Further Listening:

5. Don’t Leave Sekunderna Are About To Play The Hits

Hailing from Umeå in Eastern Sweden, Sekunderna formed in 2018, originally under the name Persona, with the aim of making, “punk rock inspired by the darkness of Ingmar Bergman films”. With a name translating as The Seconds, the band’s music feels like an exercise in making the most of your time, “counting down the seconds before you have to pause your dreams to go to work”. Their debut album, tongue-in-cheekly titled The Hits, will come out later this month via Fika Recordings, and this week they shared their new single, Lämna mig här.

Translating as Leave Me Here, Lämna mig här is a song about, “a disastrous car ride home from a show”, where vocalist Lars Sekund, “threw up all the way and begged the others to leave him at the roadside”. As my Swedish is non-existent, I’ll have to take their word on the song’s lyrical content, but that language barrier certainly doesn’t hinder the musical impact. The song rockets into existence, a slashy blast of crunchy guitar chords, understated soloing, and drums clattered into submission. With its fusion of raw energy and melodic flourish, Lämna mig här is sure to appeal to fans of the likes of Martha, Japandroids and one of the band’s biggest influences, The Marked Men. If you like your punk on the melodic side, Sekunderna have certainly got you covered.

Hits is out August 22nd via Fika Recordings. For more information on Sekunderna visit https://sekunderna.bandcamp.com/.

4. I Just Listened To Far Caspian On A Whim

The Leeds-based project of Irish musician Joel Johnston, Far Caspian is very much a solo project, with Joel producing, mixing and playing every single instrument you hear on his latest album, Autofiction. This was partly the result of his acclaimed debut album, The Last Remaining Light, which led Joe to set up his own recording studio and start producing other bands. After nearly retiring Far Caspian, he took a different approach, taking the demos and treating them as he would another band’s work, “I’m presenting myself with these demos I’ve had for a while. Let me see what I can do with them as a producer, not as a songwriter“. Autofiction arrived in the world at the end of July, an event marked by Far Caspian sharing the excellent new single, Whim.

Like all of Autofiction, Whim was written with a simple motto in mind, “I’m enjoying this right now and therefore it’s good enough”, by freeing himself of his own overthinking, Joe was able to fall back in love with the joy of making music and the reason he started doing this in the first place. Whim seems to take that newfound hopefulness further, exploring themes of, “getting out of your head and into the world”. That Joe cites Broken Social Scene as an influence is certainly evident here, dealing in the sort of tumbling, atmospheric textures favoured by the Canadian collective, a fact which only goes to highlight the achievement of Joe producing something this fully realised entirely under his own steam. As the song’s closing line states, “lean on a whim that’s led to everything”, and that feels like a nice metaphor for Autofiction as a whole, a celebration of following your instincts, letting the music guide you and being open to wherever inspiration leads the sound.

Autofiction is out now via Tiny Library Records. For more information on Far Caspian visit https://farcaspian.org/.

3. Divorce’s New Single Is A Real Calamity

Here I am again, once more telling you how much I love the band Divorce, maybe you love them too, maybe you wish I’d stop going on about them, either way, please bear with me, because while you might think you know Divorce, this might just surprise you. After releasing their acclaimed debut album, Drive To Goldenhammer, back in March, the band have been doing what they always seem to be doing, relentlessly touring, an experience they describe as, “like we were being dragged through a hedge backwards – in a nice way“. This week, they took a rare pitstop to share a brand new song, O Calamity.

A song originally written six years earlier, Tiger recalls it came to her like many songs do, “during a shift at the bar I was working at“. The track was originally arranged for another band Tiger was in with fellow vocalist Felix, but then it was added to a pile of material they’ve never released and didn’t fit onto their debut record, until now. “This feels like a good time to stop hanging onto it…a snapshot of our past written by the two of us, scarcely more than teenagers at the point of creation. It feels like an absolute world away, but good songs never get old“. Musically, the track is a real departure for Divorce, leaning into the smoky Americana of acts like Wilco or Bill Callahan as a lone acoustic guitar plays atop rural found sound. Atop it all, Tiger and Felix share vocals that seem to touch on themes of misinterpreted intentions, “oh calamity rolls on, and I never wanted to hurt anyone”. There’s a real sense of freedom here, very much a song in its own right rather than being part of any wider album context and a chance for Divorce to show another string to their impeccable bow.

