Further Listening:

5. Savage Mansion Are Living In The Present

The brainchild of prolific Glasgow-based songwriter Craig Angus, Savage Mansion have been something of a fixture on this site since they first emerged back in 2019 with their excellent, articulate slacker-rock record, Revision Ballads. Two further albums, 2020’s Weird Country and 2022’s Golden Mountain, Here I Come, have followed, alongside a relentless touring schedule, which has seen the band share stages with the likes of Pictish Trail and We Were Promised Jetpacks. Taking a break from the road, the band recently descended on Analogue Catalogue – the Newry, Northern Ireland analogue studio of producer Julie McLarnon, to record the tracks that would become their upcoming album, The Shakes, out in February on their regular home Lost Map. With the release coming quickly on the horizon this week the band shared the second single from it, Present Tense.

The result of, “a conscious effort to take a bit more care“, The Shakes was written with a particular goal in mind, “to preserve the immediacy of an exciting idea, but envelope it in something more sophisticated and reflective“. This idea is reflected in Present Tense a song Craig was initially sceptical about before it came together when the band started playing it together. The track is the low extremity of one of the album’s themes, “reckoning with the animal inside us“, as Craig explains the song explores the tale of his high school English teacher and the affair they had with a child at the school, “It was messy and horrible, and registering it as a 13/14-year-old you didn’t really take it in properly. I remember bringing it up at the pub and everyone had a similar story, at least one“. Musically, Present Tense finds Savage Mansion digging into the well of No-Wave New York bands who adored The Velvet Underground, the rhythm section has a distinct swagger, beneath the unfurling, ever-evolving guitars that possess a Graham Coxon-like swagger. Lyrically, the track is suitably wracked with nervous tension, the sound of a man brought to the edge of self-inflicted destruction by his own worst impulses, “don’t tell a soul about it, don’t act on your power, if word got out, you’d be done”. Ultimately this is a tale that requires no hatchet job, it’s a character study of the inexcusable, Craig putting his judgement to one side and really digging into what it’s like to live with yourself at that lowest ebb, when your present tense is gone and the future has nowhere left to run.

The Shakes is out February 16th via Lost Map. For more information on Savage Mansion visit https://savagemansion.bandcamp.com/.

4. Non La Heads For Homes

Hailing from Vancouver, Non La is the solo project of Taiwanese-Vietnamese musician DJ On, known for his work with Thee AHs and TV Ugly. On’s work under the Non La moniker is dedicated to queer storytelling, and was launched back in 2020 when he teamed up with Kingfisher Bluez to release the debut album, Not in Love. Now freshly signed to Mint Records, the next Non La has been back in the studio working on new material, and this week shared the first taster of where his music is headed next in the shape of a new stand-alone single, Homes.

Discussing Homes, On suggests the track was “born out of a need for catharsis“, and tackles, “the complex feelings at the end of a relationship“. What’s clear listening to Homes, is that On isn’t really ready to let this relationship go, “for you to come around, and fix everything that you’ve messed somehow, even if it takes a while, I still think I could wait for you”. Musically, the track starts off with the sort of minimal slow-core Elvis Depressedly would be proud of, just On’s echoing vocal and the wiry fuzz of a lone guitar, yet as it progresses the track swells and burns, reflecting the growing anger and pain in the lyrics as he sings, “do you think you’re being warm, when you are really starting fires? And now you want to fly away and not look back at the smoke”. Around the three-minute mark, the track comes to a crashing emotive crescendo, the guitars suddenly becoming an overdriven explosion, the drums a clattering, clanking paroxysm of angst. For all the pain left raw on the tape, this is also a song with a fondness, with a still burning tenderness and affection for what was, and what On still clearly feels, still could be. A thrilling teaser of where On is taking Non La next, Homes feels like the opening chapter in a story of huge potential, and I for one can’t wait to see where it takes us next.

Homes is out now via Mint Records. For more information on Non La visit https://www.instagram.com/nonlaband/

3. There Ain’t No Motive For This Crime, Jenny Was A New Song by Langkamer

2023 has been a huge year for Bristol’s Langkamer, and in typically irrepressible fashion, they’re not done yet. Back in May, the band shared their second album, The Noon and Midnight Manual via Breakfast Records, since then they’ve gone on to tour relentlessly, sharing stages with the likes of Friendship and Juan Wauters. Wrapping up the year with the announcement of their first-ever US shows, and a string of UK December dates, the band recently celebrated with the release of a brand-new single, Jenny.

