Showing posts with label Brother Wallace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brother Wallace. Show all posts

Wednesday, 25 February 2026

Sin Cos Tan - Brother Wallace - Thomas Duxbury and New Mother Nature - Night Swimming - Marie Dahlstrom - Danny George Wilson

Sin Cos Tan - I Wasn’t Young, I Needed the Money.

Finnish synth-pop duo Sin Cos Tan continue their Greed era with “I Wasn’t Young, I Needed the Money”, the third single from their forthcoming album Greed. Following the late-night pulse of In My House, the new track sharpens the album’s central theme into a clean, hook-driven statement: desire, justification, and the ways money can become both motive and excuse.

Formed by producer-DJ Jori Hulkkonen and singer-songwriter Juho Paalosmaa, Sin Cos Tan are known for their rare balance of Nordic melancholy, classic pop songwriting, and precise electronic production. Their music exists between nostalgia and the future: intimate, detailed, and timeless synth-pop that resonates equally well in headphones, after-dark settings, and on the edge of the dancefloor

“I Wasn’t Young, I Needed the Money” is built like a classic: tight structure, immediate chorus, and a steady electronic momentum that never turns into a genre exercise. Instead, it delivers a focused, literate narrative voice, letting the lyric carry the tension. It is one of the most direct tracks in the Greed cycle so far, capturing the album’s view of greed not only as money, but as power, control, and the normalization of harmful choices. Elegant, unsentimental, and highly melodic, it underlines why Sin Cos Tan remain one of Northern Europe’s most respected synth-pop acts.


============================================================================

Brother Wallace - Gone With The Wind.

Every so often, an artist arrives with a voice so seasoned and a story so grounded that they feel less like a "discovery" and more like an inevitability. Brother Wallace is that artist. Now, the West Point, Georgia-bred singer, pianist, and soul revivalist releases “Gone With The Wind,” the latest single and music video from his forthcoming debut album, 'Electric Love' (out 8 May via ATO Records). 
 
While his previous singles showcased a high-octane grit, “Gone With The Wind” reveals a more introspective, tender side of the powerhouse vocalist. It is not only luminous, but it also finds him turning inward without losing any of the fire that’s quickly made him one of soul’s most compelling new voices. Built on a rollicking piano riff and carried by Wallace’s sublime vocal, the track is a lived-in meditation on letting go of the noise, protecting your peace, and giving yourself permission to breathe. 
 
“I started writing that song when I was driving home from work one day, feeling like I needed to let the world go and take some time out for myself,” Wallace explains. That sense of sanctuary is amplified by the song’s heavenly background harmonies, provided by a group of young vocalists from Wallace’s hometown—students he personally trained during his years as a choral director. “When they added their parts, it felt like they were carrying me away as they were singing,” he says. “It was like a beautiful journey that I didn’t want to end.” 

============================================================================

Thomas Duxbury and New Mother Nature - She Never Knows.

Hamilton, ON's Thomas Duxbury and New Mother Nature are following up on their debut single, "Istanbul," with "She Never Knows," a high-voltage garage-rock burner that pairs blistering blues riffs with deeply reflective songwriting. Written years ago and resurfacing with renewed clarity, the track wrestles with avoidance, identity, substance use, and the quiet heartbreak of watching someone you love slip away from themselves.

"This is a song about seeing a close friend resort to substance abuse to avoid confronting their reality," Duxbury explains. "As I've moved forward through my life, I have seen so many close people go through similar issues; my dad, close friends, and even bits in myself. Avoidance takes many forms. Sometimes it's substances. Sometimes it's just lying in bed and not wanting to face the world."

Despite its heavy subject matter, "She Never Knows" is delivered as a punchy, riff-forward blast of electric rock; an intentional contrast. "You'll find this scenario in a lot of my music," Duxbury notes. "There'll be something fun and energetic, and then you listen back and realize what I'm actually saying. Songwriting is journaling for me. It's my way of converting negative feelings into something positive."

Recorded, mixed, and mastered at Duxbury's home studio Bonnie Doon Records, "She Never Knows" embodies New Mother Nature's DIY ethos. "I like to keep production as part of the songwriting process," he explains. "I'm wired as an audio engineer so I can hear what direction I want the production to go as I record and layer a track.”"


