'War' is the brand new single from Gwenno's new album 'Utopia.'which is set for release on July 11th, 2025. Having released three albums in Welsh and Cornish, 'Utopia' is Gwenno Saunders’ first album recorded predominantly in English, and presents a very different side to her life and songwriting.
Forty-three years into her life, Saunders has been many people. The disaffected Cardiff schoolgirl; the teenage Las Vegas dancer; the singer in indie pop group The Pipettes. There was a turn in a Bollywood film, a nightclub tour, a stint cleaning floors in an East London pub. Long before she would become an acclaimed solo songwriter in both Welsh and Cornish, a winner of the Welsh Music Prize, a nominee for the Mercury, a Bard of the Cornish Gorsedh, there were the days of Nevada, London, Brighton; of Irish dancing, techno clubs, messiness and chaos.
'Utopia', Saunders’ fourth solo album, is an extraordinary exploration of all of these selves. If the singer regards her first three solo records — 2014’s Y Dydd Olaf, 2018’s Le Kov and 2022’s Tresor as “childhood records”, rooted in her upbringing, her parents, her formative identity, then Utopia captures a time of self-determination and experimentation. These are songs of discovery, of the years between being someone’s daughter and becoming someone’s wife and someone’s mother. They range from floor-fillers to piano ballads, via contributions from Cate Le Bon and H. Hawkline, and encompass William Blake, a favourite Edrica Huws poem, and the Number 73 bus. It is her finest work to date.
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Critically acclaimed singer, songwriter and guitarist Josienne Clarke announces her raw and intimate new album Far From Nowhere, due out this autumn via Corduroy Punk. Alongside the album announcement, Clarke shares the first single ‘Tiny Bird’s Lament’, a haunting, minimalist track recorded direct to tape in a remote Scottish cabin. The single offers the first glimpse into the stripped-back sound and emotional clarity that define the new record.
The album will be accompanied by a short film titled Deluded, directed by Alec Bowman_Clarke, offering a candid, behind-the-scenes portrait of the album’s creation. Currently screening at festivals, the film will be shown throughout Clarke’s UK tour this October - full dates now announced - before its general release on November 30th.
Long admired for her crystalline voice and unflinching lyrical gaze, Clarke has always had an ability to evoke a communal melancholy. But with this LP, recorded at a remote Scottish cabin, she’s achieved the feat of stripping away the barriers between artist and listener. What emerges is a record of remarkable intimacy and integrity as Clarke embraces stillness and vulnerability. She sought total isolation but ended up creating something even more profoundly connective.
Also born of practical constraint, Far From Nowhere is a natural step and defiant response to the logistical and emotional tolls of trying to eke out a living in the music industry in 2025. “Making music today, for me, often feels like an exercise in retreat,” Clarke says. “The structure of the industry slowly suffocates the spirit of artists, starving them of the self-esteem that comes from remuneration for a job well done, so retreating to a cabin in the woods to make my album made sense.”
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Yesterday, fresh off the critical acclaim of her last project, Journal d’un loup-garou, Canadian singer-songwriter Lou-Adriane Cassidy returns with a bold and unexpected follow-up: Triste Animal. A raw, genre-defying album recorded entirely live to tape with zero edits, the album arrives just three months after her previous release, and marks a daring turn toward spontaneity and artistic freedom.
While wrapping up Journal d’un loup-garou, an album celebrated in Quebec for its cinematic scale and theatrical live shows, Cassidy found herself craving something looser, more instinctive. "After two years of deep focus on that project, I just needed to let go," she explains. That urgency led to Triste Animal: eight songs captured live over four days by eight musicians, with no overdubs or polish. The only exception? A guitar solo on “Adieu”, because, as Cassidy puts it, “our guitarist couldn’t make it that day.”
The result is a stripped-down, emotionally potent record that foregrounds Cassidy’s mesmerizing voice and sharp compositional instincts. Backed by some of Quebec’s top musicians (Alexandre Martel, Thierry Larose, Vincent Gagnon, PE Beaudoin), and with vocal arrangements crafted and sung alongside her longtime collaborators Odile Marmet-Rochefort, Ariane Roy, and Lysandre Ménard, the album captures lightning in a bottle: real-time performances that breathe and bleed.
Stylistically, Triste Animal is Cassidy’s most eclectic effort yet, weaving together threads of folk, soul, West Coast country, chamber pop, samba, jazz, and even traces of acoustic grunge. Tracks like “Tout le monde dans autour” (penned by filmmaker-musician Stéphane Lafleur) showcase heart-wrenching tenderness, while the brooding intensity of “Adieu” and the driving, dissonant “Valse frustrée” highlight her dynamic vocal range and emotional grit.
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New York City’s longtime ska/reggae legends The Slackers have released their newest single “My Last Star,” now available everywhere fine records are sold as a 12” UV Printed Single from Pirates Press Records.
“My Last Star” began as a dream that Greg Lee of Los Angeles’s Hepcat had the week before his death in March of 2024. Greg dreamed of a Slackers song. The Slackers have completed this song, and released it into the world.
Now that the song is finally out for all to hear, and The Slackers, along with a team of close associates head up by writer/direct Pat Byrne, have crafted a poignant music video to accompany this beautiful collaboration with - and tribute to - their longtime friend.
The Slackers are currently stationed in the Los Angeles County area, where they are gearing up to perform five shows in six nights from May 7th through the 11th. These shows in Hepcat’s hometown will function as the record release for “My Last Star,” and they will be playing the song every night.
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