Further Listening:

5. What Sounds Better Than A Big Warm Bed?

The cosy-sounding moniker of Yorkshire-based newcomer Jacob Andrews, Big Warm Bed had already made quite the splash with his first two singles, Should’ve Seen It Coming and Can’t Quit, winning him fans across 6Music and a plethora of online outlets. Signed to the Dance To The Radio label, Jacob will share the debut Big Warm Bed EP, Shores I’m Swimming, later this month and this week shared the latest taster of it, in the shape of his new track, Jackie.

Jackie is a song that came to Jacob in, “a 20 minute bout of, I guess, “‘pre grief” one day when I was feeling a certain way about my mum’s terminal illness”. The track confronts heads on the complicated feelings of living with a parent who is on borrowed time, as Jacob explains, “it used to consume me most days, the anxiety of her inevitable death. I sing about not crying, not even for the sake of a goodbye, which is wholly contradictory as I have cried a lot since I said my last goodbye to her”. Musically, Jackie is a song that sounds a long way from its Yorkshire roots, Jacob exploring plenty of transatlantic influences as the lo-fi guitar thrum meets his half-whispered vocals and brings to mind the likes of Angelo De Augustine or Kevin Morby’s more gentle moments. As the song reaches its close, it doesn’t reach a crescendo as such, yet it does seem to gently expand, inhabiting a sort of transcendental plane, the deliciously wonky bar-room piano, brightening and lifting as Jacob starts to come to terms with goodbyes, with letting the tears flow and with the painful unknown of whatever comes next.

Shores I’m Swimming In is out September 26th via Dance To The Radio. For more information on Big Warm Bed visit https://linktr.ee/bigwarmbed.

4. Yon Loader Were Never In Doubt

Yon Loader is the New Zealand-based recording project based around the songwriting of James Stuteley, alongside a rotating cast of distance and in-person collaborators. Recorded with the help of producer Harry Lilley and a collection of the great-and-good of the Aotearoa indie scene, the self-titled debut Yon Loader album is set for release next week via Tiny Engines, and this week the band shared their latest single, The Doubt.

Originally just called Doubt before James felt the need to give it the definitive article to match the, “spectre of doubt that can come to dominate and compromise so many of our choices if we let it”. The song seeks to follow the path of doubt on its natural ebbs and flows, starting off with James, “stuck taking the safe option”, and tracing it through to “those rare and fleeting moments when you stumble into being exactly where you want to be”. For this song James lets his friend Victoria’s vocals take the lead, bringing to mind Soot Sprite or The Beths as the emotive croon of the vocals meets gutsy emo-tinged guitars and clattering grungy percussion. While The Doubt is a song that flitters between emotions, there’s a certain comfort in it, a sense of shared feelings and the knowledge that whatever rut you might yourself in, this too shall pass, cast off your doubts and watch life thrive.

Yon Loader is out September 16th via Tiny Engines. For more information on Yon Loader visit https://www.instagram.com/yonloader/.

3. The Innocence Mission Have The Thread Of A Great Idea

I often talk about bands as musical veterans, yet surely there are few I’ve covered who can match the thirty-eight years and counting achieved by the much loved Pennsylvanian’s The Innocence Mission – perhaps even more impressively they’ve only parted with one band member along the way! Returning with their first new material in four years, this November will see the band release their thirteenth studio album, Midwinter Swimmers, and this week they shared the first single from it, This Thread Is A Green Street.

Described by songwriter Karen Peris as, “a sort of envisioning the landscape as a world of doorways, that might allow us to locate memory or to be nearer in some way to people we miss”, This Thread Is A Green Street is one of a trio of tracks on Midwinter Swimmers that explore ideas of, “missing a loved one who is away, and of how love can transcend distance”. Listening to This Thread Is A Green Street, it’s hard not to picture The Innocence Mission as a band removed from the trappings of modernity, they sound like a beacon from a simpler time, the recorded equivalent of darning socks around a log fire, or taking a small boat to a deserted Scottish island to count Arctic Terns – even if the life of Karen and co surely can’t be quite as luxuriously disconnected as they sound. Key to it all is Karen’s otherworldly vocal, it sounds like it should belong to some lost folk record of the 1960s, part of a lineage of mesmerising vocalists from Karen Dalton through to Mazzy Starr or Harriet Wheeler. If the whole thing sounds delightfully escapist, it’s married in the lyrics, it feels like a drifting mind, meandering before slipping back into quietly crushing reality, “this thread that will mend your sleeve again is a green street I walk, between clouds, saying out loud that I miss you, that I miss you”. Sometimes music just finds a way to say something simple, in a simple fashion and yet still blow your mind with how beautiful it can be, and nearly forty years in, The Innocence Mission do that better than anyone out there.

Midwinter Swimmers is out November 29th via Bella Union. For more information on The Innocence Mission visit https://www.theinnocencemission.com/.

2. Sasha Sells Seashells On The Sea Shore

Hailing from the Danish capital of Copenhagen, Sasha Adrian caught my ear with the excellent EP, Token. Having recently played outside of her home country for the first time at Waves Vienna, Sasha is currently building towards the October release of her second EP, a collection of songs, “each representing their own steps on the road to healing from assault”. This week Sasha shared the latest snippet of the record in the shape of the title track, Shell.

Discussing the inspiration behind Shell, Sasha suggests it is a track the vast majority of women will be able to recognize parts of, “it is a showdown with the myth that you can “just speak out”…a completely clear picture of the absurd prison you are put in when others almost imperceptibly take over, sexualize or patronize you”. The quiet seething of the song’s themes is mirrored in the music which always feels on the edge of bubbling over, recalling the likes of Let’s Buy Happiness or Poliça it’s full of tumbling guitar lines and stop-start drums, as Sasha delivers her words with all the appropriate bile and snarl, “I just want to scream, scream out for help”. A song on a subject that remains depressingly relevant, here Sasha Adrian reminds us how far the world still has to go on the path towards equality. By singing out her anger in a way that’s surely going to resonate with so many, Sasha Adrian is just the sort of trailblazer the world needs.

Shell EP is out October 4th via Celebration Records. For more information on Sasha Adrian visit https://linktr.ee/sashadrian.

1. You Won’t Be Sorry You Listened To Former Champ

A Glasgow-based supergroup consisting of Claire Mckay, aka Martha Ffion, and members of Savage Mansion, Hound and Catholic Action, Former Champ first appeared in the summer of 2022 with their explosive debut single, Grenade. Since then the band have released their fittingly titled debut EP, Vol. 1, and have just completed a string of dates supporting Martha on their largely sold-out UK tour. Celebrating the occasion the band recently shared their latest single, Sorry.

A song the band explain is about, “the conflicting feelings and expectations that arise around the children of friends and family”, Sorry exists between parallel universes, one where everyone is settling down and having kids, and one where old love affairs and passions still rage, “somewhere between the hopefulness of youth and the realism that comes with age”. Musically, the track seems to pick up where Vol.1 left off, with a combination of guitar swagger and driving drums that The Strokes would be proud of accompanying Claire’s chiming vocals, particularly delightful in the chorus as her Alvvays-like melody swoops into the line, “sorry, I don’t know if I want you, if it’s black and white, I’ll be satisfied with a picture of you”. A sparkling return, the name Former Champ mighty imply past glories, yet on this evidence their best years are definitely still to come.

Sorry is out now via Hand Of God. For more information on Former Champ visit https://linktr.ee/formerchampband.

Header photo is Former Champ by Rosie Sco.