emotional, chilled out indie-pop work of art. Describing an ill-fated, fading love, Leverenz’s mesmerizing vocals and Dennis’s lilting guitars convey a blissfully sad sense of calm before destroying that uneasy peace with a chorus that comes crashing in out of nowhere with a heavy blast of sound and realisation, hitting you right in your poor unsuspecting heart.
The band describe their influences ranging from Phoebe Bridgers, Cage the Elephant and Kacey Musgraves, all strong influences on ‘i used to write you love songs’, but we’d also throw in Canadian rockers Metric and some emo like Paramore in there too for the sheer strength behind their guitars and the lofty levels of heartache.
‘i used to write you love songs’ was released on Friday 29th July 2022 and you can find it on all the streaming platforms right now. You can see it on youtube below:
With a crackly, muffled intro, like a mysterious demo cassette found in a dusty shoe box clicking into motion on a vintage tape deck, ‘Rosebud’ is the sound of Manic Street Preachers at their claustrophobically gritty greatest. The previously unreleased track from 2001 has been chosen as the launch single for the 20th anniversary (well 21st anniversary really) re-release of their sixth album ‘Know Your Enemy’ and to think a song of this calibre has been hoarded away unheard for two decades is pure sacrilege.
After the band’s mainstream success with 1998’s ‘This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours’ the Manics went undercover for a while to regroup, on their return deciding to eschew the widescreen, string-soaked ballads that had made them super-famous and embrace their C-86 indie and spiky punk roots like they’d never been allowed to before.
‘Rosebud’ is a choice example of what they were trying to do, taking a funky, baggy rhythm section and draping it in heavy, oppressive guitars with melancholic lyrics about destroying something delicate and beautiful, managing to avoid the sense of doom and hopelessness that abounded on their 1994 masterpiece ‘The Holy Bible’, in it’s place retaining the halcyon sense of hope they nurtured over the past two LPs. Sludgy drums and guitar effects keep the band chained to the ground as the chorus and James Dean Bradfield’s vocals try like mad to loose the song soaring off into the stratosphere.
The ‘Remixed, Reconstructed and Re-issued’ version of ‘Know Your Enemy’ is coming out on 09/09/2022. Unlike your average re-release, this 20th anniversary version sees the group hacking the original 16 track album and splitting it into separate parts named ‘Door To The River’ and ‘Solidarity’, taking the original tracks, swapping album tracks with b-sides along with the addition of another unreleased song ‘Studies in Paralysis’, adding an additional CD of demos for good measure. Find the full and extensive track list below:
DISC 1 – DOOR TO THE RIVER
The Year of Purification
Ocean Spray
So Why So Sad (Avalanches Sean Penn Mix)
Door To The River
Rosebud
Just a Kid
His Last Painting
Let Robeson Sing
Groundhog Days
Epicentre
His Last Painting (LA Mix)
Epicentre (TLA Mix)
So Why So Sad (Original KYE Version)
Royal Correspondent
DISC 2 – SOLIDARITY
Intravenous Agnostic
Found That Soul (TLA Mix)
We Are All Bourgeois Now
Freedom of Speech Won’t Feed My Children
The Convalescent
Baby Elian
Masses Against The Classes
My Guernica
Studies In Paralysis
Dead Martyrs
Wattsville Blues
Miss Europa Disco Dancer
Fear Of Motion
Pedestal
Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel
Locust Valley
Masking Tape
Ballad of the Bangkok Novotel
DISC 3 – DEMOS
Ocean Spray (Studio Demo)
So Why So Sad (Cassette Demo)
Door To The River (Cassette Demo)
His Last Painting (Air Version Home Cassette Demo)
Let Robeson Sing (Home Cassette Demo)
Groundhog Days (Home Cassette Demo)
Epicentre (Cassette Demo)
Intravenous Agnostic (Home Cassette Demo)
Freedom Of Speech Won’t Feed My Children (Studio Demo)
The Convalescent (Studio Rehearsal Demo)
His Last Painting Baby Elian (Studio Demo)
Masses Against The Classes (Studio Demo)
My Guernica No 1 (Home Acoustic Demo)
My Guernica (Studio Demo)
Dead Martyrs (Home Cassette Demo)
Wattsville Blues (Home Cassette Demo)
‘Rosebud’ has been given a fantastic new video and you can watch it below:
Cheersome reflection on the changing face of solid friendship is the order of the day on Wez King’s latest record ‘We Were Young’. Reminiscing about getting into scrapes with an old pal, ending up in fights on nights out, “a puff of smoke, a white line”, all night and day partying and drinking, the singer-songwriter acknowledges his warm feelings about those lost days but decides he much prefers the lives and the companionship they share now.
King soundtracks his message of enduring affection for his mate through the lows and the highs with carefree strumming acoustic guitar and tambourines, a positive and upbeat sound that’d have any group of mates hugging and shouting along at the end of a, maybe older and slightly less raucous but no less memorable, summer’s night.
