Further Listening:

5. Gracie Gray Sings It From The Sidelines

LA-based singer, songwriter and producer Gracie Gray appeared on these pages just last month, as she announced details of her upcoming third album, Magnet, which is out this Friday via Hand In Hive. Written and recorded between a string of tour dates, Magnet is a self-produced offering, Gracie revelling in the role, which she suggests, “grew me in a very different way“. Ahead of the much-anticipated album’s release, this week Gracie shared the latest single from it, Sides.

Although it was written many years ago, Sides was initially a song Graice intentionally kept just between herself and her piano. It was only when her mum heard it that Gracie realised it could be more than just for her, “she thought the line “I wouldn’t give you up for anything” was about an estranged parent-child relationship. I never thought of it that way, but hearing that changed my perspective a lot…it means a lot of different things, and now’s the time to let it be something for whoever wants it“. The final form seems to have been on something of an adventure from its early piano roots. Here we are greeted with the metallic twang of an acoustic guitar, layers of diaphanous vocals, and subtle percussive flourishes. The whole thing has a wonderful intimacy to it, reminiscent of early My Morning Jacket records as if Gracie is whispering directly into your ear, “I wouldn’t give you up for anything, I’m fighting a war, just to be on your side”. As the song comes to a close, it seems to go full circle, the crackling static giving way to the piano line that started it all, echoing around the room like a visitor from the past. This feels like a different side to Gracie Gray’s music, an artist growing into herself, discovering where her music belongs and thankfully taking us all along for the ride.

Magnet is out July 26th via Hand In Hive. For more information on Gracie Gray visit https://www.graciegray.com/.

4. Mt. Misery Are The Meal Deal

Starting life as the solo project of Hartlepool-based multi-instrumentalist Andrew Smith, Mt. Misery became an official band in 2019, quickly winning over the always exciting North East indie-pop scene. In 2021 they teamed up with Prefect Records to release the well-received debut, Once Home, No Longer, and have gone on to share stages with the likes of Porridge Radio and Pip Blom, as well as local legends Martha and The Futureheads. With a second album well on the way and a string of UK tour dates with New Jersey’s finest Lightheaded underway, this week the band shared a brand new single, Lunch Break.

Lunch Break is a perfect summary of the work-to-live existence of so many who long for a more exciting creative lifestyle, as the band explain, “it’s not fun spending 40 hours of your week doing something that is often incredibly boring, and Lunch Break is about my personal challenges with that“. The track is a bounding slice of indie-pop, the band leaning into their inner Belle & Sebastien as they channel office-based malaise into sugar-sweet harmonies and bright guitar jangling. What Mt. Misery do so well here is to take the everyday annoyances, like your boss wanting to talk about work while you’re heating up your soup, “Hey Tracy, I’m not listening, my lunch bell is not done ringing”, and contextualise them into a grander statement. Ultimately this is a song about wanting to get off the wheel, “I’m holding out on lotteries, with no route to escape, what if this isn’t living?” In the detail they see the bigger picture, a system that asks too much and offers too little in return – now for goodness sake let a man eat his lunch in peace and dream of something better that might never be coming around the corner.

Lunch Break is out now via Prefect Records/Quiet Crown. For more information on Mt. Misery visit https://linktr.ee/mtmisery.

3. I’ll Never Get Sick Of Lunar Vacation

Already strong contenders to be the most famous band from Decatur, Georgia, Lunar Vacation came crashing to the world’s attention back in 2021 with Inside Every Fig is a Dead Wasp, a record that in their own words, “bathed in the waters of indie pop”. The band recently announced their second album, Everything Matters, Everything’s Fire, an exploration of organic, mistake-led songwriting and taking your first steps outside of your parent’s basement. With the record due to arrive in September, this week the band shared the latest single from it, Sick.

