Further Listening:

5. More Likely Than Not You’ll Find Squirrel Flower Intheskatepark

Squirrel Flower, the project of Chicago-based songwriter Ella Williams, last appeared on these pages last month around the release of Alley Light, the second track to be lifted from her upcoming record, Tomorrow’s Fire. Released next month via Full Time Hobby/Polyvinyl, Tomorrow’s Fire finds Ella taking on production duties, working out of Drop of Sun Studios in Asheville alongside acclaimed engineer Alex Farrar, a decision made from the joy she found in the self-creation of the Planet EP. With the record just a fortnight away, this week Ella shared the latest single from the record, intheskatepark.

Possibly Squirrel Flower’s most instantaneously joyous song to date, intheskatepark bounds in on a scuzzy fuzz of guitars and pattering drums, the whole thing nodding to 1990s alternative heavyweights like The Breeders or Yo La Tengo. The track was originally written a number of years back, “on a little toy synthesizer“, and it has a fittingly playful narrative to match, as Ella explains, “to me, this song is everlasting summer — even as things change, seasons, feelings, relationships, you can still try and feel the perfect lightness of summer, of a new crush, of a pop riff“. Despite the track’s nostalgic optimism, towards its close, a song Ella describes as “best listened to while biking around in the sunshine“, does seem to gently roll into the bump into the road, as she sings, “I thought if I touched you slowly you’d be feeling the same way, I thought if if told you slowly you’d be feeling the same way”. It’s the little nagging doubt that lurks in the back of your mind, the suspicion that creeps into your mind when you should be enjoying the moment, it’s worrying about Tomorrow’s Fire when today’s is burning bright. Let that worry go, hop on your bike and enjoy summer’s final anthem, Squirrel Flower never sounded so free.

Tomorrow’s Fire is out October 13th via Full Time Hobby / Polyvinyl. For more information on Squirrel Flower visit https://www.squirrelflower.net/.

4. Sad Songs Make The Most Popular Music

Currently based between Los Angeles and Melbourne/Narrm, Popular Music is the somewhat confusingly named (their own words not mine) duo of Australian composer Prudence Rees-Lee and former Parenthetical Girls leader Zac Pennington. The band first appeared in 2020 with the brilliantly intriguing debut album, Popular Music Plays Darkness, a collection of music for film entirely reimagined in their own image. For their next step the band are returning with a collection of original material, Minor Works Of Popular Music, which will be released next month, and was previewed this week with their latest offering, Sad Songs.

While not an outright cover, Sad Songs is nonetheless heavily indebted to music history, as the band explain the track is, “a pop song about the ecstasy and futility of writing pop songs”. The song casts our protagonist as a fading musical heavyweight, sliding into self-doubt and hell-bent on dragging you down with them, “abandon all romantic notions, abandon hope all those who enter here, cuz we’re just going through the motions and I’ll say anything you want to hear”. Amongst the bitter declines, there’s a distinct sadness as Zac channels the spirits of Scott Walker or Jarvis Cocker as he sings of his own lack of importance, “I wrote the songs that made the young girls cry, I wrote the songs that made them want to die. By any metric you might measure with, I made the songs they made no difference”. As the song progresses it seems to become increasingly dramatic, the vast string section getting more and more urgent, the marching drum rhythm picking up around him, as he references Gena Rowland, Barry Manilow, and both surprisingly, and unmistakably Haddaway, “Because the songs are never sad enough, because the drugs are never strong enough and when the song asked us “What is love?” We knew exactly what the answer was: Baby Don’t Hurt Me, Don’t Hurt me No more”. So yes it’s just Popular Music, but does it really not matter? Does it really make no difference? For five minutes here, Popular Music make a pretty good case that in all its brilliant pointlessness a song can still, in whatever tiny way, change the world.

Minor Works of Popular Music is out October 13th. For more information on Popular Music visit https://www.popularmusic.rip/.

3. They’ll Write Books About Ava Mirzadegan

A self-confessed writer of, “quiet songs about longing, letting go, and befriending night skies”, Ava Mirzadegan is a Philadelphia-based songwriter, singer and nylon-stringed guitar maestro. Written on the back of a painful break-up, Ava’s debut album Dark Dark Blue in her own words, “begs the question: If someone falls apart in their room, and no one is around to hear it, do they still make a sound?” With the album set to arrive at the start of November on Team Love Records, this week Ava shared the first single from it, Book Song.