Drive To Goldenhammer is out now via Gravity / Capitol. For more information on Divorce visit https://www.divorcehq.co.uk/.

2. Who Cares About A New Joyeria Single? You Should

The world last heard from the Speedy Wunderground-signed musician Joyeria back in 2022, with the release of the five-track EP, FIM. The record introduced his, “existential indie-rock sound”, something he built on this week with the release of the new single, I don’t know who cares? The track is the first taster of Joyeria’s next chapter, with the promise of more music to follow before the year is out.

Although you couldn’t really say it was inspired by it, the track reflects on “that poem by Hemingway, the short one about the baby’s shoes“, of which Joy is not a fan, “I don’t think it’s very good but it’s also the kind of nonsense that seems to resonate with people… “Oh his brilliant simplicity”. God dammit“. If Hemingway set out to overegg meaning in our existence, perhaps Joyeria’s aim is to do the opposite: “a better use of our time than imagining the misery of orbiting the drain”. The track seems to almost creak into life, Joy channelling his inner David Berman or Micah P. Hinson as he offers a disinterested shrug in the direction of everyday societal norms, “How are you doing? How do you feel today? I don’t know, who cares? Stop asking”. From there atop a shuffling drum pattern and languid guitar line, Joy seeks to celebrate wins so small, you wonder if they’re wins at all, “doing nothing is a wonderful thing, and the boredom reflects well on me, tell my mother that I got out of bed, I’m not better, just used to it”. A song that seems to teeter on the border of melancholy and indifference, it really works because it’s so straight talking, no flowery metaphor or hidden meanings for Joyeria, an artist who knows time is fleeting, and sometimes you’ve got to get straight to the point.

I Don’t Know, Who Cares? is out now via Speedy Wunderground. For more information on Joyeria visit https://linktr.ee/joyeria.sounds.

1. Davie Always Had The Nicest Lawn

Last appearing on these pages around the release of the brilliantly titled Bigger Sprout, Lawn are the New Orleans-based duo of Mac Folger and Rui De Magalhaes, co-songwriters who somewhat unusually have pretty different songwriting styles. Although now back in the same city, their upcoming record, God Made The Highway, was largely created remotely after Rui temporarily relocated to Chicago, it’s also the first record the pair made in a, “real studio”, with a real deadline to get the album done in three days. The resultant record will arrive in September via Exploding In Sound, and this week, Lawn shared the first single from it, Davie.

Penned by Mac, Davie fits nicely into his songwriting canon, tapping into all things, “breezy, jangly and personal”. The track is named after a former landlord, and reflects on a particular time in their lives, when they formed Lawn in a house that was, “big and beautiful and falling apart“, with an owner who, “acted cool and was always high but in the end totally sucked and took all our deposit money”. It’s a time that with hindsight still feels murky as they attempt to live a rock’n’roll dream, “in retrospect, it’s hard to say if they were the worst or the best times, but they were very meaningful”. Musically, the track seems to walk the line between the classic indie-pop of Teenage Fanclub or The Go-Betweens, and more contemporary North American indie-types like Cola and Real Estate, resplendent with tumbling guitar lines, fuzzy twin vocals and sprightly drum rhythms. For all the frustration bubbling underneath for the landlord who did them wrong, the lyrics here are more like snapshots of someone unsure if they’re a rockstar in the making, or just “playing a role until you get home and see the peeling at the veneer”. It’s neither bitter nor particularly a work of nostalgia, it’s a bit of a shrug, an acknowledgement that it was what it was, a formative experience, a life-changing moment that for better or worse shaped their paths and brought us to the here and now, ready for whatever comes next.

God Made The Highway is out September 19th via Exploding In Sound. For more information on Lawn visit .

Header photo is Lawn by Cora Nimtz