Further Listening:

5. El Tee’s Return Is A Series Of Baby Steps

A native of Northern California, Lauren Taver, aka El Tee, has called Naarm/Melbourne home for a number of years and first caught my ear back in 2018 with her debut EP, Radio Silence. After announcing herself to the world with the well-received 2020 debut album, Everything Is Fine, Lauren has been taking her time on the follow-up, considering relocating to Los Angeles, before setting that aside and accepting Australian Permanent Residency soon after. Working with her long-time friend, Andrew Huhtanen McEwan, this week Lauren shared the first El Tee material in four years in the shape of her new single, Baby.

Baby marked something of a change of approach for Lauren, where previously she would flesh out tracks with her band before even considering the studio, here she took an altogether more studio-led approach, seeking, “more control over the arrangement and production”. The result is a single that bristles with gutsy Americana beneath a distinctly pop-sheen, reminiscent of Sharon Van Etten or Why Bonnie in its fusion of beauty and intent. Thematically, Baby explores ideas of how, it’s often easier or more predictable to self-destruct than risk hurt at the hand of another, as Lauren explains, “Self-sabotage can be a form of protection – creating predictability can give the illusion of safety. At least, that’s what my therapist says…” By tapping into old patterns and fresh musical ideas, El Tee’s long-overdue return might just be her most exciting chapter to date.

Baby is out now via Dinosaur City. For more information on El Tee visit https://linktr.ee/elteeeee.

4. Vera Sola’s New Single Is Just Ghostly

Anyone who has kept even a cursory eye on the diary of Vera Sola could tell you that 2024 has been a busy year for the American songwriter. Following on from her brilliant 2018 debut Shades, this February shared the long-awaited follow-up Peacemaker, and then hit the road and from what I can tell hasn’t stopped yet. Somewhere in her schedule, Vera somehow found time for a brief trip to a studio, where she records The Ghostmaster’s Daughter, a live favourite originally penned to appear on Peacemaker, but now presented as the lead single for an upcoming EP consisting largely of “re-worked or re-remembered” versions of tracks appeared on Peacemaker and including guest appearances from Marissa Nadler and The Milk Carton Kids.

A song that, “didn’t fit sonically or thematically“, with the rest of Peacemaker, The Ghostmater’s Daughter became a much-requested track after her live shows, and one Vera offers, “as just my voice and guitar, as close to what you’d hear from me on stage as possible“. The track is a love story, albeit one, “staged across lifetimes”, a reflection that, “the end of a romance doesn’t have to mean the end of love. All that ends offers a chance at a beginning“. The track finds Vera digging into the darker, murkier edges of folk music, full of gothic melodrama, and more than a hint of the influence of Leonard Cohen in the fluttering Eastern European influences of the lead guitar. For all the talk of romance and inter-generational love, this is a song writ large with death, we meet murderers and butchers, attend hangings and funerals and give names to our ghosts as they drift on past in all their beautiful monstrosity.

The Ghostmaster’s Daughter EP is out November 15th via City Slang. For more information on Vera Sola visit https://www.verasola.com/.

3. I’m Really Sorry But I Just Love Rubblebucket

The Brooklyn-based duo of Kalmia Traver and Alex Toth, Rubblebucket recently celebrated their fifteenth year as a band and decided to celebrate it in typically unusual fashion with their new album chronicling the year they nearly called it a day. That year, 2015 to most of us, or The Year Of The Banana, in Kalmia’s personal practice of naming each year, was the year the pair ended their romantic relationship and began,  “peeling off psychological layers in search of the sweetness that would allow the friendship, and the band, to continue”. The fittingly titled Year Of The Banana is the record that didn’t get finished because the band broke up, only in this case it did get finished. With the album out next month via Egghunt Records, this week Rubblebucket shared the latest single from it, The Sorrow That Comes With Loving You.

Musically, the track finds Rubblebucket at their most brooding, as atmospheric swirling brass meets a smooth rolling bass and Kalmia’s dipping, cartwheeling vocal performance. Particularly wonderful is the earworm of a chorus, as Kalmia sings of her sorrow, in a way that sounds oddly free, repeating the title like a mantra, dropping low on, “loving”, before soaring into “you”. It’s a credit to Rubblebucket that they made it through the Year Of The Banana still a band, let alone made a record about it nearly a decade later, a testament to true friendship, creative kinship and knowing that some things just aren’t meant to be, and one that’s shaping up nicely to be one of the year’s most intriguing releases.

Year Of The Banana is out October 18th via Egghunt Records. For more information on Rubblebucket visit https://www.rubblebucket.com/.

2. Shove Dance Collective Are On A Roll

A nine-headed, leaderless folk collective from London, Shovel Dance Collective appeared back in 2022 with their debut collection, The Water is the Shovel of the Shore. The band borrow from various traditions for their source material, traversing English, Scottish and Irish folk songs, some of which date as far back as the 1600s. The collective’s renditions of these ancient materials are always ambitious, with their upcoming album, The Shovel Dance, featuring eight voices and twenty-five different instruments. With that new record due next month via American Dreams, this week they shared their new single, an instrumental track of Irish origins, The Rolling Wave.

Discussing the inspiration behind The Rolling Wave, the collective is quick to praise the track for the, “liquid nature of its melody”, one that has allowed for many re-interpretations, “we have rendered it again and again, wave after wave. It is one of our most-played instrumentals, and one that has most slowly altered over time, cresting here in its momentary fullness“. This version lets the gorgeously meandering fiddle take centre stage, joined by a wheezing, flowing accompaniment of what sounds to my ear like harmonium, harp and mandolin, but could be any one of a number of perfectly judged melodic choices. The whole thing has a touch of the rustic avant-pop of Penguin Cafe Orchestra or the folkier sides of the wonderful Lau. Folk music almost by definition has one foot in the past, yet The Shovel Dance Collective show you can find new life in an old song, and drag it tunefully and beautifully into the here and now.

The Shovel Dance is out October 11th via American Dreams. For more information on Shovel Dance Collective visit https://www.shovel.dance/.

1. Flora Hibberd Has Cracked The Code

A previous headliner of our now-retired monthly showcase gigs at The Victoria, Flora Hibberd is a British-raised and now Paris-based songwriter and professional translator of art history texts. Her day job has had a distinct influence on her upcoming debut album Swirl, “a cycle of songs about codes and decoding”, which was recorded in the sweltering summer heat of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. While the album won’t arrive until the start of next year, this week Flora shared the fittingly titled first single, Code.

With lyrics inspired by textile artist Anni Albers, Code was a track Flora notes, “was so hard to get right”. Existing in many iterations before it found its place, the final version came about after, “driving to get burgers in a storm”, the final version features vocals recorded, “under the piano”, and was made by playing the track over and over, “until we fell into a groove”. The result is a track of distinct sections, we’re greeted by a guitar playful enough for an early Beck record, before Flora’s vocal enters, double-tracked and melodically swooping throughout, it has a similar poise and shimmer of Cate Le Bon or Dana Gavanski, while still being distinctly Flora’s own. From there the track goes through everything from a piano-led instrumental breakdown to a fantastically weird descending noise, “made by whirling a piece of plastic tubing around”; that the whole thing stays on the tracks, maintaining its intrigue throughout is a stroke of genius or madness, or both. Early days it may be, yet Flora Hibberd already feels like an artist whose talents could take her as far as her imagination allows and, as evidenced here, she might just have cracked the code for a perfect pop song.

Swirl is out January 17th via 22Twenty. For more information on Flora Hibberd visit https://ffm.bio/florahibberd.

Header photo is Flora Hibberd by Victor Claass.