As Ava recalls, Book Song is a track born out of the very early days of lockdown, and a project she began work on with Michael Cormier-O’Leary, “taking inspiration from the band Powerdove, with me writing the songs and us building them out virtually“. The track was inspired by a desire to not get too personal, as Ava explains, “I began writing about the book staring back at me from my bedside table…it was only after that I realized I was writing about the desire to end a romantic relationship“. Fantastically Autumnal, the track, which Ava describes as, “both a realization and an apology wrapped into one“, is a wonderfully spacious affair. The echoing guitar pulses and parts beneath Ava’s vocal, an instrument as intricate and strong as a spider’s web as it brings to mind the likes of Lisa/Liza or Cross Record’s most muted moments. There’s something transportative about the music Ava makes, in all the space and silence within her songs we hear the creaks and intimacy of her bedroom pouring onto the tape, she invites us into her world, lets us look at her books, hear her records and just for a moment share the secrets she hasn’t even always worked out how to share with herself.

Dark Dark Blue is out November 3rd via Team Love Records. For more information on Ava Mirzadegan visit https://linktr.ee/avamirzadegan.

2. I’ve Got A Whole Lotta Love For Dancer

A Glasgow-based collective with roots across the entirety of the UK, Dancer have already had something of a breakout year after sharing their self-titled debut EP back in February. Wasting no time, the band, who consist of members of Current Affairs, Nightshift and Order Of The Toad, will return next month with the excellently named second album, Dancer As Well. Ahead of the EP’s release via GoldMold Records, this week the band shared their new single, Love.

Recorded live to tape at Glasgow’s Green Door Studio, Dancer As Well finds the band attempting to dig down into characteristics they already possess, distilling down what Dancer is into something more intense and streamlined than their debut. Love is a fine example, a slow-burning, melodically led track, that smooths out the edges into something more overtly poppy than ever before. We’re greeted by wavering guitar interplay, meandering lead lines cut through by urgent flourishes of rhythmic chords and the pattering bounce of the drum track. Atop it all we’re treated to a brutally honest love song, Gemma Fleet’s sing-speak vocal delivery calling back to fellow Glaswegians Life Without Buildings, as she tracks a relationship from early optimism to wearing familiarity. We’re all used to pop songs where love is presented as the be-all and end-all, the soaring high or the crushing low, here we get a more truthful take, as initial thrills, “I’d be delighted to be invited to stay with you tonight”, becomes nagging routines, “now every single thing you do is grating, the same applies to me”, yet the feelings remain, “you’re everything and more, and I love you, I love you, I really, really love you”. With a debut album already in the works for next year Dancer feel like a band quietly making a name for themselves, getting more intriguing with every release and ready to soar.

Dancer As Well is out October 13th via GoldMold Records. For more information on Dancer visit https://linktr.ee/dancerareaband.

1. Get Wrong Never Had It So Easy

Martha and The Spook School are two bands who will be forever linked, through the Fortuna Pop label, through Indietracks festival, and now through the new supergroup of sorts, Get Wrong. The synth-pop duo of Marth’s Naomi Griffin and The Spook School’s Adam Todd, Get Wrong are something of a long-distance project with the pair based in Durham and Glasgow respectively. Upping their supergroup credentials, Get Wrong’s debut EP was recorded at Field Music’s studio in Sunderland, with Peter Brewis producing and Dave Brewis mastering the record. That self-titled EP will be released in December as a joint effort between Alcopop! and Father/Daughter Records and this week Get Wrong shared the first single from it, It’s So Easy.

As Adam explains, It’s So Easy is a track that explores, “the joy you can get from the mundane when you’re in the company of people that you love“. While that might send your mind spinning towards the romantic, Adam is keen to stress it’s “not necessarily about romantic love“, instead it’s friendship and comfort, “the kind where you don’t need to try at all. You can just exist in each other’s company“. Musically, the track is a complete departure from the previous output you might know from either member, it digs lovingly into the influence of 1980’s synth-pop, channelling the likes of New Order or Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, as skittering drum machines and burbling synths create a joyously danceable backing to the sweetly melodic twin vocals. There’s a real escapism to the track as they tap into those moments where you can truly express yourself with the people you adore, “we’re getting the words wrong to almost every song, you look at me in the mirror and you see the person I always was and I love you”. Put this track on and I dare you not to smile, to be transported to your happiest memories and your favourite people, a nostalgic hug from a song you’ve never heard before, one song in Get Wrong already feels very, very right.

Get Wrong’s self-titled EP is out December 1st via Alcopop! (UK) and Father/Daughter Records (US). For more information on Get Wrong visit https://getwrong.bandcamp.com/.

Header photo is Get Wrong by Arthur Williams