The Orielles new album Only You Left is officially released today March 11 via Heavenly Recordings. “You’ve got to die and be reborn between albums,” begins Henry Wade, guitarist for The Orielles, describing the foundations of the band’s fourth studio album, Only You Left. “It comes naturally,” adds singer and bassist Esmé Hand-Halford, “it’s not something we consciously do.” Through this process of creative renewal, the Manchester-based trio – completed by drummer Sidonie Hand-Halford – have managed to weather a pandemic, defy the fickleness of a trend-led music industry, and emerge, phoenix-like, with something familiarly Orielles, yet altogether different.
Recorded in two locations – Hydra and Hamburg – over the summer of 2024, the 11 tracks of Only You Left sees the band consolidate the bold experimentation of their previous LP, Tableau (2022), with a return to the more stripped-back, song-led approach of their early origins. “There’s nothing more trad than a three-piece,” quips Henry, in reference to the band’s decision to return to their roots as a trio. Originally from Halifax, the Orielles first came to recognition in 2018 with their debut album, the indie-rock Silver Dollar Moment, which is approaching its eighth birthday in February 2026. “These things come in like seven year cycles. So we've come in like a full circle back to a familiar place, just as different people.”
According to Henry, the first ideas for Only You Left came in May 2023. Esmé had bought a freeze pedal, which allowed her to play around with sustained notes on her guitar – these heavy drones would later form the basis for the tracks ‘Wasp’ and ‘Three Halves’. In the lulls between touring, the band began to meet up and record their practice room sessions, later analysing the voice notes to the finest detail. “We recorded everything on our phones, every snippet,” explains Henry. What each song needed or what we wanted to hear from it.”
============================================================================
 |
| Photograph by Emilia Paré |
Emily Nenni will release Movin’ Shoes on May 1, 2025, via New West Records. The 13-song set was produced by John James Tourville (of the Deslondes) and recorded and mixed by Matt Ross-Spang (Margo Price, Jason Isbell) at Southern Grooves in Memphis. Movin’ Shoes is Nenni’s follow-up to her critically acclaimed 2024 album Drive & Cry. Rolling Stone named it one of “The Best Country Albums of 2024” and called it "the most exciting hard-nosed honky-tonk record of the year,” while Bandcamp said, “In a genre overstuffed with craggy male singing voices, Emily Nenni is a breath of fresh air.” Saving Country Music said, “Emily Nenni has released a fun, infectious, twangy, diverse, and career-defining album that will renew your spirits in the state of country music.”
Movin’ Shoes eloquently and wryly blends southern soul from Memphis and Muscle Shoals with southern rock from Macon and outlaw country from Austin. In addition to some of her most incisive lyrics, the album features some of her most powerful vocal performances. These songs percolate with new sounds, like the Rhodes organ that kicks off the supremely funky title track and the Lone Star harmonica that weaves throughout her bluesy cover of Paul Simon’s “Tenderness.” Nenni cites Sly Stone and Linda Ronstadt’s Motown covers as specific influences, but the old styles sound fresh and current because her personality and charisma come through in every note. “This isn’t strictly honkytonk like my former records, even though it’s still all the same influences,” Nenni explains. “I’m just drawing from more artists and genres than I have in the past.”
Yesterday, the album standout “Not a Winner” was shared with Nenni saying, “There’s a song on an early Diana Ross solo record, Surrender, called ‘I’m a Winner.’ It got me thinking how I’d technically never ‘won’ anything in my life, except a dragon-shaped bong in a raffle at a show about ten years ago. Winning looks different to everyone. For some, it’s the accolades. For others, it’s getting to do what you love. It can also just be making it through another day. I’m genuinely grateful for this life, it isn’t easy, and we all work so hard to stay afloat it seems. I just want the chance to try, that’s all I ever wanted. It’s even better when you’re alongside your friends, watching them get after it, too. That’s a win.”
============================================================================
 |
| Photo - Dessy Baeva |
Birds Flying Backwards - Lovebirds (Album).
London-based six-piece Birds Flying Backwards today release their anticipated debut album Lovebirds (March 11th via Real Love Recording Co.). Building a reputation for their blend of alt-country, indie-folk, psychedelic rock and timeless 70s aesthetic, Birds Flying Backwards have quickly established themselves as one to watch. Lovebirds captures the band’s warm, organic sound through rich acoustic instrumentation, worn-in textures. Moving fluidly between folk, Americana and psychedelia while maintaining their stylistic, tightly locked dual vocal harmonies, and reflective yet uplifting tone throughout.
Mixed by Joe Wyatt at Abbey Road Studios (The Smile, The Beatles Anthologies) and mastered by Timothy Stollenwork (Kevin Morby, Drugdealer, Arthur Russell), further enhancing its earthy, timeless feel, the album was recorded entirely live over four days in early 2025. The 10-track album foregrounds intimacy and immediacy, allowing the band’s chemistry and emotional clarity to shine. From the melancholic whimsy of ‘One Heartbreak To Another’ and ‘All I Need’, to the emotive sweller, ‘Moving On’, to the driving Fleetwood Mac-esque approach of ‘If There’s Any Justice’ the album showcases the band’s Diversity and feel for beautifully arranged, melodic songcraft.
Speaking about the album, “Lovebirds is an ode to love in all its forms — romantic love, love for friends, familial love, heartbreak, and the process of learning to love yourself. Love feels more important than ever to us. Love, compassion and solidarity are powerful tools with which to oppose oppression, dehumanisation and a political elite intent on dividing us. Recorded entirely live over four days in early 2025, Lovebirds stands as a testament to the unifying power, enduring beauty and the profound but life-affirming sadness that love, in all its forms, inevitably brings.”
============================================================================
 |
| Photo - Sam Johnson |
Hunter Morris / Mountain of Youth will release the debut album, Nowhere, NW, on May 15, 2026 via Strolling Bones Records. The 10-track set was produced by the multi-instrumentalist Ben Hackett (Patterson Hood, Craig Finn) and recorded at Chase Park Transduction in Athens, GA. The remarkable debut emerges as a sort of equilibrium state, balancing Morris’s breezy heartland and lo-fi garage influences with his ‘70s singer/songwriter and ‘90s grunge sensibilities.
The songs are mature and reflective, reckoning with loneliness, regret, and mortality, and the performances are raw and vulnerable to match, with lean, muscular arrangements. It’s an honest, empathetic meditation on purpose and impermanence delivered by a keen observer of the human condition, one who’s only just begun to truly understand himself. “When I started writing these songs as Mountain of Youth, it felt like I’d finally found my voice,” Morris reflects. “For the first time, I felt comfortable saying what I needed to say.”
Born and raised in Georgia, Morris didn’t begin taking music seriously until college. After a brief stint in Wyoming, he returned east to settle down in Athens, where he found work as a fly-fishing guide and launched various rock bands. After a few years, he was then ready to strip things back to their barest, most essential elements. The material he began penning was deeply autobiographical, but often filtered through the perspectives of characters at various crossroads in their lives. “All the characters on this record are choosing their path up the slope or looking back on the route they took and wondering what life would be like if they’d done things differently.”
The characters are also contemplating the passage of time and the loss of innocence, which he suspects is deeply intertwined with his work as a fly-fishing guide and conservationist helping protect and restore the streams and forests of North Georgia. “There’s a youthfulness and a joy and a curiosity that comes with being out in nature,” he explains, “and I always find myself trying to go places that have been left undisturbed by man. There’s a purity and a beauty in those ecosystems that I think we’re all searching for in ourselves.”
============================================================================
No comments:
Post a Comment