Further Listening:

5. The First Day Of Spring Is A Picture In Blue

A London-based band, fronted by Southend-on-Sea-born songwriter Samuel Jones, First Day Of Spring found themselves as the name on a lot of tastemakers’ lips at the start of 2023 around the release of their excellent debut EP, Fly Over Apple Blossom. Since then the band have largely been squirrelled away working on their next move, the first evidence of which they shared this week in the shape of their new single, You’re Blue I’m Blue.

While the title might hint at mutually assured depression, You’re Blue I’m Blue is actually wider in its scope, the blue in question is possibly a football kit, or a favourite band, as Sam explains the track, “is predominantly about tribes and ultimately the ability for those tribes to co-exist harmoniously and be among each other in the present”. While leaning into some of the dream-pop textures they showcased on Fly Over Apple Blossom, here the band seem to have sharpened their claws, the guitars slicing through the crashy drums and fuzzy vocals, with the bombastic, anthemic quality of The Pixies or Modest Mouse. In many ways it just feels like an expansion, the First Day Of Spring sound you loved, only louder, more direct and more focused, and as it drifts out on a clatter of drums and the visceral searing guitars, you’ll be hoping this Spring can last all year.

You’re Blue I’m Blue is out now. For more information on First Day Of Spring visit https://linktr.ee/firstdayofspringband.

4. Orla Gartland Heads Down The Mine

Dublin-born, and now London-based, Orla Gartland is a musician who understands the power of connections. Since she began sharing her music online when just a teenager, Orla has gradually grown a tribe around her, sharing work-in-progress music via her Secret Demo Club and massing a social media following the envy of many far more traditionally established artists. Back in 2019, she took the world by storm with her debut album, Woman On The Internet, which went top ten on both sides of the Irish Sea. The subsequent years have seen her take time, releasing an album with her more collaborative project FIZZ, while working away in the shadows on her next solo move. After recently sharing the single, Little Chaos, this week Orla shared the second taster of her new material, via her latest single, Mine, released via her own New Friends label.

Described by Orla as, “by far the most vulnerable song I’ve written to date“, Mine, “tells a fragmented story of an experience that really affected my relationship with intimacy and how that stayed with me throughout relationships that followed“. Recalling contemporaries like Ailbhe Reddy or Josienne Clarke, Mine finds Orla laying it all out, her voice initially joined by just an almost absent-minded guitar part, before swells of strings arrive to add some much needed textural detail. The spacious production is beautifully judged, allowing the brutal honesty of Orla’s words room to breathe and sink in, whether recalling her darkest moments or ultimately at the song’s close reclaiming her sense of self, “I still remember the time, you looked me dead in the eyes and I realised that my body was mine”. A song Orla concedes ideally “nobody can relate to”, yet also one she hopes, “can bring comfort and hope to anyone who does“, a potent combination that might just be Orla’s most striking musical statement yet.

Mine is out now via New Friends. For more information on Orla Gartland visit https://www.orlagartland.com/.

3. Fake? No, Why Bonnie Are The Real Deal

Something of a regular feature on these pages, it was just last month that Why Bonnie last appeared here. That was around the news of their signing to Fire Talk Records, alongside their excellent first single for the label, Dotted Line. This week saw the New York-based band share news of their upcoming second album, Wish On The Bone, which will see the light of day at the end of the summer. Marking the announcement, Why Bonnie also shared the second snippet of the record, their new single, Fake Out.

A song about, “trying to be authentic in a world that makes it impossible to be so”, Fake Out was the first track Why Bonnie worked on when songwriter Blair Howerton gathered the band back together to work on Wish On The Bone. Fake Out is a masterclass in musical build, it starts with a lightness, a single distant guitar that gradually resolves into something distinctly pretty as it’s joined by subtle drums and tumbling synth lines. As the song progresses though it just seems to build, the guitar starts working overtime, the bounce of the drums gives way to a crashing intensity and Blair’s vocal, initially a source of sweet, poised melody becomes a howl, as she wails, “it’s not my face, I imitate”. Just as the whole thing swells at the seams and threatens to burst outward, it instead implodes, contracting into a quiet, intimate ball, a meander of guitar and bright piano runs, adorned with a wordless melody and crackling static, eventually fading to nothing. It’s perhaps a reflection of where Wish On The Bone finds Why Bonnie, a place where anger can’t just grow, and hope must arrive, as Blair recalls, “these songs were written out of hope for a better future. I’m not naïve, the world is fucked up, but I think you can radically accept that while still believing it’s possible to change things“, and with songs this good, there’s definitely something worth clinging onto.

