Want some Further Listening CLICK HERE

5. Johanna Samuels Returns In Style

Although she’s been releasing music for well over a decade now, Los Angeles-based songwriter Johanna Samuels first caught my ear back in 2019, when she teamed up with Basin Rock to release the brilliant EP, Have A Good One. Two full-length albums, Excelsior and Bystander, have followed, and most recently, there was the 2024 EP First And Last. Although Johanna’s never been gone for long, there was a sense of a fresh beginning this week, with her new single, White Limousine, shared alongside news of her signing to Odd Man Out Records.

Produced by Jonathan Rado and featuring Courtney Marie Andrews on backing vocals, White Limousine is a song that’s been with Johanna for a long time, penned in the early 2000s after she experienced her first panic attack. The event happened, you guessed it, in the back of a white limousine, as Johanna explains, “A friend had rented one for her 15th birthday, and I felt a pressure rising within myself to be inauthentic that night. I felt a sense of dread come over me, like I was unsafe. I could feel myself growing apart from myself“. While the track harks back to an event in the distant past, it’s an experience Johanna has experienced many times, often when trying to balance integrity and making a living as a musician, “I’ve found myself having to recenter values when I find myself drifting from my authentic heart “. A song called White Limousine would always need a little grandeur, and with the bombast of the lead guitar and rich, ringing piano, Johanna doesn’t disappoint. The whole thing feels like it could be soundtracking the denouement of a super-glossy American TV show, rather than a panic attack at a 15th-birthday party. As Johanna sings, “I had a feeling that it would end up at a highway bend”, you can almost picture the car careering off the road as the credits roll, even if in reality it was just an image conjured into her mind by a desire to escape from the situation in front of her. The blurred lines of authenticity and perception are beautifully wavering, melting away in front of your eyes as the guitar wails and Johanna rides back into our conscious as only she can.

White Limousine is out now via Odd Man Out Records. For more information on Johanna Samuels visit https://www.johannasamuels.com/

4. Join The Bug Club (If You Want To)

Another week, another chance to bang on about how great The Bug Club are. As mentioned on these pages back at the end of February, the Welsh duo are set to release their latest long-player, Every Single Muscle, at the end of May on their Seattle home-from-home, Sub Pop. With the band’s Never-Ending tour, adding dates on both side of the Atlantic, including a night supporting Super Furry Animals at Brixton Academy, this week they shared the second taste of Every Single Muscle, in the shape of their new single, Yours (If You Want Me).

As ever, the band present the track with almost no additional context, all part of the refreshing take-it-or-leave-it charm they apply to almost every aspect of being a band, the complete opposite of the social media attention-grabbing style bands are led towards in the streaming age. The opening bars of the song feel like a bit of a departure for The Bug Club, their usual full-throttle approach giving way to a piece of distinctly Welsh-pop, reminiscent of Euros Child or H. Hawkline, as Sam sings wistfully, “I’m only sleeping, and if the sun don’t want to shine, then I’m not begging”. Things take a turn towards more traditional Bug Club style, with a typically ramshackle blast of a chorus, casting themselves as the Anti-Stone Roses, “I don’t wanna be adored, but I’m yours, if you want me”. There’s a previously untapped sweetness throughout, a tender straight-talking plea for someone to make it all make sense, “I’m rеady for this, whatever we’rе talking about, devotion and doubt. Well, I don’t know how to fix it on my own”. Just when you think you’ve got your head around who The Bug Club are, they throw you a curve ball, a perfect pop song that loses none of their distinctly a-commercial tendencies, leaving the listener with a simple question: Do you want them? Frankly, you’d be mad not to.

Every Single Muscle is out May 29th via Sub Pop. For more information on The Bug Club visit https://linktr.ee/thebugclubband.

3. Not Even Counting Sheep Could Make Me Sleep On Brown Wimpenny

An 11-strong traditional folk collective, from Manchester/Liverpool/London (and who seem to add a new city to the mix with every release), Brown Wimpenny are signed to probably the most exciting label in experimental folk-music right now, Broadside Hacks. The project started life in Seth Lockwood’s Manchester living room, an informal get together, growing as large as 25 members before being whittled down to a core football team’s worth, with the band recalling early gigs saw them take up half the capacity of the room they were playing in. This week, the band announced the June arrival of their debut album, Long Live Brown Wimpenny, and shared the latest track from it, their version of Jake Thackray’s classic, Old Molly Metcalfe.