============================================================================

Photo - Derek Bremner
Night Swimming - Poison Berry.

Bath, UK-based dream-pop band Night Swimming today announce their second EP 'Melting, Sometimes Bleeding', out 22nd May via Venn Records (Bob Vylan, Witch Fever, High Vis) - produced by longtime collaborator Peter Miles (Orla Gartland, Nina Nesbitt) and mastered by Simon Scott of Slowdive.

With the EP announcement comes the release of new single 'Poison Berry' and a one-take video directed by Jay Bartlett depicting a relationship deadlock. 'Poison Berry' provides the new EP's second taste, following 2025 single 'Submarine'. Built around a hypnotic rhythmic pulse, Night Swimming lean into a gauzy dream-pop palette, turning the lens inward on recurring relational dynamics. 

Speaking on the release of new single 'Poison Berry', vocalist and lyricist Meg Jones said: "'Poison Berry' is an amalgamation of my experiences with men and how they have made me feel in relationships, but it is also a reflection of my own responsibility for the kinds of dynamics I can be drawn to. There is a dryness of tone to this song that I haven’t explored before in lyrics, and a numbness. ‘Poison Berry’ details the state of being acutely aware of your partner’s emotions, although they seem distant, and the loneliness (or bitterness) of feeling like that isn’t reciprocated."

============================================================================

Photo - Lennon Gregory
Marie Dahlstrom - Frostbite.

Danish London-based vocalist, songwriter and producer Marie Dahlstrom today shares her new single ‘Frostbite’, marking the beginning of a new chapter for the Roskilde-born musician and offering the first glimpse of a new project set to arrive later this year. Over the past few years, Dahlstrom has quietly built one of contemporary R&B’s most trusted catalogues – rooted in neo-soul, jazz and understated groove.

That sustained momentum now sees her entering her most assured phase yet, starting with new single 'Frostbite', produced by Dan Diggas (Central Cee, Mahalia).

Staying rooted in the soul-led intimacy that has defined her work to date, 'Frostbite' finds Dahlstrom pushing further into nuance and atmosphere. With a cooler tonal palette than her recent work, the track explores love’s mutability through immersive textures and glistening melodies, unfolding with the quiet control that has become Dahlstrom’s signature.

On the release of 'Frostbite', Marie said: “‘Frostbite’ is a song about longing and about how the feeling lingers in the body. It’s drawn from many experiences in my life, all wrapped into this piece. It was recorded on my old piano at my parents’ house in Roskilde, in my childhood bedroom. We tracked it with one small mic held close to the piano — nothing pro about it at all — but the instrument has this warm, muted tone that really captured the feeling. To me, this is what music is about".

============================================================================

Danny George Wilson - Arcade.

Danny George Wilson, who releases his new album 'Arcade' on 20th March via Loose Music, has been confirmed as a special guest on The Handsome Family's forthcoming UK tour in May. Coinciding with the announcement, Wilson has today unveiled the title track to the new album. "Arcade’ is a song about youth culture and nostalgia…a mix of sadness and gratitude" reflects Wilson. "Doffing a cap to the classic and influential ‘Subway Art’ book that emerged in 1984, a first taste of Dinosaur Jr’s ‘Freak Scene’ and Sonic Youth’s ‘Teenage Riot’ and memories of Sutton’s long demolished Arcade."

'Arcade' finds Danny George Wilson returning to Hamish Benjamin’s studio in East Sussex - five years on from his startling, post-lockdown solo album Another Place – to construct its sequel. With Lewes-based Benjamin and right-hand man Henry Garratt, again given free rein, 'Arcade' presents a fresh collection of sonically inventive, deeply romantic songs, with atmosphere taking primacy over meaning, and narrative dissolving. As Wilson tells it: 

“The songs are about the ways we deal with losing people, time, place, or don’t deal with it… Looking back, we discover what was always there, or things that are just easier to ignore - different and contradictory perspectives. And I wanted a chance to work with Hamish and Henry again, and this seemed like their thing, and it was”.

Traditional instrumentation meets technology; the majority of tracks feature a string quartet, while Benjamin and Garratt employ synthesiser and mellotron along with a plethora of guitars. Gerry Love again provides backing vocals with cameos from Emma Tricca and Annie Dressner. Fragile, tender, full of uncertainty, ultimately 'Arcade' is a song-cycle in which the premise of each track subverts the previous, and demonstrates most assuredly, we still move in doubt.