Sick has a slightly unusual origin story, as guitarist and vocalist Gep Repasky recalls, “this song came about after accidentally going to an open mic stand-up comedy show, where, unbeknownst to us, we were the only audience members. No one was funny, and most jokes were made at our expense”. The opening track on Everything Matters, Everything’s Fire, is a scene setter for the album that follows, combining the gorgeously The Orielles-like simplicity of the strutting bassline with a layered percussion track punctuated by rototoms, woodblock, and jaw harp. Lyrically the track seems to contrast the personal and the global, fluctuating between a bad comedy night, “perfect when it’s ugly” and the looming spectre of the end of the world as we know it, “demolition looming, Manhattan and its imminent destruction, the earth is finally taking back her children”. Where previously Lunar Vacation felt light and almost playful, here they seem to carry a few more scars, bring a touch more of the baggage of life, yet sound no less energised or vital as a result.

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

2. Umarells Arrive Fashionably Late For June

Hailing from Manchester, and formed on a group trip to Blackpool, Umarells caught my ear at the end of last year with their debut single, You’re Not Here, so much so we invited them down to London to play their first-ever capital show at our monthly gig night. With the band, whose name is a very specific Italian word for retired men who watch construction sites, gradually catching the attention of all the most important ears, this week they announced details of their debut EP, One More Day, which will come out in November via Fear Of Missing Out Records. Ahead of the release this week the band shared their new single, June.

June is a song about parting clouds and lengthening days, as the band explain the track is, “the epitome of the lighter days coming in through a dark winter; someone who pulls you out of a depressive slump by just being around. Seeing the sun through your curtains after countless grey days”. While the band notes how the track was inspired by a Smashing Pumpkin’s riff, June is a more gentle affair than that might suggest. Bringing to mind the likes of Why Bonnie and Sun June, Umarells combine dreamy-pop sheen with the clatter of shoegaze, as vocalist Imogen Badrock’s glistening vocals are adorned with stop-start guitars and steady drum pattering. The distinctly wistful quality of the music is nicely mirrored in the lyrics that seem to sit on the cusp of positivity, as they sing of the lightness found in the changing of the seasons, “winter walking through, skipped past the laundry room, infinite dread and doom breaks apart to see you my June”, before landing on the closing refrain, “guess I was glad, I beat the sad”, which seems to gain greater emphasis with every repetition. Umarells might still be right at the start of their journey, but they just seem like a band who’ve got something about them, that spark of creativity that all the great bands possess that feels like it might just take them wherever they want to go.

One More Day is out November 8th via Fear Of Missing Out Records. For more information on Umarells visit https://linktr.ee/umarells.band.

1. Three Is The Magic Number For Naked Giants

Hailing from the musical hotbed of Seattle, Washington, Naked Giants formed back in 2014 when they were all just eighteen, “and full of the reckless, restless energy of youth”. A decade has passed since then, and the band, and the world they exist in, have all changed a lot, a fact they face head-on with their upcoming third album, Shine Away, a record which sets out to reflect, “who and what they were, are, and want to be”. With the album out in October via Devil Duck Records, this week the band shared their new single, Apartment 3.

Written shortly after the release of their second album, 2020’s The Shadow, vocalist/guitarist Grant Mullen notes how Apartment 3, “captures that early-20s ‘growing up’ energy—searching for a new home, experiencing first-time living arrangements, and the influence of peak quarantine solitude”. Listening to Apartment 3, there’s something strikingly authentic about Naked Giants’ music, it seems to exist without fads and trends, just a band committed to taking the music they so clearly love and putting their own spin on it. Here they’re perhaps at their most musically abrasive, the spiky, arty guitars bringing to mind the likes of Juan De Fuca or early Weezer as they sit atop the bounding rhythm section and sing-speak vocals reminiscent of Parquet Courts or Bodega. This isn’t so much the sound of the rock’n’roll dream crashing into reality, but emulsifying into it, of accepting that dream is part of the person you are, and adjusting what that means in the here and now. Naked Giants might have grown up but thankfully they haven’t stopped dreaming big just yet.

Shine Away is out October 4th via Devil Duck Records. For more information on Naked Giants visit https://linktr.ee/naked_giants.

Header photo is Naked Giants by Jake Hanson