Further Listening:

5. Kitty Perrin Might Just Be Your First Love

A singer, songwriter and BBC radio presenter from Norwich, Kitty Perrin has been writing music since she was eleven and made a big impression last year with the release of her debut EP, Stick It Out. With high-profile fans in Clash Magazine, Beats Per Minute and Tom Robinson, Kitty went on to be long-listed for the Glastonbury Emerging talent competition. Recently Kitty has been working with producer David Pye, and is set to release a string of new singles, the first of which, First Love, she shared this week.

While it’s a breakup song of sorts, First Love is actually more a song of change, in particular the change that happens when we’re no longer watching, as Kitty explains, “it’s about discovering that someone you once knew so well has grown and changed without you. The fact that you can speak to someone every day and then suddenly know nothing about their life seems so strange to me but this song is about accepting that”. Set initially to just the lurching rhythm of the electric guitar, there’s playfulness to the musicality, as pattered percussion and burbling electronics arrive and depart alongside Kitty’s thoughtful lyricism. Few songwriters wear their emotions as lightly as Kitty does here, there’s no hint of melodrama, just a gentle questioning of what might have been, “I wanted to say I’d loved you, I wanted you to say that’s good to know”. We’re often told to think of First Love as a blazing inferno, a bright burning light doomed to fail, Kitty Perrin’s version is altogether more real, it’s that feeling that lingers long in the memory, the one that shapes whatever comes next, a blueprint for love written now as a thrilling sketch of a musical journey that could take Kitty Perrin wherever her imagination wants to go.

First Love is out now. For more information on Kitty Perrin visit https://linktr.ee/KittyPerrinMusic.

4. Empty Country Are Dustine Off The Old Classics

Empty Country is the solo project of Joseph D’Agostino, a musician probably best known as the front person of the celebrated indie band Cymbals Eat Guitars. After releasing four albums, Joseph broke away from the band in 2017, before returning three years ago with the self-titled debut Empty Country album. After the pandemic largely curtailed his live plans, Joseph relocated from Philadelphia to rural New England to be closer to his family and found himself returning to the same headspace that inspired his debut record. The result is Empty Country II, an album made with the legendary recording engineer John Agnello at the studio of R.E.M. producer Mitch Easter, which is due in November as a co-release between Tough Love Records and Get Better Records. Ahead of the release, this week Joseph shared the latest Empty Country single, Dustine.

Six minutes of smouldering intensity, Dustine is a real statement of intent for Empty Country, it’s an ebbing flowing epic of a track, a fittingly tumultuous backing to tell the tale of the titular Dustine, a character who, “may never know peace – but she might not have wanted it anyway”. The track feels like a life’s journey presented in a single track, as sections of driving Band Of Horses-like intensity meet more contemplative moments that seem to share the gritty expansive vision of modern America that Modest Mouse perfected two decades back. The images Joseph paints are not the American Dream so much, as the American reality, “the suburban waste in the southwesternmost extreme of Virginia”, where shopping malls are left to natures tendrils and a rising number of drug rehab clinics are doing their best against the tide, “dead-end clinics in dead malls, dispensing destinies”. Empty Country’s music exists in a place we often don’t want to look at too closely, yet in Joseph’s unflinching portrait of an America split down tribal lines he perhaps offers a vision of better, like the fertile soil that comes from a volcano’s eruption or the new growth appearing after a forest fire, perhaps we can find hope in confronting the forces that divide, as he puts it, “we may be staring into an abyss, but we’re all staring together”.

Empty Country II is out November 3rd via Tough Love Records (UK) / Get Better Records (US). For more information on Empty Country visit https://www.emptycountry.com/.

3. A. Savage’s Dead Good New Single

The frontman of Parquet Courts, A. Savage left New York after a decade in 2017 and marked the occasion by releasing his debut solo album, Thawing Dawn. Six years on, Savage’s latest offering is an altogether more British affair, sculpted in, “the nocturnal hush of rural England”, produced by Bristolian John Parish and bolstered by the musical talents of Cate Le Bon, Ultimate Paintings’ Jack Cooper and array of other acclaimed local talents. The resulting record, Songs About Fire, is out today and was previewed earlier this week via the fabulous new single, David’s Dead.

