Further Listening:

5. You Can’t Pigeon Hole Jeremy Tuplin

I’ve been writing about Jeremy Tuplin’s music since I first heard the, “space-folk” stylings of his debut album, I Dreamt I Was An Astronaut back in the Summer of 2017, when he still had short hair and looked a bit like a fighter pilot. Jeremy’s music, like the world we both inhabit, has changed quite a bit since then, as demonstrated on his last record 2023’s deliciously-dark synth-drenched concept album Orville’s Discotheque. For his next move, Jeremy brings us Planet Heaven, a record he describes as his most personal yet, and one of which his record label, the always wonderful Trapped Animal, surmise, “it’s about humans, it’s about beauty and death and life”. While that record won’t arrive until October, this week Jeremy shared the first single from it, Pigeon Song.

Introducing something of a theme to this week’s picks, Pigeon Song finds Jeremy contrasting the dark and the light, ridiculing hatred and division and revelling in love and nature, “it was an impulse to tie together various negative ideas infiltrating the world’s collective awareness, and dispel them with something pure and beautiful”. Bookended by bird call, Pigeon Song in an undeniably pretty thing, a warm, muted piece with Jeremy joined by tumbling electronics, propulsive bass and the delightfully hushed backing vocals of The Baby Seals’ Kerry Devine. This feels like a fitting introduction to Planet Heaven, a record Jeremy says has, “a kind of soft defiance”, because sometimes when lots of people seem to be screaming, the gentlest, calmest voice is the one that has the most important thing to say.

Planet Heaven is out October 17th via Trapped Animal. For more information on Jeremy Tuplin visit https://www.jeremytuplin.com/

4. Ain’t Reach For The Obscure

In the pursuit of fantastic new music, sometimes you’ve just got to trust a record label. That’s always been the case for me with Fear Of Missing Out Records, the London-based label doesn’t release a huge amount of music, but when they do you just know it’s going to be good. Having previously brought us the likes of Umarells, Alex Chilltown and No Kill, their latest discovery is South London up-and-comers Ain’t. The band shot out of the traps last summer with a pair of very promising singles, which they bettered with March’s acclaimed offering Pirouette. To mark the occasion of their debut London headline show at The Waiting Room in Stoke Newington, this week the band shared their new single, Jude.

Recorded with acclaimed producer Theo Verney, known for his work with English Teacher and Lime Garden, Jude finds Ain’t in their typical musical territory exploring the scuzzier, more slacker reaches of the 90s guitar music revolution that in lesser hands is slightly in danger of being done to death. Christened by guitarist George Ellerby, the name Jude sparked a particularly boozy memory in vocalist Hanna Baker Darch, who recalls how it, “reminded me of a pub called Jude the Obscure, where I went with a friend from university…the lyrics reflect the bitter pints-deep tone of our conversations, which has been described as the dynamic of a witch-hag and her raccoon accomplice“. Turning early promise into something special is never guaranteed, but on this evidence Ain’t seem ready to make a splash.

Jude is out now via Fear Of Missing Out Records. For more information on Ain’t visit https://linktr.ee/aintband.

3. David Byrne Is The Best Medicine

David Byrne was born in Dumbarton in 1952, four years after my late father and one before my late mother, and I’m not exactly a child myself. He started making music in the early 1970s, and the band he’s most famous for being a member of split up 34 years ago – so how on earth does he still seem so impossibly young? So playful? So creatively uninhibited? Whatever his secret is, we’ll get some more evidence of his unbridled musical wonder later this year as he releases his latest album, Who Is The Sky? With the record headed our way in September, this week David shared the first single from it, Everybody Laughs.

In many ways, Everybody Laughs is a song about opposites, and how positives and negatives can exist alongside one another, as David recalls, “I tried to sing about these things that could be seen as negative in a way balanced by an uplifting feeling from the groove and the melody, especially at the end, when St. Vincent and I are doing a lot of hollering”. Contrast is also a constant in the music, there’s a wide-eyed playfulness to the frisky rhythms and vocal delivery, which sits against a musically complex backing, courtesy of the 15-piece Ghost Train Orchestra, who serve as Byrne’s backing band throughout Who Is The Sky? and here contribute everything from string flourishes to calypso marimbaing. At the fore throughout is Byrne’s voice, strikingly unprocessed, it feels wonderfully human, matching his lyrical musing on the shared things we all do, “everybody laughs and everybody cries, everybody lives and everybody dies, everybody eats and everybody loves, everybody knows what everybody does”. Perhaps Everybody Laughs is the answer to David Byrne’s impossible youthfulness, he knows that even if life gets dark there has to be a reason to smile, to laugh and to be with the ones you love – here’s to many more years of David Byrne making an awful lot of sense.

