Further Listening:

5. casual smart Are Building Something Special

A teenage quintet of school friends from Cardiff, casual smart are already ticking off plenty of musical milestones, with a sold-out headline show at local institution Clwb Ifor Bach, shows with Porridge Radio and Man/Woman/Chainsaw and festival slots at Sŵn and Green Man. Achievements made all the more impressive by the fact the band only released their debut single, it doesn’t get any easier, in May last year. This week the band returned with their first material of 2025, in the shape of their new single, cranes.

Described by Pete Martin from the band as, “one of our most precious songs”, cranes explores the interaction of people and place, “it’s about how the love for a person can help mend a relationship with a place, and vice versa“. A distinctly ambitious piece of songwriting, cranes open with a tumbling piano line and a flourish of woodwind, marking a distinct shift from the lo-fi antifolk of their previous output. Here they head towards the sonic territory of bands like Tapir or Black Country New Road, as they blend gorgeous instrumentation with just the right amount of chaotic bombast, the whole thing swelling before it collapses in on itself with a final freeing crescendo. Amidst all the musical intrigue, the lyrics offer a deceptively simple message of giving it all in for the one person who makes life feel worthwhile, “I’d take you over X-box, I’d take you over drugs, everything I thought I’d ever need it not enough”. With the band declaring this track a sign of where their music is headed next, it feels like a real statement of intent, one that suggests casual smart are at the start of something really special.

Cranes is out now. For more information on casual smart visit https://linktr.ee/casualsmart

4. Dean Johnson Comes Crashing Down

The music industry can be a funny old place. Until recent years Dean Johnson was probably best known as the bar-tender of Al’s Tavern in Seattle, pouring drinks between local shows and quietly becoming part of the city’s legend – the best songwriter in town who never really made it out. All that changed in 2023, when at the tender age of 50, Dean finally put out an album and finally caught a break. That record, Nothing For Me Please, shone a light on Dean’s songwriting talents, bringing him to the ears of a new audience, and in the shape of Saddle Creek, a new record label, who will release the follow-up, I Hope We Can Still Be Friends later in the summer. With the album set to accompany an extensive touring schedule with everyone from Kurt Vile to Esther Rose and Rilo Kiley, this week Dean shared the first music from the record, his new single, Before You Hit The Ground.

Discussing the track, Dean suggests it is about the difficulty of remaining upbeat both in your songwriting and your life, “amidst the literal and figurative tornadoes and tempests surrounding all of us“. Here he takes Buddy Holly as his inspiration, “a guy renowned for finding the sunny side“, even if the song finds more in common with, “his plane going down“, as Dean suggests it, “evokes the growing divide between us and the chances of happy outcomes“. Listening to Before You Hit The Ground, I was struck by how timeless Dean’s music feels, possessed with a simplicity of melody, you could almost believe he’s a contemporary of Buddy Holly himself, even if he was born many years after that fateful day Buddy said farewell. A masterclass is achieving so much with so little, Dean might have little more than a brushed drum rhythm for company, yet he transports you to another time, wraps an arm around your shoulders and invites you along for the ride. In this gorgeous slice of Americana, Dean Johnson hits pretty close to perfection, although just one tip if you will allow it Dean – if you want to write a happy song maybe don’t write it about a plane crash!

I Hope We Can Still Be Friends is out August 22nd via Saddle Creek. For more information on Dean Johnson visit https://www.deanjohnsongs.com/

3. Chris Staples Definitely Matters

I interviewed Chris Staples back in 2019, around the release of the, at that point, Seattle-based songwriter’s most recent album Holy Moly. It was an album ahead of the thematic curve in its exploration of finding hope in the hopeless, on the opening track he sang, “everyone knows that the world’s on fire”, inviting us to take that as a given, and remain positive about what’s coming next. What came next for Chris was fittingly a newfound sense of calm, he left Washington behind, and headed East, finding a home in the, “quiet rhythm”, of Richmond, Virginia. With the move, a lifelong nomad found himself in possession of, “a small gift: stillness”. The result is Chris’ upcoming record, Don’t Worry, a record made with the benefit of time and calm, an album built on the idea of reflection, finding new meaning in old experiences, and letting everything breathe. Ahead of Don’t Worry arriving at the start of August, this week Chris shared the latest single from it, Doesn’t Matter Now.

