Further Listening:

5. Nightshift Sure Look The Part

A collection of good souls from the Glasgow music, Nightshift appeared on this page back in May as they announced details of their first album in three years, Homosapiens. With lineup, and instrument, shifts since 2022’s Zöe, Homosapiens feels like a fresh start for the band, entirely fitting for a record born out of, “genuinely existential times”, as the band looked birth, death and love square in the eye. With the record now just weeks away from release, Nightshift recently shared the album’s third single, Sure Look.

Described by vocalist and keyboardist Eothen Stern as, “a love letter to yourself to take care of yourself, but also a moment of calm“, Sure Look came to her mind, “inspired by my current partner’s use of the phrase. It’s kind of untangling and calm“. The thoughtful quality of the lyrics is equally present in the music, which has a distinctly dream-like quality courtesy of Eothern’s wavering keyboard line, cyclical violins courtesy of Ray Aggs and the expert pattering rhythms of new sticksman, Rob Alexander, which are reminiscent of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs more thoughtful moments. After the outward glancing quality of the record’s first single, Crystal Ball, Sure Look is a reminder that Nightshift are a band more than capable of dipping a toe into matters of the heart, two different sides of the same coin, that fittingly suggests there might be something in Homosapiens for every person listening.

Homosapiens is out July 26th via Trouble In Mind. For more information on Nightshift visit https://nightshift.band/.

4. Jules Ahoi’s Treemendous New Single

Hailing from Cologne, Germany, Jules Ahoi has always been an artist exploring different creative paths. From his first musical project, Mauna Loa, he went through various incarnations following the trend for, “bigger, better, more produced, more polished”, and gradually feeling like he was losing himself in the process. At this crossroads he decided to lean into his roots, to get back to creativity, folk and the creation of art for art’s sake. This decision coincided with a residency spent at the Bauhaus World Heritage Site, the renowned design school in Dessau, which shaped his new record, Magnolia (The Bauhaus Tapes), which he previewed this week with the title track, Magnolia.

Magnolia was inspired by the flowering period of the tree of the same name, which has become a symbol for a “brief but intense blossoming of classical modernism in Germany”. As well as drawing inspiration from nature, the track also questions our relationship with it, as Jules explains, “man needs the earth, but the earth does not necessarily need man. A dependency that many people like to suppress or deny”. Jules has described his sound as artfolk, drawing as much on the self-taught creativity of Art Brut (the “naive art” movement rather than Eddy Argos and co), and here he adorns his folk-inspired roots with the more classical tones of cello and violin, creating a sound akin to early-Midlake or Bon Iver. Jules Ahoi is clearly a deep thinker, a quality that permeates his music, his art, and his entire existence, yet here by leaning into his instincts, he seems to have hit on something rather special, a fusion of heart and head that feels like the only direction his music should be headed.

Magnolia (The Bahaus Tapes) is out September 6th via Embassy of Music. For more information on Jules Ahoi visit https://www.julesahoi.xyz/

3. Headlining Hyde Park This Week – hemlock

The project of Chicago-based songwriter Carolina Chauffe, hemlock has always felt to me like a band on the edge of a breakthrough, their sound perfectly suited to reach a much larger audience than they have so far. That might come to overdue fruition with the October release of their new full-band album, 444, which re-imagines select cuts of Carolina’s, “twelve-year song-a-day-for-a-month phone-fi folk project”. Working with a band of beloved Midwestern musicians, Carolina created a sort of, “best of so far” collection, that serves as a sonic expansion of the sound many were already learning to love. Ahead of the release, this week hemlock shared a Double-A single, consisting of Drive & Drive and Hyde Park.

The two tracks showcase two different sides of hemlock, Drive & Drive reflecting, “the routine whiplash of being an independent touring musician”, while Hyde Park looks at, “new love, celebrating fate and the crossing of paths”. If they’re walking different lyrical paths, the two tracks also showcase the new variety in hemlock’s songwriting. Drive & Drive is the more obviously full band of the two numbers, as smouldering guitars with the intensity of St. Vincent or Squirrel Flower, meet Carolina’s gritty vocal delivery and the pleasing clatter of drums. Possibly my favourite of the two though is Hyde Park, from the pleasantly skittering quality of the drums, to the Tenci-like vocal melody and wavering guitars, it is at once gentle and conversely propulsive, like a lapping wave on a calm shore. In terms of setting a scene for where hemlock’s music is headed this couldn’t be much more thrilling, and that long overdue breakthrough moment has never seemed closer.

444 is out October 11th. For more information on hemlock visit https://hemlocksounds.com/.

2. Fightmilk Are The Soundtrack To Your Summer

Something of a fixture on the UK DIY scene, Fightmilk formed back in 2015 when songwriting duo Lily and Alex decided to turn their then-recent respective breakups into, “an indiepop soundtrack by which to navigate millennial life”. Two albums followed, the 2018 debut Not With That Attitude, and the pandemic-delayed 2021 offering Contender, which were welcomed with open arms by online tastemakers and Radio DJs alike. Freshly co-signed to Fika Recordings, and the mysterious Insert Name Here Records, this week the band shared Summer Bodies, the first taster of their as yes undetailed third record.

Discussing the track, Lily suggests Summer Bodies is about, “how women and femmes are constantly bombarded with media telling us how to be our best and most beautiful selves, or, bluntly, how to bully your mind and body into an image set by constantly moving goalposts”. Musically the track is in many ways classic Fightmilk, with poppy vocal melodies colliding with clattering drum rhythms, yelp-along backing and almost glam-rock-influenced guitar thrashing. The whole track is writ large with angst and empowerment in equal measures, never more so than the band’s favourite part, “where we all take turns unleashing a big scream”. As they rightly damn impossible body standards and societal pressures to look a certain way, Fightmilk’s lean, toned and muscular new sound is thankfully one thing most definitely ready for the summer.

Summer Bodies is out now via Fika Recordings / Insert Name Here Records. For more information on Fightmilk visit https://linktr.ee/Fightmilk.

1. The Actual Frank Lloyd Wleft On My Actual Website

Celebrating, or at least marking, last week’s Independence Day, London singer/songwriter Frank Lloyd Wleft shared his transatlantic journeying opus of a single, The Actual Kids In Actual America. The track is Frank’s first new material since the release of last year’s lauded mini-album, Raised on Red Milk. Frank and his band have gone on to share stages with the likes of Mary & The Junkyard, Lou Terry and Supermilk, quickly building a reputation as one of the capital’s most exciting new performers.

The Actual Kids In Actual America was written on the back of a solo two-month trip Frank took across the USA, with, “lyrical details emerging along the way“. It is a track in various parts, the first section drawing on distinctly American sounds, from the Velvet Underground-like strut of the lead guitar through to the “country idiom“, of the lap steel and fiddle that make up the middle section, and the, “Appalachian-style a capella singalong“, which takes the track into it’s final formal – an impassioned, performance poem, The Fall Of America. It is a Beat-inspired concoction, both enamoured and enraged by modern America in all its bloated beauty, with “everything presented as equally enchanting and equally banal“. He lists off the great, awful and just plain weird parts of American culture, “a sprawling panorama of United States culture as it reveals itself to a young, 20-something Brit”, from the “state-line abortions” to the “sex appeal of the Green M&M”. A fabulous journey of a song, here Frank Lloyd Wleft’s unique sound and inimitable witticisms feel sharper, more polished and more compelling than ever.

The Actual Kids In Actual America is out now. For more information on Frank Lloyd Wleft visit https://linktr.ee/franklloydwleft.

Header photo is Frank Lloyd Wleft by Lucas Edwards.