Described by Savage as, “a portrait of the block in New York City that I called home for over a decade”, David’s Dead is a memorial for his friend and neighbour David Lester, who was homeless and would call on Savage late at night for a chat. The song reflects on Savage’s time in that block, “a tally of things that had changed in that time”, that will resonate with anyone who has lived in a city and watched it evolve in front of your eyes, “David’s passing made some of those changes much more evident than they were before. I can tell you that the last time I saw David I bought him both a black coffee and a can of Crazy Stallion, and that we drank a coffee together on my stoop, but I said ‘see ya later’ when he cracked open the tallboy”. While a wiry, Vibraphone-led story of a shapeshifting city might not be the most obvious tribute to an old friend, Savage’s vision is a fitting one, as he recalls corner shops, murals of local folk and late-night rock’n’roll parties now replaced by struggling renters, neighbours who don’t greet one another and an overwhelming sense of humanity trampled by corporate greed. A. Savage is a writer in the great tradition of the observer, one of those creatives who can look at the world and see it from a different angle than anyone else, and crucially reflect it back for others to see it through his own eyes. As the Ghost of Christmas Past did to Scrooge, he allows you to float about yourself, he shows you what you already know and leaves you with the room to piece the image together for yourself, whether you like what you see or not.

Songs About Fire is out today via Rough Trade Records. For more information on A.Savage visit https://a-savage.com/.

2. Mali Velasquez Is Just The Medicine

It was only two months back that Mali Velasquez first appeared on these pages when the Nashville-based songwriter shared Bobby, the first taster of her debut album, I’m Green, due out next week via Acrophase Records. The album was written following Mali’s relocation from the Texas panhandle to, “the verdant foothills of Tennessee”, a move that inspired her to make music, garner a reborn appreciation for nature, and galvanise a disciplined approach to oil painting, as shown in the artwork of the record. Ahead of the album’s release, this week Mali shared the latest single from it, Medicine.

Described by Mali as, “an extremely cathartic song to write“, Medicine explores ideas of, “overextending myself without regarding any consequences of smothering or overwhelming the person and feeling guilty for doing it“. The song starts gently, a thoughtful flutter of guitar and Mali’s wavering vocal, yet gradually grows in intensity, the guitar taking on a Torres-like fuzz and the drum track picking up behind her as Mali’s voice becomes an emotive howl, “I wanted to say to you, but I fucking forgot, and if I have a paper heart, then you’re probably better off”. While the personal is writ large, perhaps the deeper thoughts in the song are ones of imbalance, in relationships and in the expectations of a society that has conditioned us to accept these as normal. With her genre fusing musical explorations and subtly complex lyricism, Mali Velasquez is breathing fresh life into old sounds, capturing the aching thrills of young adulthood in all their dramatic glory and marking herself out as an artist for whom there really is no limit.

I’m Green is out October 13th via Acrophase Records. For more information on Mali Velasquez visit https://www.instagram.com/malivelasquez/.

1. The Music Is Just Pouring Out Of Middle Sattre

Middle Sattre started life as the solo home-recording project of Salt Lake City native Hunter Prueger, although after heading to Austin, it didn’t stay solo for long. Now expanded to a somewhat impractically large eight-piece lineup, Middle Sattre have spent the last couple of years playing and touring together, and with a mid-west tour on the horizon, this week they shared their much anticipated debut single, Pouring Water.

When Hunter formed Middle Sattre it was in some ways a reaction to his strict upbringing in the Mormon Church and the internalised homophobia and shame he inherited from growing up gay in that environment, a theme he explores in Pouring Water. The track reflects on three pivotal moments and people in his life, the girl he dated in high school, “but never kissed or held hands with“, a friend he went on a date with, “in a last-ditch attempt to be straight“, before they both ended up coming out to one another and finally to his first date with a man, “and the dread and disgust I felt when he asked if I wanted to go back to his place and hook up“. Through these events, Hunter found a common thread at which to tug, “in every experience, regardless of how I identified, there was something holding me back from diving headfirst into these emotions“. Musically, the track is surprisingly subtle for an octet, the influence of Sufjan Stevens and early Perfume Genius clear to see as fluttering guitars accompany Hunter’s shimmering, and rather devastating vocal delivery, as he sings the pained words, “it must be the last chance that I have, try as hard as I can, to make somebody happen for me, to fix me right”. Later in the track, the full effect of the band comes to the fore, as chiming backing vocals and an energetically beautiful violin line, as he almost matter-of-factly repeats the line, “I’ve never been in love, ’cause every time I get close, I get overwhelmed with shame”. Pouring Water is a song of such personal reflections, yet it resonates way beyond, at its heart it is a song not of arriving, but of working towards self-acceptance, of learning who you are in a world that doesn’t always encourage you to do so, and if you can’t relate to that you’re very lucky indeed.

Pouring Water is out now via Sad Tree Records. For more information on Middle Sattre visit https://middlesattre.com/.

Header photo is Middle Sattre by Niles Davis.