Further Listening:

5. Brace Yourself For The Full Bodied Taste Of Dutch Wine

A trio based out of Glasgow, Dutch Wine had something of a breakout year in 2022, starting the year selling out the 120-capacity The Hug and Pint and finishing it at the 300-capacity Stereo. Along the way, the band also found time to release two EPs and receive a nomination for a Scottish Alternative Music Award, not a bad return for their first full year as a band. This year has perhaps understandably found the band pausing to catch their breath, until this week at least when they returned with a new single, Brace.

Dutch Wine recently left the, “improvised storage unit” where the band was formed for a more traditional studio space, and as vocalist Calvin Smith recalls, it couldn’t have come at a better time, “this was the first of our new tunes that reignited the spark for me”. The song came from a new experience for Calvin, writer’s block, “I felt like I wasn’t able to write anything exciting or worthy”. From the acorn of a few chords, came the oak tree that is Brace, the band’s most ambitious and fully realised moment to date. It’s a timeless indie-rock song, the sort of earnest guitar crashing, snare slapping sound that was de rigueur in the early noughties courtesy of bands like The Stills and Nine Black Alps. Thankfully Dutch Wine possess that unexplainable quality that lifts this beyond a retro pastiche, as Calvin pours out his doubts and self-admonishments atop a wall of noisy expression. Whatever the it-factor is, Dutch Wine have it in spades, and while surely not their aim, they transport me back to a time when I was just discovering the possibility music had to offer. The world moves on and so does music, yet occasionally you just need a sip of something comforting to send you back, so pour a glass of Dutch Wine and let the new nostalgia flow.

Brace is out now. For more information on Dutch Wine visit https://linktr.ee/dutchwineband.

4. Katie Von Schleicher Speaks To The People

The slow-drip return of Katie Von Schleicher to the world’s ears began back in June when she ended a three-year musical hiatus with the single Elixir, quickly followed by a second, Overjoyed. The intervening years saw her largely move behind the recording desk, making other people’s records as she wrote poetry, enrolled in creative writing classes, and generally did anything but share her own music. Thankfully the songs never stopped, and this week we were treated to the third of her summer series of singles, in the shape of their new track, Montagnard People.

Montagnard People lifts its title from a somewhat unusual source, “a business card I picked up somewhere in the south and found charming; I keep it on my piano”. Accompanying a distinctly ambitious musical backing, the track at face value feels like a series of disconnected moments, “simple really” as Katie puts it, “my older sister telling me to commemorate my aging body with nudes while I still looked young, my slow passage of time in lockdown watching every action movie starring Dwayne Johnson, time losing all sense of movement and yet going on“. These seemingly disparate snapshots may feel loose and free-flowing, yet they’re accompanied by a wonderfully expansive musical vista. The complex rhythm section punctuated by congas and a brilliant rolling bass line are accompanied by a shifting backing of swooping strings and pulsating horns, the whole thing reminiscent of the sonic ambition coming out of Spacebomb Records. For all the suggestions of lyrical simplicity, there seems to be a certain strain of hidden meaning, a sense of time passing, ageing and listlessness, hidden in a warm bath of musical luxuriance. Further evidence that Katie Von Schleicher remains a playful, creative songwriter of the highest quality, and one who after many years of making wonderful music still feels like her best moments are yet to come.

Montagnard People is out now via Sipsman. For more information on Katie Von Schleicher visit https://www.k-v-s.net/.

3. The Garment District, Sure, Take The Next Onto A Street Called Finland And You Can’t Miss It

Based out of Pittsburgh, The Garment District is the brain-child of Jennifer Baron, an artist whose roots dig deep into the independent scene, both as a founding member of Ladybug Transistor and having worked with the likes of Sonic Boom and Jowe Head. Working with an extended circle of free-flowing collaborators, The Garment District were born over a decade back, with various releases peppering the following years, leading up to 2016’s If You Take Your Magic Slow. Some seven years later, The Garment District are set to return this September, teaming up with the HHBTM Records imprint to share their latest collection, Flowers Telegraphed To All Parts Of The World, which they previewed this week via their new single, A Street Called Finland.

