Further Listening: HERE
5. It’s Time For Your Regular Reminder Of Margaret Glaspy
Margaret Glaspy appeared on these pages back in June when she released Michigan, the first taster of her upcoming record, I Am Both. The album, Margaret’s fourth, was a deliberate volte-face for Margaret as she stepped back from what she was doing and sought a return to, “original thought instead of being under the influence of so many outside opinions”. With the album out now via ATO Records, this week Margaret shared the latest single from it, Reminder.
The song is something of a letter to self, as Margaret explains, “the song’s a message to myself for when it feels like I’m doing nothing of value, reminding me that it’s important to keep showing up in lots of little ways instead of giving up altogether”. It also fits into the album’s wider theme of Margaret following her instincts, “something I never would’ve written if I were still praying to the gods who told me everything needs to be neat and tidy and symmetrical”. A masterful slow build of a song, Reminder starts with the rawness of Margaret and an acoustic guitar, a perfect setting for the initial plea to herself for openness, “hope can only get me so far, I also have to be willing to catch a few scars”. As the song progresses, Margaret is joined by brief flourishes of bass and pattering, subtly complex percussion. As the song grows into itself, Margaret also seems to evolve, moving from words to deeds, as she starts to live by her convictions, “even if I fall on my face and hit the ground, blood on my face is better than clown makeup”. This latest record from Margaret Glaspy feels like a brave step back into herself, a realisation that the only way to make music your living is to put yourself into it, to make the songs you want to make and stand bravely beside them, and when you’ve got the talents of Margaret Glaspy, well that could take you anywhere your heart desires.
I Am Both is out August 7th via ATO Records. For more information on Margaret Glaspy visit https://margaretglaspy.com/
4. Graham Hunt Is Growing Old Gracefully
Hailing from Madison, Wisconsin, Graham Hunt has only been releasing music since 2019 but already has six albums under his belt. His latest offering, American Pyramid, arrives less than a year after the breakout record, Timeless World Forever, which was the final album in a trilogy of home-recorded albums, all made in the same house, which he recently left behind. As Graham explains, “part of me felt like I could live in that house and make an infinite amount of records there…but for a long time I’d also had this vision for tracking an album live with a band in a studio”. So he did, throwing himself into the full band dynamic entirely, turning up with a handful of, “simple iPhone voice memos”, and then figuring the rest out once the eight-piece band had arrived at the legendary Pachyderm Studio. With the results of this new way of working on the way, this week Graham shared the latest taster of it, Getting Older.
Listening to Graham Hunt’s music, there is a sense of a songwriter with an old soul, the slacker-rock and classic 1980s indie influences suggesting someone far older than his 35 years. It’s fitting then that Graham has written this brutal paean to holding on to hope as the years roll by. As the verses lay out the struggles as he sings, “I know that you had a rough year”, or laments the economy, “there’s not a lot of work for us guys”, in the shimmering chorus he pleads to keep dreaming, “we’re all getting older, please don’t think it’s over for you, ’cause I made that mistake once, one I’d never want you to”. If the lyrics are clinging onto hope, the music is contrastingly joyous, as strutting lead guitars and rickety snares play out like the middle ground of Pavement and Tom Petty. In just two minutes, Graham Hunt seems to lay out a manifesto, a soundtrack for anyone clinging onto the dream. We’re all getting older, but that doesn’t mean it’s time to go gentle into that good night.
American Pyramid is out August 28th via Run For Cover Records. For more information on Graham Hunt visit https://grahamjacksonhunt.com/
3. Angela Autumn’s Smoking New Single
Appalachian-born and Nashville-based, Angela Autumn has been sharing her music with the world for coming up to a decade. Back at the end of June, she shared Mountain Stream, the first taster of her new album, Believer, and things kind of exploded for her, gaining fans at most of the online big hitters with her, “slack-tuned anthem about escaping something”. With Believer arriving in September via Gar Hold Records, this week Angela shared the second single from it, Heavy Tobacco.
While the Western world’s view of tobacco is largely one of Bike Sheds, illness and teenage rebellion, it doesn’t have to be that way, as Angela explains, “in many cultures, particularly American indigenous, tobacco is regarded for its purification abilities“. The way that contradicts our Western view of this plant was one of the inspirations behind the track, as Angela explains, “the message is that anything positive can become harmful when abused. It’s me reflecting upon choices that were necessary but carried both positive and negative consequences“. Heavy Tobacco is a song that lives up to its name; there’s an almost foggy closeness as Angela’s unmistakable vocal is coated in an ooze of bass, stop-start percussion and shimmering bass guitar. Amid all these weighty accompaniments, Angela takes on the role of an almost skittish protagonist, her lyrics like a maze, as her melodies rush about, full of urgency in distinct contrast to the music’s subtle, slow-moving swells. As a first taster of where Angela’s music is headed, Heavy Tobacco couldn’t be much more intriguing; suggesting Believer could just be the record Angela finds the crowds of disciples her music so richly deserves.