============================================================================

Wednesday, 21 January 2026

Em Spel - Ninå - Chalice Sect - Brother Wallace - The Green Apple Sea - MUKI

Photo - Deidre Huckabay

Em Spel - Geographic.

Em Spel is scheduled to release the new LP "Bird or Snake" on the 27 March on Birdwatcher / Carilloni, the first single "Geographic" is released this week. Em Spel's intricate, flute-driven alt-folk sounds like nothing else in Chicago. Led by songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Emma Hospelhorn, Em Spel's debut album, The Carillon Towers, was hailed by the Chicago Reader as "Scintillating" and by Dusted Magazine as "a folktale turned oddly, surreally modern, a magical realist scenario set in the right now." 

Hospelhorn is a flutist in avant-classical group Ensemble Dal Niente, and her discography includes work on flutes, bass guitar, and keyboards for V.V. Lightbody, Mute Duo, and others working in a diverse array of genres including folk, drone, garage rock, post-punk, and classical. In this solo endeavor, she fuses all of these influences with story-driven lyrics to create invitingly strange folk vignettes.

Em Spel’s second full-length album, Bird or Snake, finds the artist teetering joyfully between art-folk and intimate indie rock. Recorded in Chicago by veteran Califone and Iron & Wine producer Brian Deck, Bird or Snake is an exuberant leap forward for Em Spel. Hospelhorn is at her arranging best, folding dizzying vocal harmonies, elegant instrumental writing, and deftly deployed electronics into a musical tapestry that evokes the warmth and wildness of an industrial Midwestern landscape. The album pulses with life, from the driving drums and propulsively patterned guitars of “Poet” (featuring guest Sam Wagster on soaring pedal steel) through the organ and vocal-driven road trip love song of “Fruiting Body,” which features bird songs Hospelhorn recorded on a handheld microphone at an artist residency in Maine.


============================================================================

Ninå - Truth or Dare.

Ninå’s “Truth or Dare” blends pop-soul with a bluesy edge and an unmistakably adult feel, classy, confident, and made for late-night rotation. Driven by a locked-in bass line and acoustic guitar, the track moves with effortless groove while letting the vocal lead with warmth, control, and attitude. 

The songwriting keeps it timeless: sharp, vivid lyrics, a chorus that sticks after the first listen, and a guitar solo that seals the mood with real personality. It’s the kind of record that feels both intimate and bold, polished but still human.

Behind it is Ninå, a vocalist who turns real-life turning points into music that feels honest, fearless, and alive. She doesn’t oversell the emotion, she delivers it, and that’s what makes the song hit. "Truth or Dare" is the latest single leading into her upcoming album Bloom with Fire.

============================================================================

Chalice Sect - Violet Grey.

“Violet Grey” is the latest single from Los Angeles-based electronic darkwave project Chalice Sect. Merging electro-industrial style vocoder, darkwave romance, and dance-driven club rhythms, “Violet Grey” is ready to rouse goth boots onto dancefloors worldwide.

With “Violet Grey,” the band forges a path into goth club rotations with their characteristic blend of industrial-rich beats reminiscent of Kontravoid resculpted with New Order-esque melodicism. Showcasing a unique blend of dark dance fare and '80s alt-inflected songwriting sensibilities, "Violet Grey" delivers a charged reanimation of classic darkwave sounds into heavy electronics for a retro-futuristic sound all its own.

Chalice Sect is a darkwave/post-punk project from Los Angeles, drawing from post-punk, new wave, and dark electro while maintaining a modern electronic edge. Built around driving basslines, synth-heavy arrangements, and direct songwriting, the music balances atmosphere with momentum.

Rather than leaning on nostalgia, Chalice Sect focuses on clarity, rhythm, and energy — creating songs that reference classic influences without sounding dated, and delivering a sound that is both recognizable and current.


============================================================================

Brother Wallace - Electric Love / Who's That?.