A properly DIY-affair, Jenny was recorded, mixed and mastered by the band at their own Bristol base, and picks up the slacker-country baton that The Noon And Midnight Manual wowed so many with earlier this year. Built around an avalanche of fabulous entwined guitar melodies, and complex percussive flourishes, Jenny is Langkamer at their most candid, as they touch on ideas of, “vulnerability and self-defence“. As the band explain, the track is, “about the walls that some people put up around themselves to try and stay safe. Some people have this veneer of bravado and distance, but it only serves to make them weaker and more vulnerable“. In many, the way the track seems to touch on ideas of modern masculinity, of seeing vulnerability as a flaw in our tough guy armours, and opening up today as a route to pain tomorrow, as shown in the repeated line, “Jenny if I let you in now, you’re gonna fucking kill me”. The track ends, if not with a revelation, but at least with a certain softening, “scatter, scatter my, scatter my days”, as if our narrator is opening his heart to the wind, and the possibility of dropping his guard. While so many bands of brothers playing guitars seem like relics of the distant past, Langkamer seem willing and able to evolve with the times, and remain relevant and thriving as a result.

Jenny is out now via Breakfast Records. For more information on Langkamer visit https://linktr.ee/Langkamer.

2. Even Age Can’t Change Anona

Based out of Brighton, Anona is the project of Ella Oona Russell, a multi-instrumentalist and painter best known as the flautist, stand-up drummer and vocalist with The New Eves. After a three-year period of delays and postponements, the debut Anona EP arrived back in January and drew plenty of plaudits of its own. Celebrating a hugely successful year, this week Ella shared the latest Anona single, the Karen Dalton-inspired, Same Old Lady.

Inspired by Dalton’s Same Old Man, itself a reworking of the American folk song Old Man Sitting at a Mill, Same Old Man takes the bare bones of Dalton’s track and spins them into Anona’s own, “freaky, orchestral-folk eminence”. The track manages to at once be a delightfully expansive affair, and contrastingly intimate, while we’re treated to a vast array of instruments from flutes to saxophones, cellos and pianos, the focus never really leaves Ella’s crisp, Naima Bock-like vocal. The song was born out of a live performance, and became something rather special, as Ella explains, “I wanted to see where we could take it and that feeling. It turned into a celebration of these people that live and die within the song”. By tapping into the rich heritage of this song, Ella allowed herself to really explore the characters within, to breathe new life into people long departed and to introduce them to a whole new generation for us all to get to know them once more.

Same Old Lady is out now via Strong Island Recordings. For more information on Anona visit https://linktr.ee/anonamusic

1. The Umbrellas Are Echoing Around My Mind

The latest jangling indie-popsters from the West Coast of America, The Umbrellas formed in 2018 and are a San Francisco-based four-piece signed to the winning label pairing of Tough Love and Slumberland Records. Describing themselves as “renegade romantics”, the band found many potential admirers with their self-titled 2021 debut, which saw the band head out on the road, and even on some international flights, supporting the likes of Papercuts and Fucked Up. For their next move, the band decided it was time to spend some time at home, descending, in the most literal sense, to record in vocalist Matt Ferrera’s basement studio, enjoying the freedom it provided to, “sit on the songs, and really work on them”. The result is their upcoming album, Fairweather Friend, which will arrive in January, and which they previewed this week with their latest single, Echoes.

Echoes touches on a slightly unusual topic for a pop song, of accepting your dreams might never come true, as the band explain the track, “utilizes that wistful, melancholic feeling of letting go of some of the more unrealistic aspects of your dreams and aspirations“. While it has a certain sense of world-weary mourning, the song is also in its own way somewhat joyous, liberated from the pressure of dreaming too big, “there’s no sense in crying over all that’s been forgotten like it never was at all, over what was just beginning when you used to feel so tall, we’re all just getting older and the city feels so small, watch your dreams become an echo down the hall”. Musically, it finds the bands tapping into their classic influences from The Pastels to The Sundays (in particular in the wonderfully tumbling vocal melody, which has had Here’s Where The Story Ends stuck in my head all week), and showcasing a growth into the more introspective thoughtful indie-ilk of Allo Darlin’ or the much missed Veronica Falls. This is the kind of progress you dare to hope for when a band emerges with a new record, The Umbrellas have reinvented themselves without ever forgetting how good they already were, a jewel in the indie-pop crown primed and ready to thrive in all weathers

Fairweather Friend is out January 26th via Tough Love / Slumberland Records. For more information on The Umbrellas visit https://linktr.ee/theumbrellas

Header photo is The Umbrellas by Jorge Aguilar