Further Listening:

5. New Zelma Stone Music Is Really There

I vividly remember the first time I heard Zelma Stone’s music, it was her track Fly, from the stunningly good EP, Dreamland. The track was dedicated to songwriter Chloe Zelma Studebaker’s late grandfather, just one of many people Chloe has grieved in her relatively brief time on this planet. Grief flowed through Dreamland, its follow-up, 2021’s The Best, and its ebb and flow remain on her latest offering, A Dance, which will see the light of day in August. Ahead of the release, this week Chloe shared the second single from it, Really There.

We have a tendency to think of grief in its most dramatic form, the crushing all-encompassing black cloud, the howling tears, the jabbing pain of poking at a fresh wound, Chloe knows that’s just a small part of the unpredictable ebb and flow we’re powerless to control. Continuing her exploration of the full gamut of grief, Really There finds Chloe questioning the oft-repeated, “looking down on you” narrative of deceased loved ones, as she repeatedly asks, “are they really there?”. With each run-through of the question, her faith seems to be tested, at times she is overwhelmed with doubt, at others almost comforted, her belief restored. The wavering conviction of the vocal is matched in the musical backing, as the low-end boom of the processed rhythm section is adorned by swells of glistening synths, and majestic swooping guitars, that duck and dive like swallows against the setting sun. Zelma Stone’s music is so intrinsically linked to loss, it would be easy for it to fall into the trap of despair, yet it never does, because its creator knows that isn’t the path to take, we process death so we can truly know the precious nature of life, and the two dance on together to a tune that changes, but never stops.

A Dance is out August 4th. For more information on Zelma Stone visit https://linktr.ee/zelmastone

4. Do Yourself A Favor Listen To Shady Bug

Cornerstones of the St.Louis music scene, Shady Bug were formed in 2017 by guitarists Hannah Rainey and Ripple. With a sound that exists at the meeting point of, “harmony and harsh”, the world last heard from Shady Bug back in 2019 around the release of their excellent album Lemon Line. With Hannah increasingly emerging as the band leader, they’ve recruited bassist Chris Chartrand and drummer Jack Mideke to bring their sound to new heights, as demonstrated this week on their new single, Favor, the latest taster of their upcoming album What’s The Use, which is out today via Exploding In Sound.

Favor seems to come almost running into earshot, a pulsating bass sending the listener careering chaotically forward, before the drums arrive, hesitant at first before they settle into the pocket of the low-end rhythm, before being joined by the jarring stop-start quality of the guitar. There’s a delightful juxtaposition between the sweet melodic qualities of Hannah’s vocal lines and the more dissonant, unhinged evolution of the instrumentation, like the middle ground of the angularity of Foyer Red and the melodic flourish of Sun June. Lyrically, Favor reads like a self-admonishment for repeatedly putting others’ needs before your own, “can I get you anything? Do you need something? Always, I’ll wait, I’ll wait, always”. With a newfound clarity and a sense of real progress, this feels like a fresh new phase for Shady Bug, Missouri’s best-kept secret now sound ready to let the world have it.

What’s The Use? is out now via Exploding In Sound. For more information on Shady Bug visit https://shadybug.band/.

3. I Say, I Say You Should Listen To Kid Fears

Originally the solo pursuit of Atlanta-native Rose Ewing, after releasing two solo records, Kid Fears morphed into their current four-piece lineup to take Rose’s ideas out into the live environment. Next month will see Kid Fears share their first full-band record, Undying Love, and this week the band shared the second single from it, Say.

While describing themselves as a shoegaze group and citing the influences of the likes of Low and My Bloody Valentine, listening to Say, Kid Fears seem like a band that shouldn’t be so keen to put themselves into any box. While yes, at times the guitars howl and kick in a pleasingly wall-of-noise fashion, there’s a penchant for melody here too, Rose’s lightly echoing vocals, are given room to breathe, standing stoically against the guitar-led chaos, as reminiscent of The Cranberries as any shoegaze contemporary. The loudness of the music is neatly juxtaposed by the intimacy of Rose’s lyricism, there’s something undeniably domestic about the scenes she conjures, you can almost picture the dust in the sunbeam as she sings of, “shifting on the hardwood, tears come easy in the middle of the day, crystalized by golden rays”. The song, like its creator’s frustrations, comes to a head at the close, as Rose repeatedly pleads for clarity, “say what you mean”, the feelings rushing from her like a dammed river bursting through. Luxurious sonic creations, with a real emotional kick, Kid Fears are onto something rather special, and with a fair wind expect a lot more people to cotton onto that soon.