Discussing the inspiration behind A Street Called Finland, Jennifer suggests it, “is a way for me to reflect on and process the thoughts, feelings and perceptions I have – as well as imagined experiences with and places inhabited by – a half-sister I have never gotten to know“. That sense of adventure and searching is present in the music, as Jennifer dipped into, “the golden age of the analog synthesizer universe“, before going in search of a, “driving beat to propel the song and the imagined narrative“, brought to life via a combination of live drums and 808 samples. The result is fairly extraordinary, a song that seems to exist on ever-shifting sands without ever stumbling, throughout instruments enter, play their part and then never leave, the whole thing building to a melodic cacophony, before a distorted Wurlitzer electric piano brings the whole thing to a bonkers, although rather beautiful end. A Street Called Finland almost has the feel of trying to cram the entire history of alternative-pop into a single five-minute song, the sound of a creator so alive, and in love with ideas that they can’t bear to leave any of them out, and thankfully capable of balancing that into something that really works. A gorgeous kaleidoscopic pop record, The Garment District have made something joyous, a band in love with music, making music to fall in love with, what’s not to like about that?

Flowers Telegraphed To All Parts Of The World is out September 22nd via HHBTM Records. For more information on The Garment District visit https://www.thegarmentdistrictmusic.com/.

2. And The Lifetime Achievement Award Goes To…Popular Music

Popular Music is the almost ungoogleable trans-Pacific project of former Paranthetical Girls band leader Zac Pennington and the Australian composer Prudence Rees-Lee. Back in 2020, the band shared their wonderfully unusual debut Popular Music Plays In Darkness. Written in an apparently haunted apartment out in East Hollywood it saw the band covering a series of songs written for films and attempting to deconstruct, “the musical language of 20th Century cinema”. As that curtain fell, the obvious question- what exactly do you do for an encore? The answer, get writing! The result is the band’s first album of original material, Minor Works, recorded over three continents, it features a rhythm section of Greg Saunier (Deerhoof) and composer Jherek Bischoff (Angel Olsen, Xiu Xiu, David Byrne), Juliette Pearl Davis of Pearl & The Oysters, and even the small matter of 17-piece Russian Chamber Orchestra, conducted over Zoom – so I think it’s safe to say they haven’t got any less ambitious.

Ahead of the album’s release in October, the band recently shared the record’s first single, Lifetime Achievement. The track begins with a scene-setting pulsing keyboard chord, a light shines down from the rafters bathing a podium of an award show in an artificial glow, our narrator takes the stage of a dusty award show to polite applause, a career coming to an end in inauspicious circumstance to the strains of a “pre-recorded band”, playing, “fanfare for a common man”. As the song progresses the whole thing seems to blur, a drum-machine propels the wavering synths, “the memories drift to better fit the rhyme”, as the uninterested crowd become a thronging mass, “they’re throwing flowers now, there’s a coronation with a pastel paper crown”. As the song draws to its reluctant close though, we are suddenly not sure we’re even at an awards show at all, the distortion grows in intensity, and the spotlight feels more like it’s coming from the heavens, “the moment has come, the moment is done, lift up your lace in front of grace and god and everyone, the end has begun”. Theatrical and just the right side of absurd, Popular Music seem to have not just created a soundtrack, but a whole world, there remains nobody quite like them and they’re all the more intriguing as a result.

Minor Works is out October 13th via Sanitarium Sound Services. For more information on Popular Music visit http://www.popularmusic.rip/.

1. Faith Healer Want To Be Your Dog

Based out of Edmonton, Alberta, Faith Healer are the duo of Jessica Jalbert and Renny Wilson. Although they’ve been active for the best part of a decade, it was arguably 2017’s Try that truly announced the band’s arrival, the album saw the band shed their chamber-pop roots and expand their sound outward into brave new musical worlds. Six, rather odd, years later, and the duo seem keen to pick up where they left off, with their upcoming album, The Hand That The Fits The Glove, set to arrive in October via Mint Records, which they previewed this week with their new single I’m A Dog.

Discussing I’m A Dog, Jessica suggests it is a song about the influence upbringing and society put upon us, “about how the supposed sinfulness of indulgence and sensuality has been baked into my identity, and how that makes me feel like an unruly dog“. The track in someways dips back into simpler times, “light and easy, a throwback to the jangly Faith Healer of old”. The song wafts in, all breezy synths and tumbling bass, before a propulsive rhythm and easy vocal send it spiralling into a lightly psychedelic slice of dream-pop, nodding to the sophisticated pop of acts like Saint Etienne or The Beta Band. Towards the song’s close, there’s even time for a wonderful guitar break-down, a sign of the confidence with which Faith Healer are approaching their music, bringing Canadian cool to the world at large.

The Hand That Fits The Glove is out October 13th via Mint Records. For more information on Faith Healer visit https://faithhealer.bandcamp.com/

Header Photo is Faith Healer by Colin Medley