Further Listening: HERE

5. Farewell To Winter, Hello To Neil Brogan

The former frontman of the criminally underrated Sea Pinks, Neil Brogan has always been a prolific writer of, often great, songs. Sea Pinks released eight records in ten years before calling it a day in 2020, and he’s not really slowed down much since then, as suggested by the slew of largely unpromoted material available via his Bandcamp. For his next move, though, Neil has, in a way. got the band back together, bringing his former Sea Pinks pals, Davey Agnew and Gary Cummins, into the studio with him, as they tracked the new record live, apart from the “pure decadence” of some overdubs. The result is the upcoming record, Near Broken Band, a record written quickly as always, but this time, in the wake of his father’s death, one that is underpinned by grief. Ahead of the album’s July release, this week, Neil shared the first single from it, Joys Of Spring.

Take in isolation, Joys Of Spring feels like a carefree slice of indie-pop, like riding your bike around a deserted city centre on a spring evening, “full of the joys of spring, and I know what to do”. However, as the drums bound and the guitars fly in by in joyous abandon, Neil’s overt optimism seems to be masking something a little deeper, “can’t believe it’s true, the sky is blue, because it’s been so grey for so long, I didn’t know what to do, didn’t know what to play, didn’t know what to say”. If this song is full of seasonal joy, it’s celebrating the pride found in taking the first fleeting step, opening up the curtains to find the world has changed forever, but allowing your muscle memory to guide you out the door and let the cogs of living start to turn once more.

Near Broken Band is out July 10th. For more information on Neil Brogan visit https://neilbrogan.bandcamp.com/.

4. Everything I Am Is Happy Just To See You

Hailing from New England, Happy Just To See You are probably best known for their emotive take on indie-rock, yet dig beneath the surface and there’s always been a hint of Southern twang trying to escape. The band’s new record, Last Week’s Horse, really scratches the itch, with engineering/production duo Courtney Swain and Brad Krieger overseeing a record that brings alt-country front and centre of proceedings. Ahead of the album’s release, the band shared one final track from the record, Everything I Am.

Everything I Am is a track of brilliant contrast, singer Evan Benoit flickering effortlessly between settings, as he recently told Merry Go Round, “the song is two identical verses, but I was in very different headspaces for each: Verse one is the perspective of being near death in a hospital bed, verse two is out on a date at a cocktail bar”. With a musical backing of clattering percussion, flourishing strings and bar-room piano chords, Everything I Am occupies a similar space to the noughties Americana of bands like My Morning Jacket and Band of Horses. Atop is all, Evan has never sounded better, howling out for escape and connection, “I’ve been working on the proper way to explain to you everything I am”. This isn’t so much a new direction for Happy Just To See You, more a shift in focus, a realignment of what they always were that might just have led them to brave new heights.

Last Week’s Horse is out now. For more information on Happy Just To See You visit https://www.happyjusttoseeyou.com/

3. A Box Of Stars Bids A Fond Farewell To A Friend

A Box Of Stars, the musical moniker of Macaulay Lerman, appeared on these pages just last month with the excellent Movies Later, the first taster of his upcoming album Walnut Street. The first A Box Of Stars release since 2023’s Somethinghood, Walnut Street is named in honour of a street Macaulay never lived on, but alongside his former partner, always dreamt he might. The process of grieving, “a previous time in life and imagined future”, is writ large across Walnut Street, including on the latest single shared from it, Haydn’s Song.

Haydn’s Song is, unsurprisingly, about Macaulay’s late friend Haydn and trying to make sense of, “the weight of an unquantifiable loss”, but also it’s more than that. A song intended to, “be solely a memorial for my dear companion”, became, “a dedication to old bands, past romantic relationships, and the beloved house that Walnut St is named for. It revealed to me the unseen network in which all loss travels through the body, closely connected regardless of time and place”. Musically, the track feels like the untapped middle ground of Jeffrey Lewis-like anti-folk and the baritone truth-telling of Bill Callahan or Friendship. Throughout, Macaulay sing-speaks atop a backing of brushed percussion, fluttering acoustics and ebbing saxophone, flittering between the past, present and an imagined, rapidly disolving future. As the song reaches a close there’s a sense of the futility of second-guessing yourself, “there’s nothing to be done, when we lose the ones we love. There’s no action to retract times passing, remember or forget, it makes no difference. It happened, it happened”. Ultimately, Macaulay stumbled upon, “a place within me where Haydn feels as alive as ever…accessible through time spent remembering with loved ones, and the creative act. To write a song is to visit an old friend”. And as for the listener, well, when I listen to a song this good, I can’t help but think of the ones I’ve lost, who might just love it every bit as much as I do – so to absent friends, this one’s for you.

