Natalie Holmes just dropped a new music video for "Alone Time" ahead of her studio album "Opposite Day" due out Friday 17th October and it's another superb track that raises expectations even further for the new album. We have also added the tracks shared so far that are available on Bandcamp.
A nod to that ‘you always want what you can’t have’ feeling, ‘Alone Time’ is a sonic self-confrontation wrapped in shimmering pop meditation.
Where the rest of the album roams, this track stands its ground, providing a steady and unwavering foundation for an eternal tug-of-war between craving solitude and needing connection, coupled with the haunting sense that you might be too tangled to harmoniously share life with another. Melodic keys based synths pair with a heartbeat 808 kick and addictively silky, catchy vocals, building subtly throughout.
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| Photo - Lyle Bell |
Home Front holds on to a particular kind of passion. The sort of thing that guides you - like a climbing vine steadily blanketing your bests and worsts, cutting through changes and impasses; victory and loss. This passion, their drive, is what makes a record like Watch It Die, their latest full-length for La Vida Es Un Mus, feel just right.
For decades the duo’s Graeme MacKinnon and Clint Frazier have embedded themselves in grass roots music making, community building, and the overpowering ebbs and flows of diy punk. With Home Front, formed in 2020, they’ve given their lifetime of experience a chance to distill and then power into this musically omnipotent project which equally conjures textured Tangerine Dream sounds in a film montage, or the pummelling soundtrack to the first steps taken towards winning the fight of your life.
Its lead single “Light Sleeper” sends energy waves rattling through speakers with all the urgency and volume of post punk/new wave/street punk. The track is available today alongside a video which features a cast of characters including Home Front touring members Brandi Strauss (bass), Ian Rowley (guitar), and Warren Oostlander (drums). The new album 'Watch It Die' is coming on November 14 via La Vida Es Un Mus Discos.
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| Photo - Ellie Carr |
Last month Nashville-based songwriter Emily Hines released her debut album These Days via Keeled Scales. This month she releases her cover of the Jackson Browne classic by the same name.
Emily writes, "I first heard 'These Days' about ten years ago while I was on the road opening for Corey Kilgannon. Jackson Browne was my on ramp into the folk rock that guides much of what I make.'These Days' quickly became a song I returned to over and over. Its meaning to me only expands over the years. I’m honored to offer my rendition of such a timeless work."
A self-described chronically-sincere farm girl, Hines grew up on a farm in rural Ohio before moving to Nashville where she played in other songwriters’ projects before recording her own songs on a 4-track cassette recorder. Hines worked with producer Henry Park. Together they drew inspiration from acts like Duster, Laura Marling, and Karen Dalton to record simply and add layers one at a time.
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Last month, London-based electronic artist Blue Loop, the moniker of Merseyside-born producer and performer Emma Hall, announced her debut album Cycles would be released on November 7th. Crafted during the treatment for stage 3 breast cancer in summer 2023, Cycles weaves together analogue synths, layered vocals, and found sound to trace a raw, non-linear path through illness, identity and transformation.
Hall announced the album in July via the sharing of the its title-track. Early praise from CLASH called the single “a beautifully sonorous excursion into analogue electronics.” New single ‘Luxury Chords’, out today, showcases a different side of Blue Loop’s repertoire. A woozy, love-soaked ballad written for Hall’s partner during the bleakest days of chemotherapy. Of the track, Hall says:
"I wrote 'Luxury Chords' deep into chemo, about the love that can arise out of deep grief and sorrow. By that point everything felt so bleak – yet me and my partner had reached this weirdly beautiful, isolated place that it felt like only we could understand. One of his favourite songs is 'If I Am' by My Bloody Valentine, which he loves for its “luxury chords” – it has a kind of janky, soulful chord progression. The best gift I could think of was to write him a track with some more luxury chords just for him.
The track features a beautiful, James Bond-esque string arrangement from Amy Chalmers (who also wrote the strings for Bill Ryder Jones’ album Iechyd Da). Amy was my first music teacher at school, and when I was diagnosed she got in touch to offer me a string arrangement - the most amazing gift! When this song emerged I knew it would be the perfect fit.
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