Edge of Arcady

The Rhythm Method – Have A Go Heroes

London’s The Rhythm Method were on a sort of Streets-like wave back in 2019, the release of their debut LP ‘How Would You Know I Was Lonely?’ superbly finessing their take on spoken word road-level observations over omnifarious multi-tempo beats, after the almost accidental grass-roots success of first single ‘Local, Girl’. Afterwards, save for a couple lockdown singles and a 2021 World Cup effort, they seemed to go to ground.

‘Have A Go Heroes’ sees the sagacious duo resurface for the second time in the run up to album number two, ‘Peachy’, due for release in 2024. Giving Joey Bradbury’s sardonic scrutiny a rest, the record sees the group’s other half, Rowan Martin, lead with an uplifting Pet Shop Boys-esque tribute to the indefatigable national spirit, inspired by a psychotic episode after a 2018 gig in Hull meshed with a 600 mile stretch of motorways, service stations and equally mania-inducing or soothing meandering rowdy towns, rowdy townspeople and idyllic landscapes.

‘Have A Go Heroes’ was released on 8th November 2023 on Moshi Moshi records, setting The Rhythm Method up nicely for their soon-to-be-released second album ‘Peachy’, due out on 8 March 2024. You can pre-order the record now. We’ve put the tracklist down below:

1 – Just A Boy’s Game
2 – I Love My Television
3 – Nightmare
4 – Dean Martin
5 – Have A Go Heroes
6 – Curse
7 – Please Don’t Die
8 – Peachy
9 – Black & Blue

Feel very free to have a watch of ‘Have A Go Heroes’ below:

Everything Everything – The Mad Stone

Manchester future-art-rockers Everything Everything’s latest single ‘The Mad Stone’ is one of the central parts of their forthcoming 7^th album ‘Mountainhead’, a record that, we’re told, is a parable for modern times, mellifluously dissecting a society with the sole mission of building a greater purpose sacred mountain, leaving a resource depleted hole left behind for it’s labouring citizens to live in.

With all the dynamism and technological ingenuity of Radiohead, the oracular four-piece use lush orchestration and sumptuous choral harmonies to reveal the spellbinding, narcissistic wonder the civilization in question discovers at the mighty mound’s zenith: “At the very top, there was a screen that showed a picture of a/Man who stood there looking at a picture of a man who stood there/looking at a picture of a picture of a man on a screen”.

Prior single ‘Cold Reactor’ acts as a euphonic precursor to ‘The Mad Stone’ and the full album, ‘Mountainhead’, is due to be released on 1st March 2024. You can pre-order it right now in a range of formats. The full track list is below:

1 – Wild Guess
2 – The End Of The Contender
3 – Cold Reactor
4 – Buddy, Come Over
5 – R U Happy?
6 – The Mad Stone
7 – TV Dog
8 – Canary
9 – Don’t Ask Me To Beg
10 – Enter The Mirror
11 – Your Money, My Summer
12 – Dagger’s Edge
13 – City Song
14 – The Witness

The group have also announced the following tour dates. Check them out and find ticket links below:

March 26th 2024 – SGW3 Galvanizers, Glasgow
March 27th 2024 – Stylus, Leeds
March 29th 2024 – New Century, Manchester
March 30th 2024 – New Century, Manchester
March 31st 2024 – De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill
April 2nd 2024 – The Junction, Cambridge
April 4th 2024 – Rock City, Nottingham
April 5th 2024 – Troxy, London
April 6th 2024 – O2 Academy, Bristol

‘The Mad Stone’ was released on 17th November 2024 and you can watch it’s visualiser video below:

Rainyday Rainbow – Baby In The Basement

Wait! What’s that sound coming from the depths of the basement? No, it’s not a baby. It’s too much of a multicoloured cacophony of a melody to be a baby’s ululation. I think it’s actually Swansea psych-punks Rainyday Rainbow performing their latest mind-warping wonder of a single ‘Baby In The Basement’.

Lead by Egg Spectrum, along with Tom Emlyn (whose provoking solo work we’ve featured a few times already), Evan Collett and Osian Boland, we suspect their latest track is the result of some freakish acid-trip hallucinated encounter with a perpetually wailing bambino phantasm as the interstellar psychedelic doom jazz vibrations of King Gizzard and Osees float around the aural periphery.

‘Baby In The Basement’ was released on 3rd November 2023 and is the first we’re getting to hear from Rainyday Rainbow’s forthcoming ‘Masters Of The Cosmos’ EP, due for release on 1st January 2024. The tracklist for the ‘Masters Of The Cosmos’ EP is below:

1 – Venomous Vines
2 – Your Nature
3 – Heir Of The Dog
4 – Baby In The Basement
5 – Masters Of The Cosmos
6 – Pot Skulgrim

You can have a listen to ‘Baby In The Basement’ on the Spotify link below:

Cardinals – Roseland

You’d do worse than look to current indie luminaries Fontaines D.C. for a tip on where the best new music is coming from, so when the group’s frontman Grian Chatten declares Cork rising stars Cardinals as one of his new favourite bands then we wanna know more. Enter Cardinals debut single proper, ‘Roseland’, their first release on So Young records.

Though the song takes it’s title from a ballroom in NYC, the record’s world doesn’t leave Ireland’s second largest city, unwinding a brooding plot from MacCurtain Street police station to the harsh end of young love, soundtracked by a sparse bassline, later joined by the icy and disparate sounds of accordion, wall of sound guitars and the ecclesiastical imagery of “a tired religious vocation and a cross at the end of it all.”

The 20 year olds shun the calculable trappings of modern alt-rock to create their own cold and austere universe, immersing their songwriting in Irish trad-folk with more than a streak of a punkish intensity, like The Pogues before them, frontman Euan Manning owning the downbeat, haughty charm of Echo & The Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch. Heck, there’s even a bit of Gang of Youths about them.

‘Roseland’ was produced by Richie Kennedy (U2, Interpol) and was released on 7th November 2023 through So Young records. You can view the video below now:

DAYZIES – Eskimo

If Bloc Party had a go at playing a slightly speeded up version of The Undertones 70’s classic ‘Teenage Kicks’, we reckon the resultant sound would be something akin to Newcastle indie rockers DAYZIES’ new single ‘Eskimo’, a healthy collision of hazardously angular guitars and high-spirited punk melody.

The North-East four-piece’s third single release, named after a nickname for an ex who wore a parka with a big fluffy rimmed hood rather than the snow-blighted indigenous peoples of Alaska, wields an unforgettable tune, some high-grade yelping and a brilliant middle eight. Ingredients enough for an astoundingly excellent single.

DAYZIES have a couple gigs lined up if you’re in London or the North-East over the next few months. You can find them at:

Two Palms, Hackney, London – 25/11/2023
Coastal Crawl Festival, North Shields – 17/02/2024

‘Eskimo’ was released on 3 November 2023 via the ever exciting Bubblebrain Records. Hear it for yourself on the Spotify link below:

Gruff Rhys – Silver Lining (Lead Balloons)

Inarguably one of modern Welsh music’s foremost icons, Gruff Rhys has a less-than-earnest warning for his long-serving listeners on latest single ‘Silver Lining (Lead Balloons)’, the second track to be taken from his forthcoming 25th LP. And what warning is that, we hear you ask, above the symphonic piano and scrumptious strings? Well, we’re not exactly certain, but it’s somewhere between the eccentric poetical sentiments of, and we quote: “There’s no use lining all your dreams with silver/For silver lined clouds look much like lead balloons” and “I left my dreams in a rental car/Live for now and dream afar”.

The beautiful, orchestral sounds, created almost entirely with only wooden acoustic instruments, were recorded live in a 19th-century building on the outskirts of Paris during March 2022 with the ex-Super Furry Animals frontman on vocals, Kliph Scurlock, formerly of Flaming Lips, on drums, Osian Gwynedd on piano, Huw V Williams on double bass and an overdubbed string quartet arranged by Gruff Ab Arwel, only breaking the timber-based rule to include some utterly euphoric brass from Gavin Fitzjohn. Replete with gold like this and previous single ‘Celestial Candyfloss’, Gruff Rhys’s quarter-centuplicate handiwork looks set to be one of his finest and most idyllic yet.

‘Silver Lining (Lead Balloons)’ is the second single to come off of Gruff Rhys’s forthcoming record ‘Sadness Sets Me Free’, due to be released on 26th January 2024 via Rough Trade Records and available to pre-order now. The full track list is below:

1 – Sadness Sets Me Free
2 – Bad Friend
3 – Celestial Candyfloss
4 – Silver Lining (Lead Balloons)
5 – On The Far Side Of The Dollar
6 – They Sold My Home To Build A Skyscraper
7 – Peace Signs
8 – Cover Up The Cover Up
9 – I Tendered My Resignation
10 – I’ll Keep Singing

‘Silver Lining (Lead Balloons)’ was released on 7th November 2023 and you can watch it on Youtube below:

iest – Lizard Skin Chic

Enigmatic singing songwriting newcomer iest has a magnificently cool blooded, blissed out space waltz in the bag for his third single, ‘Lizard Skin Chic’, putting his brittle, ambrosial vocals and washed out, lilting guitars up against obscured lyrics and a general dreamy feeling, all produced by South Welsh independent music maestro, Minas, and visually adorned with ancient arcane Sumerian reptilian statue artwork.

Angling indistinctly at illuminati cover stars, equally at aimless inner-city drives and romantic wanderings in the rain, the record meanders gracefully around various juxtaposed nomadic subjects before the slow dance shifts up a gear, briefly, with all of the surf guitars and jazz drums summoned up into a rapture of other-worldly bleeps and squalls and then adroitly released back to a hazy, revelatory calm.

iest is in the process of piecing together his debut ep ‘Everything You Know’, due for release on 18th November, which we are of the understanding will also contain prior singles ‘Disappear’ and ‘Go Slow’. There’s an essential sounding EP Launch at Rothfink Industries HQ in Bedwas on release day, as per the funky graphic above.

‘Lizard Skin Chic’ was released on 4th November and you should take a listen on the Spotify link below:

Half Happy – Say This Twice

Cardiff woozy indie-popsters Half Happy’s latest single ‘Say This Twice’ is part spoken word, part radiant melody and entirely a sublime record about irrecoverably lost love. Rose’s cool vocals give a disappointed but eloquent account of sorrowfully bored domestication alongside Pete’s lustrous, dramatic, Tame Impala-like guitars.

Having heaps in common with alt-rock contemporaries Pit Pony, Sprints and past tour-mates English Teacher, the bittersweet quartet use dreamy, heavenly sounds to communicate the mournful atmosphere of bright-eyed romance turned stale, while managing to pack in a gorgeously lilting chorus and all.

‘Say This Twice’ was released on 25th October 2023, available on all of the streaming platforms everywhere and you can watch the record’s video on Youtube below. Spoiler: it sees the band looking confusedly at a platter of spaghetti bolognese and performing to a field of sunflowers:

Megan Wyn – Familiar Faces

Megan Wyn’s second single, ‘Familiar Faces’, is as forceful and powerful as indie rock tunes come. The Welsh girl’s voice is at it’s husky finest and, along with co-songwriter Alex Quinn (The Royston Club, Lottery Winners), she’s managed to successfully forge an intensively driving alt-anthem to raging heartbreak.

As she casts off the track’s soaring chorus, Wyn resignedly warns “The devil hides in familiar faces”, finding herself cruelly torn between jealousy and rejection, over energized drums and stirring guitars that we reckon must translate excellently to being performed live, as we’re sure her many rabid legions of live show attendees would gladly attest.

You can catch Megan on tour currently (we’re not sure she ever stops touring, actually) at the following dates:

02/11/2023 – Band On The Wall, Manchester – supporting the brilliant Andrew Cushin
03/11/2023 – Kazimier Stockroom, Liverpool – headline gig
18/11/2023 – Empire, Middlesbrough – supporting Komparrison
15/12/2023 – Colours, London – supporting The Motive
17/02/2024 – Coast Festival, North Shields

‘Familiar Faces’ was released on 13th October 2023 and you can take a listen to it below on Spotify:

Silent Forum – Here’s The Email

In small, atomised, spare bedrooms all across the land, lone office workers log in to check their emails, dripping milk from a bowl of Cheerios all over their duvet, soaking papers on their desk with Tassimo Costa macchiattos as they bustle to show active on Teams by 9am. With post-punk shades of Idles, Sports Team and Talking Heads, on ‘Here’s The Email’ Silent Forum peer over the shoulder of those home-workers and read their nugatory laptop screens out loud: “Here’s the email – hope you’re safe and well, in these troubling times, hope your family’s well, hope your dog is well”.

Getting together from as far afield as Cardiff, Bristol, London and Barcelona, the quartet’s latest single taken from forthcoming second album ‘Domestic Majestic’ uses barbed, intersecting rhythms, pop-punk peppy guitars, nimble drums and wry, slice of life confessional lyrics to cheekily question the value of resilience and strength in adversity when the height of your day is pushing products, papers and sending out tasters.

‘Here’s The Email’ was released on 24th October 2023. Check out the video below that sees the band sat in chairs in the middle of the road, an act that caused a police van containing 6 officers to rock up and make sure a pesky protest wasn’t going on (no arrests were made and everyone was allowed to carry on nicely with their business):