Walnut Street is out now. For more information on A Box Of Stars visit https://linktr.ee/aboxofstars

2. Alexis Taylor and Mike Simonetti Are Just Perfect Together

While their take of electronic-pop is perhaps not in my usual musical wheelhouse, I’ve always been a fan of Hot Chip, they’re one of those bands who you can just tell love music, and love the music they’re making. In particular I’ve always loved Alexis Taylor’s vocal delivery, the way he finds room for quietly devastating emotions even within a song that’s ostensibly a floor filling banger. With that in mind, Alexis’ latest project was something that really caught my eye, a collaboration with Mike Simonetti, one half of Pale Blue and the founder of the Troubleman Unlimited and Italians Do It Better labels. This week the pair shared their first single, Perfect Kiss, which will be released alongside remixes and a cover of Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s I See A Darkness, as a 12″ EP, next month via Domino offshoot, Smugglers Way.

Although a new collaboration, it’s one many years in the making after Alexis heard Mike DJing in a Williamsburg Club, and was suitably impressed enough to dig deeper into Mike’s varied creative outlets. There they found they shared a lot of the same musical DNA, Mike noting that they, “seem to be on a similar wavelength regarding pop music“. Perfect Kiss is a track Alexis explains is, “about being alienated and an outsider in society while wanting to be accepted for the true person that you are“. If their tastes aligned on a love of 80’s pop, Perfect Kiss feels more like a meeting of grounds, bringing Alexis’ skewed take on electro-pop into the grounded honesty of Mike’s guitar work. Throughout the song seems to be inflating, as layers of synths and programmed drums fill the track up like helium into a balloon that never quite lets itself take flight. The brilliantly produced backing is a fitting setting for one of Alexis’ finest vocal performances, bringing a wonderful authenticity to the lyrical exploration of breaking down your barriers, “stuck inside four walls of pain, brought on by my own disdain, waiting for the man to come, hoping me he might beat my drum, take me out into the world, let me be that perfect girl”. It might never scale the charts or soundtrack daytime radio like many of the songs that inspired it, yet for those who like their music less brash and glitzy than the charts have ever been, Perfect Kiss might just be a perfect pop song.

Perfect Kiss / I See A Darkness 12″ is out June 12th via Smugglers Way. For more information on Alexis Taylor visit https://alexistaylor.komi.io/ and for Mike Simonetti visit https://www.instagram.com/mikesimonetti/.

1. Are Firestations Back? Or Is Just An Apparition?

Long-term blog readers will be well aware of the work of Firestations, who’ve appeared both on these pages and on stage at various shows I promoted back in my London days. I’ve been a fan since I stumbled upon their excellent debut album, The Year Dot, back in 2018, and since then they’ve gone from strength to strength, most recently with the stripped-back 2025 offering Many White Horses, a near-solo album for frontman Mike Cranny, written on a sailing expedition around the west coast of Scotland. Never a band afraid of re-invention, they’re now shedding the stripped back folk of that record like a tasteful Aran Sweater, and getting back to (sensible levels of) rocking out as a five-piece once more. The result is their upcoming fourth album, International Dust, which they previewed this week with the first single from it, An Apparition.

Initially designed as, “a kind of anti-monarchy protest song“, Mike admits it ended up being, “more of a ghost story”, at least partly inspired by, “Michael Haneke’s German TV adaptation of Kafka’s The Castle“. While that might sound a little dense, An Apparition is actually surprisingly light on it’s feet, with a poppy sheen, and a chorus Mike wanted to turn into, “a proper catchy singalong”. Although the lyrics about being, “haunted by a misremembered past, perhaps, and going through a series of collective hallucinations“, might, thankfully, not quite hit Oasis levels of mass approachability. Musically, this feels like something of a return to earlier Firestations material, as the burbling synth opening is punctuated by driving guitar chords and the shimmer of the descending keyboard line. As the drums and guitars click into sync amid the wash of layered vocals, they, if anything, sound even beefier than before, like The Twilight Sad’s more thoughtful, less angsty Southern siblings. With International Dust, Firestations seem to have made a conscious decision to lean back into, “that ‘band in a room’ spirit“, creating a reminder of why we love music in the first place, and why bands love making it, “we want to give something emotionally engaging and something that adds in some small way to the creative conversation that keeps our world turning“. Whatever the future of the creative industries looks like, people will still make music, still sing together and still make albums that in their own small way make life just that little bit more worth living, just like Firestations do.

International Dust is out October 16th via Lost Map. For more information on Firestations visit https://linktr.ee/firestations.

Header photo is Firestations by Suzi Corker.