Wish On The Bone is out August 30th via Fire Talk. For more information on Why Bonnie visit https://www.whybonnie.com/

2. Langkamer Are Acting The Part

There’s something almost old-fashioned about the rise of prolific Bristol-based slacker-rockers Langkamer. In a time of hype and boom-and-bust fame, they’ve taken a more traditional route, three albums in three years, prodigious gigging, touring with pretty much anyone who’ll have them, and gradually building things up as they hone their songwriting craft. This October will see the release of their new album, Lagzamer, and celebrating that excellent news, they shared the record’s first single, Richard E Grant.

Although quite what the song has to do with the reliably rebellious titular actor, Richard E Grant is the first example of the themes explored on Langzamer namely loss, grief, “Death and God”. Here, as drummer/singer Josh Jarman explains, they particularly dive into grief, “in the short term and the long term. It’s about finding healthy coping strategies to deal with loss“. While there’s a tendency to portray grief as something constantly heavy, here Langkamer sound contrastingly breezy, the song has a lightness of touch, as the rhythmic bounce of the guitar and drums is adorned with tumbling keys and a delightfully bubbling bass line. Amid it all Josh offers an ebbing reflection, as memories meet reality, the past and present colliding into one blurry whole, “Richard E Grant, tickets and dinner for two, singing the same stupid songs I always do”. As the song gradually builds in intensity, we seem to find Josh questioning a way forward, “if you’ve got to do it, you can’t go through it, go around, go around”. It’s as if he does not want to step into the current of grief, wanting instead to sidestep and delay, not ready to work through all the messiness and goodbyes that come with moving on. It feels like a different period for Langkamer, taking their road-worn musical talents and harnessing them onto something darker, more personal and quite possibly more intriguing than ever before.

Langzamer is out October 16th via Breakfast Records. For more information on Langkamer visit https://linktr.ee/Langkamer.

1. Lunar Vacation Set The Stage For Something That Matters

Hailing from Decatur, a small city in Georgia, Lunar Vacation came to the world’s attention back in 2021 with the rather brilliant, and brilliantly titled, album, Inside Every Fig is a Dead Wasp, in their own words, “a product of many hours shared experimenting in a living room together”. While that was a record, as the band put it, “manicured”, for their next move Lunar Vacation went for something completely different, working with an ethos that every idea could be a good one, ““this one’s organic. We embraced mistakes; it made the work even better“. The result is their upcoming album, Everything Matters, Everything’s Fire, due out once again via Keeled Scales in September, and previewed this week with their new single, Set The Stage.

Written by vocalist and guitarist Gep Repasky, Set The Stage is as they explain, “the first love song I wrote about someone and then sent it to them”. It’s fair to say that didn’t go too well, “that is the first and last time I will ever do that. Love can make you do really strange things“. Still, as the old saying goes every cloud has a silver lining, and in Gep’s case that silver lining comes in the form of a rather brilliant new single, “once the walls were down, we went in blazing, and changed the vibe of the sad, acoustic demo to the monster that it is now“. The song doesn’t just start, but bursts out of the speakers, a blazing flourish of clattering cymbals and feedback-drenched guitars, before taking a turn for the grungier low-end as Gep’s vocals enter, their poised delivery belying the vulnerability shown in the lyrical pronouncement, “in my dreams we’re together, we’ve been in love forever, now I’d hate it if you’d ever think the same”. As the song progresses the initial flicker gives way to a sense of both justified resentment, and a realisation it was never meant to be, “I feel likе crying every second that I think of your complеxion, to be fair, you never really fit in me”. The song ends in a cloud of shoegazy noise, and a suitably raging repeated refrain, “you changed on me again”, seeming to nod to that lightbulb moment where someone’s real feelings come sharply into view, and you don’t always like what you see. This matters, this is fire, and by putting their powerful friendships at the heart of everything they do, Lunar Vacation have never sounded better.

Everything Matters, Everything’s Fire is out September 13th via Keeled Scales. For more information on Lunar Vacation visit https://linktr.ee/lunarvacation

Header photo is Lunar Vacation by Violet Teegardin.