On Doesn’t Matter Now, Chris looks way back for, “a song about growing up in ’90s and remembering times that you were emotionally immature“, thankfully Chris doesn’t look to scald or wallow in his youthful mistakes, instead he offers compassion to the person he was, “if I saw you today I know what I’d say, I’d say sorry but I was the only person I could be”. Recorded with great friends and regular musical contributors, Kyle Crane and Alan Parker, Doesn’t Matter Now is a gentle whisper of a song, Chris’ low-key vocal delivery and choppy guitar rhythms adorned with swells of slide guitar, and a subtle but none-the-less impressive drum rhythm, bringing to mind the likes of Lionlimb or Sam Evian. Time is so important in music, and here Chris seems to have all the time in the world, a sense of universal tranquillity flowing out of everything he does, it suits him beautifully, on this evidence he’s never sounded better.

Don’t Worry is out August 5th. For more information on Chris Staples visit https://linktr.ee/chrisstaplesmusic

2. Cass McCombs Just Wants A Moments Peace

Since the release of 2022’s Heartmind, Cass McCombs has been on something of a journey through his past. Firstly Cass re-signed with Domino Records, where he released five albums in a particularly fertile musical period between 2007 and 2013, including my personal favourite record of his, Catacombs. With that Cass also decided to release Seed Cake on Leap Year, a collection of previously unreleased music, recorded in The Bay Area in the late 1990’s. In revisiting this material, Cass also decided to revisit some old collaborators for his next musical move, including Papercuts’ Jason Quever and Chris Cohen, which conversely seems to have pushed his music forward. The result is the upcoming album, Interior Live Oak, out mid-August, and previewed this week by the record’s second single, Peace.

Cass McCombs has always struck me as something of an old musical soul, and the opening Peace certainly wouldn’t sound out of place on a protest line somewhere in the 1970s, quite fitting really for our current political climate. Indeed the song’s lyrics seem to walk that line too, on the one hand, it’s a song about the enduring quality of friendship, “take this with you, where you go, keep it close when things don’t make sense”, on the other it’s hard not to hear this a plea for a little universal sanity, “peace is what we say when we say goodbye, when we say goodbye we say peace”. Cass McCombs’ music has always had a slow-burning quality, and Peace is no different, its simple driving rhythm and entwining guitar meander might wash over you on first listen, but with each return, you get another piece of the puzzle, a moment of breakthrough and beauty to take with you. Twenty-plus years at the musical coal face don’t seem to have dented Cass McCombs’ sense of hope or freshness, and when you’re still writing songs this good, how can you not feel your best days are yet to come.

Interior Live Oak is out August 15th via Domino. For more information on Cass McCombs visit https://cassmccombs.com/

1. Dancer See The Positive Side

Regulars on the ever-fluid Glasgow music scene, Dancer crashed into my musical conscience with not one but two excellent EPs on GoldMold Records back in 2023. Last year they teamed up with international indie-pop institution Meritorio Records for 10 Songs I Hate About You, a record that pretty much lived up to both the quality, and the meaning of its title. Since then they’ve shared stages with the likes of The Bug Club, Dry Cleaning and Lewsberg, seizing that momentum the band are set to return in September with their second album, More Or Less, originally called More until Pulp beat them to it, which they previewed this week with their new single, Just Say Yes.

The period since 10 Songs I Hate About You, has been a transitional one for Dancer, with the introduction of a new drummer, Buffet Lunch’s Luke Moran. His crisp playing is evidenced on Just Say Yes, locked in with bassist Andrew Doig as Dancer band plot possibly their most overtly pop moment to date. If there’s a change here though, there’s also plenty of what fans of the band loved already, from Chris Taylor’s fluid guitar work to Gemma Fleet’s rhythmic vocal delivery and playful lyricism. Here blending an ultra-confident exterior with a nagging doubt underneath, “just say yes, ’cause you know I’m the best”. Playful and delightfully buoyant, Just Say Yes is Dancer at their most polished, yet it loses none of the urgency and energy that’s defined them as a band up until now, all in all, it’s a definite yes from me.

More Or Less is out September 12th via Meritorio Records. For more information on Dancer visit https://linktr.ee/dancerareaband

Header photo is Dancer