Who Is The Sky? is out September 5th via Matador Records. For more information on David Byrne visit https://whoisthesky.davidbyrne.com/

2. Rebecca Schiffman’s Ready To Burst Out Of Her Bubble

A born-and-bred New Yorker, Rebecca Schiffman committed what some people from her home city might consider the cardinal sin of upping sticks and moving to Los Angeles. Even more egregiously to the East Coasters, Rebecca’s upcoming fourth album, Before The Future, is something of a love letter to Los Angeles, and the community of producers and musicians there that welcomed her in with open arms. The album was made differently from her previous offerings, eschewing the old idea of making an album in a single sitting with a single producer, and instead recording here and there, picking up ideas from everyone she worked with along the way to make the record come to life. With the album set to land at the end of next month, this week Rebecca shared the second track to be lifted from it, Bubble of Love.

Discussing the track, Rebecca explains that it, “traces a relationship from the honeymoon phase when you could spend all your time with someone and anything is possible, to a time when it feels claustrophobic and you want to pop the bubble“. The track was produced with Luke Temple, frontman of the brilliant Here We Go Magic, and it seems to tap into some of that band’s indie-pop breeziness. It’s a track so sprightly you can almost imagine Rebecca sang it jogging on the spot, a similarly propulsive affair to acts like Lael Neale or Stereolab. Amid the clattering motorik rhythms and wonky, wavering keyboards, Rebecca’s lyrics play out a relationship in double speed, from the initial infatuation, “don’t need to know what you’re thinking, I’m still learning where you’re from”, through to questioning if relationships are even for you anyway, “I thought my married friend would judge me, but she just said you’re not suited for monogamy”. Rebecca’s Bubble Of Love might have popped before it could ever bloom, yet her curiosity for the world outside it is clear, a songwriter who seems to really think about the world she inhabits and that open-minded intrigue goes a long way to explaining why Before The Future might just be one of the year’s most intriguing releases.

Before The Future is out July 25th. For more information on Rebecca Schiffman visit https://www.rebeccaschiffman.com/.

1. Allo Darlin’ – Hallo Liebling

Does it say something about a band that you can still remember where you were when you heard they were splitting up? I was in Copenhagen when Allo Darlin’ called it a day, scrambling to not let the restless pursuit of tickets for their farewell shows get in the way of enjoying my holiday. With the departure of their record label, Fortuna Pop, earlier that Summer it felt like something of an end of an indie-pop era. Wind forward the best part of a decade, and you’ll have to forgive this writer for becoming a little dewy-eyed with nostalgia at the news of the band’s upcoming return. Then Allo Darlin’ have always been a band that tapped into nostalgia, able to whisk you away on a wave of warm melodies, shared memories and collective good times. After reconnecting over group Zoom calls during the early days of the Coronavirus pandemic, the band agreed that when it was all over, one way or another they’d become a band again – a plan made slightly more tricky by their members being strewn across the globe, but true to their word they’ve done just that. The result: some rapidly sold-out reunion shows, and now a new album, Bright Nights, due out via Fika/Slumberland next month, which they previewed this week with their new single, Cologne.

Cologne was originally written as a celebration of the band’s performance at Cologne Popfest earlier this year and grew to become something more. In many ways, Cologne is the perfect gateway from the Allo Darlin’ of previous records and the band we see before us now. Although they’re often lumped into the indie-pop scene, Allo Darlin’ have always carried a certain Americana twang and that seems to be dialled up here courtesy of Paul Rain’s remarkable tumbling guitar lines, which bring to mind the like of Friendship or Bill Callahan, and matched with the strutting rhythm sections are a perfect foil to Elizabeth Morris Innset’s ever-potent blend of travel, memory and longing. She starts by urging us to look up from our screens, to see the beauty of Cologne, or wherever we find ourselves, even if the stunning architecture is obscured by the “revellers from the night before…puking into the bins outside the book store”. The song seems to touch on the same push and pull of many Allo Darlin’ songs, the battle of home and the open road, only now what was once home has become a memory, with life is now firmly rooted in European soil, “there are many places we have called our home, we keep a little piece of each one in our soul”. Towards the song’s close Elizabeth sings the line every fan of this band probably wants to hear, “the river is wide, and the road so long, we’re not in it for the ride, we’re in it for the long run”, sure they might not be talking about Allo Darlin’, but whether this is a brief return or the next step on a life long journey, it’s just a delight to say hello once more to one of the best bands around.

Bright Nights is out July 11th via Fika Recordings (UK) / Slumberland Records (US). For more information on Allo Darlin’ visit https://www.allodarlin.com/.

Header photo is Allo Darlin’ by Jørgen Nordby.