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5. Remember Sports Are All About Getting Across The Line

While I still think of them as relative newcomers, Philadelphia’s Remember Sports actually formed back in 2012. They were just known as Sports then, and were attending Kenyon College in Ohio, self-releasing the much-loved debut album Sunchokes. They subsequently signed with Father/Daughter and released a further three albums, while navigating a name change in the middle. Following 2022’s EP, Leap Day, came a period of hibernation for the band, which thankfully ended this week with a brand new single, Across The Line, and the news that the band had signed with the queer and trans-run label, Get Better Records.

Discussing Across The Line, principal songwriter Carmen Perry suggests it’s a reflection on a dream, “where I blew up my life by doing whatever I wanted“, the song seems to deal with the idea of, “following different paths of what your life could look like, if only in your mind“. Written under the heady influence of Cherry Blossom trees in the springtime, Carmen suggests the song, “sounds like floating pink petals to me”, and it certainly has some new bloom energy. It’s a song that seems to always be walking the line between messy noise and polished pop, like the, to my knowledge, untapped middle ground of Alanis Morrisette and Wednesday. Spending some time thinking about their next move seems to have really worked for Remember Sports, they sound reinvigorated, full of fresh ideas, and quite possibly more exciting than ever before.

Across The Line is out now via Get Better Records. For more information on Remember Sports visit https://www.remembersports.com/.

4. Is That New Music From Whitelands I Glance On The Horizon

A band we’ve been championing around these parts since premiering their excellent single Fluoxetine back in 2018, Whitelands’ reputation has only been on the rise ever since. After catching the ear of Sonic Cathedral, the perfect home for their shoegazey musings, last year saw the band release their debut album, Night-bound Eyes Are Blind To The Day. The record garnered widespread acclaim and celebrity endorsements from everyone from Slowdive to actor David Jonsson, who stars alongside Honor Swinton Byrne in their latest video. The video accompanies their new single Glance, the latest taster of their upcoming second album, Sunlight Echoes.

Picking up where their previous single, Heat Of The Summer, left off, Glance again shows a newfound confidence in Whitelands’ sound, in particular their embracing of a more pop-centric sound with vocalist Etienne Quartey-Papafio coming to the fore. Here Etienne is channeling the perhaps unobvious influences of Chappel Roan and Sabrina Carpenter, “they’ve shaped how I sing now…I wanted to see if there was more I could do“. The result is a song that melds the band’s shoegaze roots into something distinctly more accessible, reminiscent of the swooping grandeur of Mansun or The The. A song about the, “what ifs”, Glance explores, “that first look between two random people in a real life physical space“. It was written after a period of writer’s block, which was only undammed, when Etienne, “had my heart broken”. Whether it was worth the pain only Etienne can attest, but with Glance, Whitelands are a band clearly not dwelling on the past; more than ever, they seem ready to grasp the spotlight and never let go.

Sunlight Echoes is out January 30th via Sonic Cathedral. For more information on Whitelands visit https://linktr.ee/whitelandsband.

3. Tōth’s New Single Doesn’t Need Any Spin

Something of a fixture around these parts, both with his solo music as Tōth and formerly as one half of the excellent Rubblebucket, Alex Toth has never been a songwriter wedded to a specific genre, and is all the more interesting for it. I first came across Tōth’s music around the release of their debut album, Practice Magic and Seek Professional Help When Necessary. An album written while nursing, “a broken foot and a broken heart”, that was a claustrophobic exploration of moving on. The follow up You And Me And Everything was a technicolor explosion of danceable acceptance of the things you can’t control. With an album forthcoming via Northern Spy / Egghunt Records in the hopefully not too distant future, this week Tōth returned with the first taster of it, Spiraling.

