Further Listening:

5. Flora Hibberd Is In A Real Swirl About Jesse

Paris-based songwriter, Flora Hibberd appeared on this site back in September around the release of her single Code, one of the first tracks to be lifted from the upcoming debut LP, Swirl, which will arrive at the start of 2025. Continuing the momentum ahead of the record’s release, this week Flora shared the fourth single from the album, Jesse.

Opening the second half of Swirl, Jesse was written on the back of something of a career highlight for Flora so far, when she performed on Cerys Matthews’ 6Music show. As Flora explains, it is about, “the sense of extreme energy experiences like that give you”. The track seems to inhabit a similar place to artists like Dana Gavanski or This Is The Kit, with Flora joined by the warm rumble of the bass, rhythmic guitar chords and distant, yet quietly flamboyant flourishes of organ. Throughout Flora’s lyrics seem to paint pictures without filling in the details, “station to station, and yes I tuned in, to hear you play the one true melody, my one and only”. As the song begins to gently drift out, it does so with a repeated refrain, “I should be there soon, you should be real proud”, without ever explaining where she’s going or the source of this much-wanted pride. With each new track, Flora continues to fascinate, and Swirl sounds more and more like it’s going to get the world in a spin when it arrives next year.

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

4. David Allred’s Beautiful New Single

David Allred is one of those musicians who is so prolific it can at times be hard to keep up. Just take a glance at the discography on his website and you’ll see a dizzying amount of solo records, collaborations and guest appearances spanning his nearly fifteen years as a musician. He’s appeared on this site previously both as one half of Allred & Broderick and as a solo artist when I tuned into his excellent debut release for Erased Tapes, The Transition. Working again with that ever-fascinating label, this week the Portland, Oregon-based composer announced details of his latest offering, The Beautiful World, which he shared alongside the mesmerising title track.

While much of the music David has made previously has come from a place of escapism, The Beautiful World is much more rooted in personal experience, the record’s themes revolving around the suicide of a family friend, Lauren. The Beautiful World became a dedication to existential themes of death, grief and the shared experience of loss we all go through. The title track is a fitting introduction, David looking for “old normalcy”, as he navigates the here and now. We find him musing on friends scattered about the place, and longing for the community he once had around him, “I want to belong in the beautiful world, where my friends live in the same place, I want to belong in the beautiful world with you”. Musically the track is a thing of sparse and mesmeric beauty. David’s voice seeming to drift in and out of the backing of found-sound percussion and swelling keyboard chords. At times it becomes spoken word, and at others it is multi-tracked and dense, the melody almost seeming to merge into the organ, as if voice and instrument are acting as one. David has spoken of this record coming from a place of, “growing with what I do, and truly living life more”, and as a result, it’s perhaps no surprise that he’s never sounded more honest, connected and beautifully/brokenly human than ever before.

The Beautiful World is out January 24th via Erased Tapes. For more information on David Allred visit https://www.davidallredmusic.net/.

3. Ezra Furman And Alex Walton Will Have You In Knots With Their New Single

Having forged a reputation as one of the world’s most exciting songwriters across nine brilliant studio albums, Ezra Furman has probably earned the right to do exactly what she wants, and for most of 2024, she’s been doing just that. Regular shows in her hometown of Boston, plus two nights at Union Chapel, have been billed as “Ms. Ezra Furman Does What She Wants”, and by all accounts have lived up to the name. Along the way, she met fellow Bostonian, Alex Walton, a self-taught musician, filmmaker, visual artist, carpenter and “former museum security guard”. The pair struck up an instant bond, that led to a collaboration, the first fruits of which arrived this week in the shape of their new single, Tie Me To The Train Tracks.

A song Ezra recalls the track was made, “in a burst of neurotic passion” at Alex’s house in Roxbury. Tie Me To The Train Tracks is built around a simplistic bassy riff, little more than three notes that ring out throughout the track as they’re adorned with howling slashes of electric-guitar and choppy processed percussion. The whole thing has a distinctly unhinged quality, from the weird distortion on the backing vocals to Ezra’s howling, squalling vocals, “lock your chains on me, drop me in the ocean don’t tell my dad”. Lyrically, the track seems to touch on the idea of love as a bind, an uncontrollable emotion that burns and chains you down, yet like a moth to a flame Ezra finds herself fluttering back to it again and again. There’s a sense of freedom here that’s really quite invigorating, as if Alex has re-lit a fire in Ezra, made her believe in the power of music once more and set her on a path to an exciting future of doing exactly what she wants, one that already sounds like it could be her most intriguing work yet.

