Further Listening:

5. Cornershop & Eden Gray Are Such A Dam Good Double Act

2025 continues to be a year of returns, and you could easily lump Cornershop into that group; however, while their fame might have peaked in the late 1990s, the band have actually remained pretty active ever since. Back in 2019, they met vocalist Eden Gray, who was at the other end of her career and just starting to take music more seriously. Their planned collaboration got waylaid by Cornershop heading to France to work on 2020’s England Is A Garden, and Eden focusing on her work in law and technology ethics. Post-pandemic, they finally entered a studio, and the result is the new single, “Amsterdam via Rotterdam,” out now via Ample Play Records.

Described by its creators as, “an ode to youthful spirit, memories and the beauty of small regrets”, Amsterdam via Rotterdam is a fantastic fusion of ideas, Eden Gray’s crisp vocal delivery given life by the bouncing bass and playful synths Cornershop always bring to the party. Lyrically, the sense of youth fading into the back mirror is palpable, yet it doesn’t seem to wallow. Instead, it feels reflective, knowing things could have been done differently, but regrets serve no purpose, “if I could do it again, I’d spend more time with friends, we would go out and be young again in Amsterdam”. The whole thing has a beautiful end-of-summer feel, a soundtrack to leaves turning golden, and holiday romances fading into happy memories, gone but certainly not forgotten.

Amsterdam Via Rotterdam is out now via Ample Play Records. For more information on Cornershop visit https://www.cornershop.com/.

4. I’ve Got High Hopes For Eve Adams

Based out of Joshua Tree in California, Eve Adams is seemingly very interested in dust. It even comes into the title of her upcoming album, American Dust, a record reflecting on how landscapes tie generations together, “the dust that clung to the covered wagons of my ancestors as they crossed the Great American Desert is the same dust my great-great-grandmother swept off her porch during the Dust Bowl of 1936 in Oklahoma, is the same dust that blows in through the cracks in my windows here in the desert”. Ahead of the record’s release via the excellent Basin Rock Records, which is based in the considerably less dusty setting of West Yorkshire, Eve recently shared the record’s latest single, Get Your Hopes Up.

Described by Eve as, “a gentle dare to feel something again”, Get Your Hopes Up is a song about opening yourself up to the world, “hope is risky, of course – but so is giving up on love”. Despite its thoughtful themes, Get Your Hopes Up has a certain swagger to it, a soundtrack to saloon doors bursting open as our protagonist comes to give love one more shot, “it’s easier to say it’s the end of the road, than it is to agree to build more”. Particularly wonderful is the half-cut bar-room piano, like Tom Waits has been on the whisky all day and agreed to bash out one more perfect rendition for another bottle. Combined with the natural woozy shimmer of the slide guitars and skittering percussion, it makes for a delightfully hazy backing to Eve’s sleepily smitten drawl, “I don’t want to lay down more rules, it’s hard enough to be in love with you”. By leaning into her distinctly American history, Eve Adams seems to have found a coat that truly fits her, a kind of retro-sheen without any glitz or glamour, just a hard earnt, straight-talking honesty that couldn’t suit her more.

American Dust is out now via Basin Rock. For more information on Eve Adams visit https://www.eveadams.club/.

3. Will Paquin’s New Single Really Does It For Me

A singer and guitarist based in Nashville, Will Paquin is a songwriter who doesn’t always want to share, “sometimes I keep things a secret just to make them feel like they’re only mine“. It might explain why the five years since his breakout album, Chandelier, arrived in 2020 have seen him share just a handful of new tracks, choosing instead to nurture his ideas and songs behind closed doors until he was ready to give them to the world. Thankfully, that will happen very soon, with the self-release of his new album HAHAHA, which he previewed this week with a new single, We Really Done It This Time.