While Tōth’s musical stylings might be delightfully fluid, the themes keep coming back to love, whether it’s the pursuit, the pain, or sometimes, like here, both at once. The song explores, “the ache of love that feels both new and déjà vu”, as Alex reflects in the lyrics, “I thought we were everything, but you and I were spiraling”. Musically, this is at the more reflective end of Tōth’s output, opening with a flourish of trumpets, before the vocals take to the foreground. Quietly hypnotic, they give the whole thing a dreamy quality, mirroring the gentle repetition of life’s patterns that haunt the lyrics. This serene, Grizzly Bear-like drift is cut through by the subtly explosive chorus, where buzzing textures of organ meet the distant clatter of guitars. There’s no great resolution here, indeed, the track seems to almost end back where it began, yet there’s perhaps a sense of eyes opening, the growing sense of, “the feeling that we never stood a chance”. The track plays out like a hedge maze, yes, we get lost with every wrong turn, yet by repetition, we eventually break free, and the deep-rooted spiral comes to an end.

Spiraling is out now via Northern Spy/Egghunt Records. For more information on Tōth visit https://www.tothtunes.com/

2. Annabelle Chairlegs Just Isn’t Letting Summer Go

The alter-ego of Austin-based songwriter Lindsey Mackin, Annabelle Chairlegs has one of those names that just make you want to ask questions, mainly questions like, why are you called Annabelle Chairlegs? While I have no answer for that, across two self-released albums, I do know that Annabelle Chairlegs sure knows her way around a pop song. This week Annabelle announced she’d signed on the dotted line with the, “new artist friendly feeder label”, TODO Records, which she celebrated, like everyone should, with ice cream, or to be totally accurate, a new single called Ice Cream On The Beach.

The first Annabelle Chairlegs material since 2022’s Danke Schoen/Sunglasses, Ice Cream On The Beach was produced by Ty Segall, and finds Lindsey reflecting how the titular food/place combo is, “always a great idea, until it’s not. A love song”. Musically, the tracks open with a distinctly beachy keyboard line, reminiscent of The English Riviera-era Metronomy, however, as Lindsey’s vocal enters, it takes a delightful turn. They take you somewhere completely different, bucket and spades sliding into the background for something more rugged and exposed. There’s a touch of Melody Prochet or Katy Kirby to the poised delivery, which has a wonderful stoicism, as if she’s stiff upper lipping her way through the process of laying her romantic cards on the table. Despite the gentle questioning of the delivery, the words are pure, unfiltered adoration, “it’s total bliss, I feel you walk beside, when I’m alone, I’ve been to heaven now, I’ve seen it at my front door”. Sure, Ice Creams melt, sand blows in your eyes, and winter is rolling around again, but like trips to the seaside, Annabelle Chairlegs is never going out of style.

Ice Cream On The Beach is out now via TODO. For more information on Annabelle Chairlegs visit https://www.annabellechairlegs.com/.

1. Dorothy Takes Are Bringing Back The 50s

A freshly minted small-scale supergroup, Dorothy consists of Jude Woodehad (aka Saint Jude), Marco Pini (of GG Skips, Sorry, RIP Magic), and Francesca Brierley (aka heka). The London-based trio are the latest signing to Fire Talk Records’ emerging artist imprint, Angel Tapes. Celebrating that news, the band this week shared their debut single, 50s song, the first to be lifted from their upcoming EP, Sea Songs, which will land in December.

50s song is an intriguing introduction to Dorothy, and one of which they paint a vivid portrait, “the shack is a roaring glow, filled with all kinds of folk…The beer flows from the taps like gold, and like a moth you flock to it again and again throughout the night. You sing at the moon of your heart’s desire”. In music writing, there’s a tendency to use retro when you mean something sounds like an impersonation of the past, yet here Dorothy display a different meaning. This doesn’t sound like anyone other than Dorothy, yet it sounds like it is from another era. It’s in the way it’s recorded, from Marco’s crooning vocals, through to the splashy percussion and prominent piano flourishes, it sounds like some lost recording of a band way ahead of their time. Particularly lovely throughout are the backing vocals, an angelic choir in perfect contrast to the grittier, grimier lead, reminiscent of the way Nancy Sinatra made Lee Hazlewood’s husky drawl shine brighter than it ever did alone. Delightfully out of step with anything else going on, Dorothy are all the more exciting for it, the sound of three remakrable artists coming together and making something that might even be more captivating than anything they’ve made alone.

Sea Songs is out December 12th via Angel Tapes / Fire Talk. For more information on Dorothy visit https://www.instagram.com/dorothy_at_sea/

Header photo courtesy of Dorothy

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