Further Listening:

5. Don’t Be A Dummy – Listen To Dummy

A quartet based out of Los Angeles, Dummy’s debut album, Mandatory Enjoyment, was one of 2021’s quiet success stories, gradually garnering critical acclaim for its patchwork quilt of influences and genres, as fans bought copies quicker than their record label, Trouble In Mind, could get them back into stock – an impressive achievement even in the age of vinyl pressing plant delays. Having subsequently gone on to play shows with nearly every band you’ve seen on anyone’s bands-to-watch list, it’s fair to say a lot of people are quite excited for their next move. That will all become clear this September when the band share their second album, Free Energy, with the record followed by an impressively intense run of European tour dates. Ahead of the release this week Dummy shared the latest single from the record, Nine Clean Nails.

Approaching Free Energy, Dummy made a very conscious decision with their sound, to leave the motorik-beat behind, a rule they quite happily bend, and then break on the distinctly driving Nine Clean Nails. The whole thing seems to find Dummy at their most accessible, as the insistent looping rhythm is adorned with the melodic interplay of Emma Maatman’s vocals and Nathan O’Dell’s intricate guitar work, bringing to mind the likes of Amber Arcades or Stereolab. The band have spoken of the track being, “about feelings of isolation and the rollercoaster of mania”, mirrored as much in the rapid tumbling music as the lyrics, which find Emma in a spiral of apathy and the apocalyptic, “mass extinction imminent, a fact defined by any Euclidean mind”. While this particular track might throw back to their earlier material more than most of Free Energy, there’s still something distinctly forward-thinking about it, the sound of Dummy experimenting, enjoying exploring sound and following the music, and yes the free energy, wherever it takes them.

Free Energy is out September 6th via Trouble In Mind. For more information on Dummy visit https://linktr.ee/notdummy.

4. Naima Bock Goes Gentle On Us

One of my favourite discoveries of recent years, Naima Bock burst onto the scene with her 2022 debut, Giant Palm, a record that took global influences, across genres and eras and grounded them all into a distinctly South London setting. After that record sent Naima touring across the globe, it was on returning home to her grandmother’s shed in South London that she started plotting her next record. The result is her upcoming album, Below A Massive Dark Land, set for release at the end of September on her two label homes, Sub Pop and Memorial Of Distinction. After sharing two singles, Kaley and Further Away last month, this week Naima shared the latest track from the record, Gentle.

A track Naima has, “lived with for a couple of years”, each verse of Gentle is, “a different version of myself or a situation I was in. None of them link in reality, but they fit together in this song, which leaves me with a sense of union and satisfaction“. Bringing to mind the likes of Rozi Plain or Dana Gavanski, Gentle brings the ever-present undercurrent of playfulness in Naima’s music and places it front and centre. The track opens with a rhythm track built of plucked violins, later amplified with pulsing flutes and drones of saxophone and strings. Dotted among the ever-shifting sands of the instrumentation are an array of voices, Naima sometimes letting her own strikingly excellent delivery take centre stage, before adding the emotive swell of a chorus of voices, and then dropping it down to the chatter of background noise. The whole thing seems to flip between a classical take on a folk song and a folk band re-interpreting a piece of classical music, a genre-bending masterclass held together by luxurious melodies that surely marks Below A Massive Dark Land out as one of the year’s most anticipated releases.

Below A Massive Dark Land is out September 27th via Sub Pop / Memorial Of Distinction. For more information on Naima Bock visit https://www.naimabock.com/.

3. You’re Going To Really Lake The New Langkamer Single

Hailing from Bristol, Langkamer have carved out a reputation as one of the most prolific and intriguing new bands currently operating on the UK music scene. The past three years have seen the band release three albums, an EP, plus a string of standalone singles, collaborate with Willie J Healey, Fenne Lily and Clara Mann, and share stages with the likes of Mystery Jets, Jeffrey Lewis and The Wave Pictures – in other words, they’ve kept busy! For their next move this October they’ll share their new record Langzamer, and this week they shared the latest single from it, their collaboration with the always fabulous The Golden Dregs, At The Lake.