Will’s attempt to, “score my life as a cowboy western”, We Really Done It This Time explores a doomed relationship both with people and place, “thinking of California and the rocky relationship I had waiting for me there. I was in Vermont at the time, and worried about what I would find out west…a romance bound to crash before takeoff”. Now, if you’re expecting slide guitars and Stetson hats, you’ve probably come to the wrong place. Will’s version of a cowboy western is altogether more urgent. HAHAHA’s opening track, We Really Done It This Time, feels like life in double-time, all jerky guitar-drive and drums battered into submission, like the middle ground of the Oh Sees and Kane Strang. Lyrically, it’s a fairly unflinching reflection of a relationship in meltdown, “you stole my heart and took it to the turnpike, and left me at the state lines, you really done it this time”. As statements of intent go, Will Paquin’s is a committed one, suggesting that HAHAHA, despite its playful title, might just be the work of an artist with a seriously bright future.

HAHAHA is out September 12th. For more information on Will Paquin visit https://www.willpaquin.com/

2. Wilder Maker Hit The Rodeo

I couldn’t entirely tell you why, but Wilder Maker have always struck me as just about the least Brooklyn-sounding Brooklyn band going. Something in their sound always screams of more pastoral, idyllic settings. However, as if to prove me entirely wrong, their upcoming album, The Streets Like Beds Still Warm, is defiantly urban, the first part of a planned, “concept trilogy”, the record is the opening hours of, “one long night in the city from dusk to dawn”, with our narrator, “drifting down avenues and in and out of bars and hospital rooms”. While the full record won’t arrive until next month, this week the band shared two new tracks from it: They Laugh That Win & Another Bullshit Rodeo.

Described by the band’s Gabriel Birnbaum as, “landing just after 11pm”, the tracks showcase improvisational and experimental qualities of this new period for Wilder Maker. They Laugh That Win is a charming burbling sub-two minute instrumental, full of tumbling, staggering guitar-lines, held upright by wheezing woodwind and dragged forward by the occasional push of percussion. My favourite of the two, however, is Another Bullshit Rodeo, a song I find just delightfully odd. The electronic flourishes and vocals that feel almost melody-less before resolving just at the songs end have a touch of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot-era Wilco, mixed with the jazzy flourish of the percussion, walking basslines, and an underlying sense of unnerving dread. Sure, it might take three albums for this full story to come to light, but this shift for Wilder Maker already feels like the start of an already intriguing band’s most enticing chapter so far.

The Streets Like Beds Still Warm is out September 19th via Western Vinyl. For more information on Wilder Maker visit https://linktr.ee/wildermaker

1. herbal tea Heads Below The Waves

The moniker of Bristol-based songwriter Helena Walker, I was tipping herbal tea for big things way back in 2019. Since then, it’s been a little quiet, there was a 2021 EP, Unwrap, which felt like an excellent canape, with no main course in site. Thankfully, that’ll all change later this month, when Helena shares her debut album, Hear As The Mirror Echoes, a joint release between Gold Day and our friends across the pond, Orindal Records. Building the excitement for that release, this week came a brand new herbal tea single, Submarine.

A song that seems to take it’s title as much from the sonic landscapes created as the lyrical content, Helena notes it’s a song whose, “meaning keeps shifting as time goes by”. Perhaps the over arching theme is one of disappearance and cocooning yourself from the cruelty of the world at large, “trying not to think of then, when she was always hiding”. The only track on Hear As The Mirror Echoes to feature studio-recorded drums, Submarine certainly makes good use of them, creating a heavier more all-encompassing atmosphere than previous herbal tea material. We’re sucked into the briny deep of slowcore and shoegaze as guitars scythe and shimmer in equal measure, and Helena’s vocal seems to make a break for the surface, which feels almost entirely futile. In the age of self-promotion, where artists are expected to constantly shout loudly for your attention, herbal tea seems to be playing her own game, a slow burn, a gradual progression, an artist willing to wait for you to find her, and one who will definitely be ready for you when you do.

Hear As The Mirror Echoes is out August 29th via Orindal (US) / Gold Day (UK). For more information on herbal tea visit https://linktr.ee/herbaltea.

Header photo is herbal tea by Sarah Rose Currie.