Tie Me To The Train Tracks is out now via Bella Union. For more information on Ezra Furman visit https://www.ezrafurman.com/. For more information on Alex Walton visit https://www.instagram.com/full_life_consequences.

2. Preserving Your Good Looks Is Just A Matter Of Damage Control

Back in 2022, I spent an inordinate amount of time raving about Good Looks, and their fantastic debut album Bummer Year, to anyone who’d listen. At the time it didn’t seem to quite get the acclaim it so richly deserved, but two years, one life-threatening car accident and one member being run over outside the venue of their album launch later, things seem to finally be happening for the band. Their Dan Duszynski-produced second album, Lived Here For A While, was released in June to widespread acclaim, and a recent transatlantic jaunt saw the band perform at Pitchfork Festival and Brighton’s Mutations Festival, as well as their own headline show in London. Marking the occasion, and promoting a longer UK tour in January next year, the band also shared a new single, Damage Control.

We often talk about songs as breakup songs but few straddle the moment quite as clearly as Damage Control does, as frontman Tyler Jordan explains, “I wrote this song in two parts—the first during a rough patch in the relationship, and the second after we finally broke up”. While in his own words, “not the most gracious breakup song”, Damage Control certainly captures some of the spite and anger these events can bring, as Tyler sings, “you write too many songs about the ways I’ve done you wrong, and baby I just clap, and act like I ain’t mad”. With the music inspired by, “listening to a lot of Big Star”, the track finds Good Looks at their rambunctious best, as scything My Morning Jacket-like guitars collide with clattering drums and Tyler’s spiky vocal delivery. A band that shows the joy in keeping on, Good Looks seem to be finally finding their moment to shine, and on this evidence, they’re going to enjoy every second of it.

Lived Here For A While is out now via Keeled Scales. For more information on Good Looks visit https://goodlooksband.com/.

1. The Tubs Are Letting Their Freak Flag Fly

If you attended any of the shows at The Victoria we put on with Scared To Dance, there was a pretty good chance that a member of The Tubs would have been on stage at some point. The various members perform in an array of other bands, be it Ex-Vöid, The GN Band, Suep or perhaps most famously three-quarters of the band were in Welsh music prize-winning noise-pop band, Joanne Gruesome. Having released their debut album, Dead Mead, last year this week the band announced their new record, Cotton Crown, would arrive in March via Trouble In Mind, an occasion they marked by sharing their new single, Freak Mode.

As with much of Cotton Crown’s creation, Freak Mode was written about the period following the suicide of vocalist Owen ‘O’ Williams’ mother, the folk singer Charlotte Greig. In particular, Freak Mode was written about, “dating while grieving the death of my mother. It’s about making wacky tragicomic romantic assumptions and being an emotional freak, but also kind of being self aware about that and explaining it to whoever you’re shagging”. The jet-black comedy of the lyrics is contrasted by the music, a bright tumble of guitars that finds them leaving up to their self-prescribed, “Celtic jangle boyband” style which brings to mind the likes of The Wedding Present or more modern contemporaries Ducks Ltd and The Reds, Pinks And Purples. Amidst the rapid drive of the rhythm section and guitar/bass interplay, Owen sits in his own thoughts as he admonishes his own tendency to be, “a freak in love”, and wonders how it must feel from the other side of this explosion of emotional unloading, “I know it’s over, know it didn’t star, I know it must be strange, to be the one caught in the middle”. In many ways this is a perfect return for The Tubs, everything you loved about their first album remains, yet they’re also clearly moving forward, digging deeper, finding new meaning in this topsy-turvy journey we call life and sharing it with us all in ways that are more intriguing than ever before.

Cotton Crown is out March 7th via Trouble In Mind. For more information on The Tubs visit https://linktr.ee/thetubs.

Header photo is The Tubs by Robin Christian