Believer is out September 11th via Gar Hole Records. For more information on Angela Autumn visit https://www.angelaautumnmusic.com/.
2. The Catburgers Don’t Bite, They’re Very Friendly
A Scottish band from the mid-1980’s with a long-lost album coming out via the ever-reliable Slumberland Records – I mean the press release had me hooked before I’d even pressed play. The band in question are The Catburgers, formed in Edinburgh in 1985, after bumping into each other watching The Television Personalities and discovering a shared love for the C-86 DIY explosion. The band would go on to release, check notes, absolutely nothing, so quite where Slumberland dug up the recordings, who knows, but thankfully they did. The result is Galashiels, a recently discovered archival recording of the band in their pomp, released over 35 years later. This week the band shared the first track from the record, I’ve Got A Friend.
In barely two minutes, I’ve Got A Friend lays bare The Catburgers’ indie credentials, as drums and breathless bass skitter by at breakneck speed and guitars become the very definition of jangle-pop. Atop it all is vocalist Robert Jones, urgently laying out his ode to the life-changing quality of true friendship, “I was lost, you could say I was all at sea. You took me in, and the rest is history“. Of course no indie-pop song would be quite right without a touch of failed romance, so the girls in the street are still laughing at poor Robert, but with a good friend it’s water off a duck’s back, “for once in my life I can say, that I really just don’t care, because I know something, that they just can’t see. I’ve got a friend”. It might have taken The Catburgers thirty years, but this feels like their moment for at least a bit of the limelight to finally shine their way. Long-lost no more, they’re ready to soundtrack a lot more beautiful friendships being formed. And if you like what you hear, there’s even better news. The band are back together and playing live once more, proof that while rock’n’roll dreams might lie dormant, they never quite fade away.
Galashiels is out September 25th via Slumberland Records. For more information on The Catburgers visit https://www.instagram.com/cat_burgers_band/
1. Listening Elanor Moss Can’t Fix Everything, But It Won’t Hurt
London-based songwriter Elanor Moss was something of a fixture on these pages a few years back, walking off with my EP of the year courtesy of her most recent release, 2023’s Cosmic. Since then there’s been plenty of shows, both playing and promoting, but not much in the way of new music. The subsequent three years have instead seen a lot of work behind the scenes, recording not one but two albums, or perhaps more accurately two versions of the same album. Initially the plan was to record in New York City, however, the results were, in her own words, “a bit rollocking”. Listening back, Elanor started to feel the pangs of the album she hadn’t made, something, “quieter, weirder, more English”. The New York sessions were shelved, a new ensemble formed, and the songs were taken to a cabin in the Scottish Highlands to make the album Elanor never realised she wanted to make. The result is her upcoming debut album, The Knife, The Needle, due out via Merge Records, and previewed this week by Elanor’s new single, Fixer.
The track that lends The Knife, The Needle its title, Fixer, is a track Elanor describes as being, “about vulnerability, that double-edged sword…when you love someone you have to show them; you put that power in their hands. That’s scary. They could hurt you. But that exposed place, that vulnerability, can also be a doorway into something else, some kind of healing”. Fittingly for the de facto title track, Fixer is probably the moment where The Knife, The Needle most leans into its quieter, weirder side. The song opens with a minute of what sounds like a very small orchestra tuning up, as swells of brass and strings very gently take their turn in leading the song’s direction. Fixer really comes into focus, though, as Elanor and her guitar enter, with a promise/desire to take someone’s burden away, “wanna buy you pretty things, but I can’t even make my rent. Can I take all of your worries and your burdens, instead?” From such hopeful beginnings comes a lingering darkness, a fear that at any point the closeness could get too much, “somewhere, deep down I’m afraid that if you show me the knife, I might use it on you babe”. It’s a line Elanor keeps revisiting throughout; only the fear switches, Elanor fearing the knife to her own chest, and then opting to let the vulnerability show in hope of healing, “maybe what we thought of as a knife is just a needle we could use to stitch the wound?” Fixer is a truly remarkable piece of songwriting, one that suggests that by embracing her instincts, Elanor Moss might just have created a record for the ages.
The Knife, The Needle is out August 21st via Merge Records. For more information on Elanor Moss visit https://www.elanormoss.com/.
Header photo is Elanor Moss by H. Hawkline