The second taste of Langzamer, At The Lake was recorded at The Cornish Bank in Falmouth, and is a distinct departure for the band, foregoing their tendencies for energetic slacker-rock for something considerably more inward-looking, a half-whispered slice of thoughtfulness, reminiscent of former touring mates Friendship, or the much missed Dave Berman. The track is, as Josh Jarman from the band explains, “about the fallout of binge drinking culture, and the prestige that we attach to the idea of the poète maudit“. Throughout the track he references those lost to drink and drugs, from Janis Joplin to James Joyce, “souvenirs stolen from the dark”, as we, “romanticise unhealthy behaviour in the name of creativity”. With this song that seems to explore the darker recesses of its creator’s mind, Langkamer are breaking new ground for their music, sliding into a more serious, ruminative side, asking the big questions that life throws our way and sounding better than ever as they do it.

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

2. Soot Sprite Get Straight To The Bones Of It

With members spread out between Devon, Bath, Oxford and London, Soot Sprite, a vehicle for the songwriting of Elise Cook, first came to my attention back in 2019 around the release of my favourite EP of that year, Sharp Tongue. Having gone through various line-up changes since then, they followed it up with 2021’s EP Poltergeists and 2022’s single Lazy. Two years on from that, last week saw the band share a new 7″, featuring their previous single I Went Swimming and their latest offering, Home Among Your Bones.

Not just the other side of the record to I Went Swimming, Home Among Your Bones also offers an entirely different message. While I Went Swimming was about cutting off a toxic relationship, here Elise revels in, “feeling happy and secure in a relationship”. The track was written shortly after she moved in with her current partner, and sets out to, “capture the joy of feeling love with someone without feeling insecure and sad”, something she notes is, “very new to me”. What stops this song short of saccharine sweetness is the sense of surprise, happiness and comfort presented as new thrilling emotions, rather than the default certain pop songs would have you believe, “so used to sabotage but I’m craving this comfort, to stay the same so we’ll break this chain”. This sense of lightness is neatly mirrored in the music, which is, by Soot Sprite standards at least, a joyous summer banger, the track recalling the dreamy indie-pop of Life Model or the much missed fellow South Coast janglers L I P S. With this very welcome return Soot Sprite show off both the quality and versatility of their songwriting and in doing so remind me just why they were so exciting in the first place.

I Went Swimming / Home Among Your Bones 7″ is out now via Specialist Subject Records. For more information on Soot Sprite visit https://linktr.ee/Sootsprite.

1. I Heard About ladylike Straight From The Horse’s Mouth

A quartet hailing from Brighton, ladylike appeared on these pages in November last year when they released their sublime debut single, Southbound. Since then the band have played shows with the likes of Divorce, The Bug Club and Lime Garden, as well as earning a spot on this year‘s Glastonbury Festival Emerging Talent Shortlist and reaching the final of the Green Man Rising 2024 competition. All very impressive for a band with just one single to their name, a fact they set about changing this week as they teamed up with Something. Records to share their new single, Horse’s Mouth.

Discussing the inspiration behind Horse’s Mouth vocalist/guitarist Georgia Butler suggests the track, “depicts the relentless work ethic of the modern-day person through the narrative of an unnamed individual“. There’s something delightfully transatlantic about the sound of ladylike, like the middle ground of Tapir!’s expansive, artistic take on British folk and Tenci’s swopping, sweltering version of Americana. The track is a real sonic journey from the opening urgent twangy fluttering, through to the cascading, atmospheric middle-section with its repeated refrain, “work to the bone, work yourself to the bone”, and the clattering closing slice of noisy, almost structureless post-rock. While these remain early days for ladylike’s music they already seem to be onto something really special, a band marrying ambition and distinctiveness and creating something rather magical as they do it.

Horse’s Mouth is out now via Something. Records. For more information on ladylike visit https://linktr.ee/ladylikeband.

Header photo is ladylike by Brooke Edwards