The sense of history in the song is laid bare from the start, with the band sourcing an archive live performance from Thackray himself, direct from the musician’s estate. He explains the idiosyncratic traditional sheep-counting methods of North Yorkshire shepherds, before Brown Wimpenny enter to tell the somewhat bleak tale of the fictional shepherdess Old Molly Metcalfe. Explaining what drew them to the track Brown Wimpenny explain its place in the folk canon, “it is refreshing as a folk song, both for the fact that its female protagonist is portrayed without the gaze of sexuality; and that it goes against a romanticised view of pastoral life, something that the modern folk revival is often guilty of“. The other thing Browm Wimpenny’s version does that’s sometimes forgotten in folk-reworkings is to remember it’s music, not just storytelling. Thackray’s voice gives way to a textural flourish of instruments and voices, probably more akin to Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra than it is to your average folk ensemble. The song gradually picks up across it near nine minute run, as the tale of Molly Metcalfe, frozen and broken on the moors as she works for someone else’s, “fine warm wool”, gradually darkens, punctuated by the repeated sheep counting refrain, “Yan, tyan, tether, mether, pip”. Like previous singles, Raglan Road, and The Sheffield Grinder (a version of which I stumbled upon in the wild at Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet this past weekened), here Brown Wimpenny have mastered the art of breathing new life into old tales, re-interpreting the stories in their own intriguing way and passing them on to whoever wants to put their own spin on them next.

Long Live Brown Wimpenny is out June 5th via Broadside Hacks. For more information on Brown Wimpenny visit https://brownwimpenny.bandcamp.com/

2. Squirrel Flower’s New Single Is Wheely Good

I’m a well-documented admirer of the music of Squirrel Flower, aka Chicago songwriter Ella Williams. Each of Ella’s last three albums have appeared in the top five records on my end of year list, with 2020’s I Was Born Swimming topping the chart. So it’s been a long three years waiting for new music, after 2023’s Tomorrow’s Fire, a wait that finally ended this week with a new single, Wheels.

The track was recorded, “live at 12am in a makeshift recording studio that we built in one day”, with the original vocal preserved in all its, “sleepy and loose” glory. The inspiration for the track came from the rather unusual source, “a gas station attendant said to me, ‘may your wheels stay on the ground.’ I thought that was so beautiful”. The song was written as Ella drove, singing it into her phone as a Townes Van Zandt live CD played in the background, before finishing it collaboratively when she arrived at Babehoven’s Maya Bon’s house. That wasn’t the only influence Maya Bon had on the finished product, with Ella recruiting her and Billie Marten to record harmonies, “inspired by the ‘Trio’ album (Linda Ronstadt, Dolly Parton, and Emmylou Harris, the voices and sounds of my childhood)”. It all makes for one of Squirrel Flower’s most straight-shooting numbers to date, a smouldering country-rock ode to a life on the road and the things we leave behind, as the guitars twang and the three-part harmonies swoon, “I am always coming, just as you go”. If Wheels is an aside in the Squirrel Flower catalogue, or a sign of where Ella’s music is going next, only time will tell. For now, we can just luxuriate in one of the best in the business, putting the key in the ignition and letting the wheels roll once again.

Wheels is out now via Polyvinyl. For more information on Squirrel Flower visit https://www.squirrelflower.net/.

1. Sunshine? Not If Juni Habel Has Anything To Say About It

Having previously mentioned a singer from Basin Rock’s past, the label’s current endeavours closes off this week’s round-up, as Juni Habel shares her new single, Pearl Cloud Song. The track is lifted from the Norwegian songwriter’s upcoming third album, Evergreen In Your Mind. Co-Produced with Stian Skaaden, the album is Juni’s first in three years, and follows up on her breakout moment, 2023’s Carvings LP. It was designed as an attempt to build on the delicacy of her songwriting tendencies, embracing both playfulness and patience as Juni explains, “we always aim to capture effortlessness – but the way of getting there is anything but effortless”.

Pearl Cloud Song is perhaps the finest example so far of Juni’s new found confidence in her songwriting, entirely removing probably her most acclaimed instrument, her own voice. A decision she explains came from experimentation before returning to where it all began, “sometimes I stumble upon a really nice guitar tuning, and the song can almost tumble out on its own”. With no words to reference, the title came from really feeling where the music came from, Juni noting, “I love how the title adds a little shimmer, and the sensation of flying”. Despite being more trans-North Sea than transatlantic, Juni’s music here seems to channel a certain level of American dust, coming across like the middle ground of William Tyler and Juni’s late labelmate, the great Michael Chapman. Like the best instrumental music, Pearl Cloud Song has an ability to transport you somewhere, to tell a story without the barriers of language, needing just the fluttering guitar work and stop-start drum rhythms to create a beautiful vista in front of you. Three years perfecting this new record feels like time well spent. Juni Habel is a musician going up a gear and ready to soar higher than ever before.

Evergreen Your Mind is out April 10th via Basin Rock. For more information on Juni Habel visit https://junihabel.bandcamp.com/

Header photo is Juni Habel by Malin Longva.