Undying Love is out July 28th. For more information on Kid Fears visit https://linktr.ee/kid_fears.

2. Here I Am, Stuck In The Middle With Daneshevskaya

Daneshevskaya (kindly presented with a pronunciation guide – Dawn-eh-shev-sky-uh – for those of us not clued up on Russian-Jewish names) is the project of New York-based artist, Anna Daneshevskaya Beckerman. The daughter of a pianist and musicologist father and an opera-singing mother, Anna was always likely to follow in the family tradition of pursuing music, both as a profession and a passion. Anna’s own songwriting journey began as a teenager in her bedroom, quickly developing her own style, even as she balanced the pursuit with training as a social worker, and her current job working in a pre-school in her current home of Brooklyn. After sharing her music on Bandcamp under the Daneshevskaya moniker, Anna caught the attention of Winspear, who this week shared her new single, Somewhere In The Middle.

Continuing the familial thread that runs through all her music, Somewhere In The Middle was inspired by something her great-grandparents would say, as Anna explains, “my grandma had two sisters and her parents would say ‘Anita has the looks, Miriam has the books, and Gloria has the charm.’ I used to think about which one I would want to be. I never questioned having to choose”. The song explores the way we look at ourselves and others, and the often black-and-white contrasts the world likes to force us into. That Anna was influenced by Patsy Cline and her ability to, “sing sad songs with gusto”, is evident, even if Anna’s version is a decidedly more modern affair, full of layered vocals, racing drum parts and muted flourishes of synth and guitar. The whole track seems to sit uncomfortably in the greys, Anna debating the questions that hover over both her own intrinsic qualities and the situations she finds herself in, “having a good time isn’t everything, I’m lying on the ground and the ground’s lying back onto me”. With a single this good and a string of dates supporting Black Country, New Road on their upcoming US tour, Daneshevskaya looks like becoming a name we’re all going to be hearing a lot more from very soon.

Somewhere In The Middle is out now via Winspear. For more information on Daneshevskaya visit https://linktr.ee/daneshevskaya.music.

1. Vera Sola Heads Off On A New Path

Cast your mind back four years, and you might well recall that Vera Sola was something of a regular feature around here. That was around the release of her atmospheric and haunting debut album Shades, a record Vera made in a moment of personal chaos, almost entirely alone just setting up a microphone and seeing what happened. Since then Vera has been touring, writing and most recently signing to the City Slang label, an event marked with the release of her first new music since Shades, courtesy of the single, Desire Path.

Recorded in Nashville with co-producer Kenneth Pattengale, Desire Path takes a wrecking ball to the sonic boundaries of Shades, taking Vera’s songwriting from the shadows in a vast sonic landscape with over a dozen contributing musicians adding their talents to the piece. The track was written in response to, “screwing up a Brenda Lee song“, Vera recalling how, “the twisting chords laid out a story of awakening to compounded delusion, denial, despair”. While it’s a song of unquestionable grandeur, Desire Path actually opens in a pleasingly gentle fashion, as we’re met with a lilting acoustic and barely strummed electric guitar flourishes, before the gorgeous plod of an upright bass begins to cut through the retro-tinged gentility. From there the song goes through what Vera describes as, “a scattershot of keychanges and ratcheting modulations”, as the luxurious melodrama of Van Dyke Parks-like strings accompany her frankly remarkable vocal delivery, ringing a cascade of hidden emotions from every word. Particularly wonderful is the track’s ability to constantly surprise, take the way just as you think you’ve got this track pinned as some cinematic Hitchcock like melodrama, you’re suddenly met with an almost sci-fi like, “out of tune only for a madman” synth, at once brilliantly unexpected and deliriously joyous. Even if, like me, you were already a little obsessed with Vera Sola’s magical music, Desire Path feels like a whole new level, dramatic, daring and entirely deserving of whatever praise comes her way.

Desire Path is out now via City Slang. For more information on Vera Sola visit https://www.verasola.com/.

Header photo is Vera Sola by Ebru Yildiz