‘We Were Young’ was released on 8th July 2022 and is available to hear on the streaming platforms now. Have a listen on the Spotify link below:
Cardiff DIY recording artistFate Of The Sun has had it with the current crop of lead politicians and on new single ‘Rogue’s Gallery’ he lines them up against the wall, along with some individuals he considers their moral kin, placing Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, Matt Hancock, Trump and Putin next to killers Fred and Rose West, Harold Shipman and Dennis Nilsen in this scathing political takedown.
Angry, scuzzy synth and F.O.T.S’s distinctive sung-rap vocals create a menacing atmosphere in which Margaret Thatcher is compared to Jeffrey Epstein’s friend – the Duke of York and if you’re left with any lingering questions over how the solo artist would like them to be dealt with, the repeated satisfying gunshot sound effects should provide answer enough.
Fate Of The Sun’s Tim put it this way: “Just because you wear a Eton tie, it doesn’t make you above the Law. Rogues Gallery is a reaction to the recent bollocks we are having to put up with from our politicians. It seems like scumbag is the number one attribute needed to become a political figure so I’m just lumping all the Scumbags together! The decisions these people make can have a generational effect on people’s lives and families, as do the crimes committed by the other disgusting individuals who make up my Rogues Gallery.
The rogue’s gallery or gallery of rouges in my mind is like a shooting gallery at the fair but in a fucked up Black Mirror type alternative dystopian world. Instead of a target to aim at, you get the chance to shoot the actual rogue. Very brutal, but think Running Man, Battle Royal or most recently Squid Game. Rogues Gallery would live in that type of universe.”
‘Rogues Gallery’ was released on Friday 22nd July on all the streaming platforms and you can hear it on Spotify below:
The Big Moon’sfirst single taken from third album ‘Here is Everything’ is a sweeping, anthemic story of finding an innocence and sense of wonder amid a time of burn out and tiredness. The bones of the song were written when the group’s main songwriter Juliette Jackson was swamped in the exhaustion of nurturing a newborn baby and the tumult of feelings that came with it, aching to write a song of sheer happiness while being tugged down by exhaustion, yet still managing to appreciate the wide eyed joy at the centre of it all.
And with her bandmates let loose on ‘Wide Eyes’, what would maybe be a personal little hymn to the anxiety and magic of bringing new life into the world gets transformed into an upbeat, soaring epic about rediscovering beauty when everything’s gone haywire.
London’s The Big Moon are on the cusp of releasing their third album ‘Here is Everything’, due to be released on 14th October 2022 via Fiction Records and you can pre-order it on all of it’s wonderful formats now. The tracklist is below:
2 Lines
Wide Eyes
Daydreaming
This Love
Sucker Punch
My Very Best
Ladye Bay
Trouble
High & Low
Magic
Satellites
‘Wide Eyes’ was released on 13th July 2022 and you can see the video below:
To mark his monumental headline gig at Finsbury Park last Friday night, Sam Fender,the Geordie king of indie, has re-released one of his favourite tracks from his ‘Seventeen Going Under’ album sessions, ‘Alright’. Missing from the finished album release and originally playing second fiddle to A-side ‘Long Way Off’, the track was put out on vinyl only in 2020 and again as a Record Store Day release backed with a live version of The Kitchen in April of this year, but the emotive tearjerker has now been given a much deserved release of it’s very own.
Fully embracing his newfound status as a universally adored indie-crooner extraordinaire, Fender digs deep to harness vocals that would make Jeff Buckley do a double-take, delivering a heartfelt and clearly deeply sentimental song about “cheating death” and fighting depression. A song that would no doubt have sounded spine-tingling sung to 40,000 people in London last weekend and will sound similarly spine-tingling belted out from Wembley Stadium’s stage when he makes it there in a couple of years time.
‘Alright’ was released on all of the streaming platforms on 15/07/2022. There’s a Spotify link handily included just below this article for you, along with a video pinched off of Youtube of the track performed with his band at Finsbury Park on Friday night:
Lissy Tayloris an up-and-coming new singer-songwriter from Stoke-on-Trent via the USA via Manchester and her new single ‘She’s a Stunner’ is an empowering guitar track about a really fucking powerful and commanding, stunning and unidentified woman.
With her north-west accent preserved, Taylor’s voice has the dreamlike brittleness of Ellie Goulding coupled with all the raw brashness of Chrissie Hynde, fastened onto potent, tenacious guitar lines and an infectious chorus, the perfect recipe for a tune to embolden listeners who’ll want to adopt the track as their own sass-fuelled theme song.
‘She’s a Stunner’ was released on 24th July 2022 and you can hear it now on all the streaming platforms. You can watch the official video right here:
Also, if you like what you hear, an awesome sounding Gab Hydesremix of Lissy Taylor’s previous single ‘Young’ was released yesterday (15th July). We’ve put a Spotify link below for you to fill your ear cavities with:
