Further Listening:

5. Shangri-Lass Is Always By Your Side

Based out of Sheffield, Shangri-Lass is Rose Love, best known as the bass player in bilingual myth rockers, Sister Wives. The first signing to the hot-off-the-presses label, Redundant Span, Rose will release her first solo EP, Over & Over, this April. Much of the record was inspired by a diagnosis of CFS/ME and Fibromyalgia, which came after falling ill while working in Brazil as a costume designer for Black Mirror. While her illness can make activity both painful and fatiguing, within that Rose found solace in music, as she puts it, “when you lose life as you know it, you find out what’s important to you”. Ahead of the EP’s release, this week Rose shared Shangri-Lass’ debut single, Parallel.

Listening to Parallel, it’s clear it’s not just a band name Rose has lifted from 60’s girl groups, as to a backing of prominent bass and stabs of fizzing electronics, she swaggers with the same hopeful naivety of that era, wanting to see the best in someone who’s just going to ride their leather-jacketed self off into the sunset at the first sign of trouble. Rose recalls how the song’s lyrics were, “written years ago at the beginning of a relationship that started intensely and ended badly“. Ultimately perhaps the song is about failing to trust your instincts when love clouds your view, as Rose sings, “tear yourself down, but leave me out boy, I know it’s not easy to do”. With the promise that Over & Over will showcase Shangri-Lass’ eclectic taste and pop sensibilities, its promises to be an intriguing introduction to an artist clearly in love with making music and showcasing that love with the world.

Over & Over is out April 28th via Redundant Span. For more information on Shangri-Lass visit https://www.instagram.com/shangri_lass//

4. Jude Brothers Redefines Silence

In their own words, “Arkansas forged and New Mexico moulded”, Jude Brothers last shared their music some six years ago, in the shape of their debut LP, & the Concrete Dragonfly. Thankfully that hiatus is set to come to a halt this May with the release of a new nine-track collection, Render Tender / Blunder Sunder, which coincides with a lengthy fourteen-date run of some of the UK’s most intimate rooms. Ahead of all that excitement, this week Jude whet appetites with the release of a new single, Practicing Silence / Looking For Water.

Render Tender / Blunder Sunder was recorded in a two-day blast on a mesa in Lamy, New Mexico, Jude attempting to make sense of the, “profound grief and doubt in the bizarre and often-public end of a long and fruitful romantic and musical partnership”. A record that learns to move on with life after separation and finds its creator rediscovering their creative voice in the process. Practicing Silence / Looking For Water is a beautiful jumping-off point for the record as a whole, as to a backing of Celtic lever harp, Jude channels the rich history of American folk singers from Karen Dalton through to Joanna Newsom. As with so much of the best music, Jude’s songs seem to not just document life but to question it, here openly dissecting a relationship with the clarity of distance, “truth be told, I’m still practicing silence to be free. though I’d still like to know what your life has been like without me”. Melding musical precision to an emotional rawness, Jude Brothers’ music is carved from musical tradition, yet comes out looking delightfully fresh, a songwriter inspired by folk’s past and reshaping its future, old sounds breathing with new life, a reminder there’s life in this ancient genre yet.

Render Tender / Blunder Sunder is out May 10th. For more information on Jude Brothers visit https://judebrothersmusic.com/

3. Don’t Pass On Hannah Georgas

Although actively pursuing her solo career since 2009, Hannah Georgas’ star really shot upward back in 2020 with the release of the fabulous album, All That Emotion, which she produced with the help of The National’s Aaron Dessner. An EP of re-workings featuring the likes of Owen Pallet and Kate Stables followed, but until this week the world was still waiting to hear where Hannah’s music would go next. Freshly signed to Lucy Rose’s Real Kind Records, this week Hannah shared her first new material in three years, in the shape of the sparkling single, This Too Shall Pass.

This Too Shall Pass finds Hannah back producing her own music, along with a cohort of musicians whose CVs read like something of a who’s-who of American indie. Hannah has spoken of a desire to take the reigns, and the track serves as something of a line-in-the-sand moment, a new chapter for Hannah Georgas’ music to be shaped entirely in the image of its creator. Thematically, This Too Shall Pass is a study in not over-thinking, as Hannah explains, “I have a lot of internal pep talks, as a way to quiet my own doubts and insecurities. This song is a reflection of that, and a reminder to go a little bit easier on myself”. The change in musical direction is evident from the start, some of the smoothed edges left unpolished as she nods to artists like Frankie Cosmos or Alyssa Gengos, as sing-speak vocals sit atop driving guitar-rhythms, wavering pulses of synth and loose complex drum rhythms. Throughout the track Hannah seems to lament her failures, before falling back on the title like a mantra, “this too shall pass, the pain won’t last, trauma at its best, this too shall pass”. After your most successful album to date, it might seem a strange time for a reinvention, but like so many of the best songwriters Hannah Georgas knows that sometimes you’ve got to roll the dice, and on this evidence, it might just be an inspired decision.

This Too Shall Pass is out now via Real Kind Records. For more information on Hannah Georgas visit http://www.hannahgeorgas.com/.

2. Lael Neale Speeds Past The Competition

After causing something of a gentle ripple with her excellent Sub Pop debut, Acquainted With Night, back in 2021, Lael Neale’s next move was always going to be intriguing. Acquainted With Night was almost deliberately limited in its scope, everything was stripped back to its bare bones, minimal instrumentations, the spontaneity of first takes, and the everyday mundanity of making toast and folding sheets. It was a beautiful and intimate listen, but not necessarily a style that you’d want an artist to repeatedly go back to ad infinitum. Thankfully based on the first tasters of its follow-up, Star Eaters Delight, Lael completely agrees, the first single, I Am The River, is an arms-flailing celebration of life that’s quite possibly my favourite song of the year so far, while the follow-up In Verona, is an eight-and-a-half minute whirlwind, a grandiose near-Shakesperean epic. Continuing her breathtaking destruction of expectations, this week Lael shared the latest taster of the album, in the shape of her new single, Faster Than Medicine.

After the Los Angeles-based songwriter recently channelled New York dance floors and rustic Italian cityscapes, Faster Than Medicine finds the Lael Neale world-tour coming to a screeching halt somewhere in the English West Country, from the “bells of St.Ives” to the “waters of Bath”. It’s a fitting setting really for a song that channels something of that famous daughter of the South West, PJ Harvey, as Lael’s poised vocal is adorned with searing Omnichord, the metronomic tick of the drum machine, and urgent, The Walkmen-like guitars. Delightfully out of step with the modern world, Lael still carries a 90’s flip-phone and proudly notes, “no screens” were involved in the making of Star Eaters Delight, but don’t mistake this for a Luddite yearning for the past, Lael Neale’s just carving out her own way of making thoroughly modern music, as the world spins faster and faster she offers something thrillingly different for anyone willing to make the time.

Star Eaters Delight is out April 21st via Sub Pop. For more information on Lael Neale visit https://laelneale.com/.

1. Jess Williamson Is On The Hunt

Sharing her music with the world for over a decade now, Texas-raised and now LA-based songwriter, Jess Williamson’s career has been on a steep upward curve since 2016’s stunning Heart Song. Subsequently signed to Mexican Summer, Jess released two further albums, culminating in 2020’s Sorceress. Last year she released a brilliant solo sabbatical, when she teamed up with Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield to form Plains, sharing the critically lauded country-pop album, I Walked With You a Ways. This week Jess marked a return to business as usual with news of a new solo album, Time Ain’t Accidental, set to land in June, which she shared alongside a fabulous new single, Hunter.

Time Ain’t Accidental was formed in the fires of a breakup that happened just as the Covid-19 pandemic struck, thankfully listening to Hunter it seems to have come roaring out the other side. Far from lingering in loss and isolation, this is the sound of a person emboldened. The track was written, “when I was heartbroken over a breakup and experimenting with dating in Los Angeles“, an experience Jess likens to, “being thrown to the wolves“, but one that, “helped me to see myself and what I really wanted more clearly“. With her unmistakable voice to the fore from the start, Hunter initially seems to hitch-a-wagon to the sound of I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning-era Bright Eyes, before sliding into something more polished and luxurious, as pulsing piano swell around her, before drifting into the background once more. Amidst it all, Jess seems to let it all out, from the striking opening line, “I’ve been thrown to the wolves and they ate me raw”, through to her reflection of going into dating optimistically, “when you walk as a woman who’s only known love, it’s easy to miss the signs, you bow down to me like I was sent from above, but who’s in your bed tonight”. A stunning return, Jess Williamson sounds wiser, brighter and more thoroughly herself than ever, with Time Ain’t Accidental it already feels like she’s onto something very special indeed.

Time Ain’t Accidental is out June 9th via Mexican Summer. For more information on Jess Williamson visit http://www.jesswilliamson.com/.

Header photo is Jess Williamson by Jackie Lee Young