Some artists spend their whole lives getting ready for the moment the world finally hears them. Brother Wallace is one of them. This week, the West Point, Georgia-bred singer, pianist, and soul revivalist announces his debut album 'Electric Love', out on 8th May via ATO Records, and shares the album’s title track—a Motown-esque number that’s equal parts playful, revelatory, and gloriously cathartic—alongside an official music video.

On “Electric Love,” Brother Wallace doesn’t just sing about joy—he fights for it. The song moves like a shot of sunlight through a storm cloud: Stax-and-satin soul, piano-driven, and bursting with momentum, it’s built for the exact moment when you decide you’re not going to let the world harden you. “It’s about choosing connection,” Wallace says. “Finding that current again—the thing that reminds you you’re alive.”

Across its 13 songs, Electric Love is less a debut than a revelation—a body of work fueled by gospel roots and classic soul lineage (Sam Cooke, Little Richard, Southern soul greats) while refusing to live in nostalgia. Wallace writes in lived-in scenes and hard-earned feeling: heartbreak without defeat, joy without naïveté, vulnerability without apology. The album’s rhapsodic opener “Who’s That?” (released last fall as his first ATO single) entered the Top 30 at Triple A radio in the US for the first time this week—an amazing feat for his first-ever single. Now, the title track “Electric Love” expands the frame: this is an artist building a world where joy is radical, and connection is survival. Now, the title track “Electric Love” expands the frame: this is an artist building a world where joy is radical, and connection is survival. 



============================================================================

Photo - Nic Knelleken
The Green Apple Sea - Big Heart.

German Indie Folk/Americana institution The Green Apple Sea are releasing their new, very personal album "Dark Kid" on February 20th via KF Records. “Big Heart” is a song for and about people who would rather say nothing at all than say something wrong. For those who sneak out of parties without saying goodbye. Who don't answer the phone when it rings because they're afraid of an awkward situation. For people who postpone or don't do important things at all, for fear of messing everything up. 

Those who laugh too loudly at the wrong time. For those who avoid eye contact when talking. For those who use "one" when they mean "I." For those who lower their heads when spoken to. For those who don't reply to a message for weeks because they're afraid of saying the wrong thing. For those who are actually quite funny, but also very strange. For those who feel they don't fit in. For those who know they can't. For those who are far too honest for anyone to take seriously. For those who rarely reply, "Very good. Thank you. And you?" For those who are best off on their own. For those who rarely plan more than a few weeks ahead, because who knows what might happen then. For those who talk to themselves far too loudly when others are around. For those who can't simply be happy when something good happens, because it's supposedly impossible and will inevitably turn into crap. For those who are constantly preparing to die in every possible way. For those whose philosophy of life is more or less reduced to the phrase "I'd rather not."

The theme running through the episodes on the album "Dark Kid" is Stefan Prange's not always easy childhood and adolescence. The fact that his stepfather nicknamed his father "Satan" only seems a bit strange in retrospect. The fact that his stepbrothers chained him to a stair railing with a bicycle lock when no one else felt like watching him might seem a bit cruel in hindsight. But for 10-year-old Prange, it was nothing out of the ordinary. When he tells these stories and sings lines like "I wasn't afraid to die, I was just waiting to die," it's meant with the same pragmatic naiveté with which the protagonist, "Dark Kid," accepts his surroundings.


============================================================================

MUKI - Gasoline.

MUKI (pronounced mʊk.ie) makes his first impression with 'Gasoline', an emotionally charged indie pop and folk-leaning debut, out this Wednesday, January 21. Born in Dubai with Indian roots, the now Naarm/Melbourne-based Mukul Jiwnani has built his life around making and performing music. A full-time performer, 'Gasoline' marks his official debut under the MUKI moniker, a project shaped slowly and deliberately after years of writing, refining, and searching for the right moment to step forward.  

'Gasoline' unfolds with a gentle sense of space and restraint. Layers of finger-picked electric guitar sit against a spacious kick drum and a hypnotising, echoed snare. While piano drifts through the arrangement to create a lush, dreamlike atmosphere, subtle guitar licks and warm bass lines add colour without crowding the song.  

MUKI’s vocals move between intimacy and emotional release, shifting from wispy softness to impassioned cries and airy falsetto, before opening out into a chorus lifted by layered, choir-like harmonies that wrap the song in warmth.   The result is a loving, immersive intensity that feels deeply personal.  Captured in its slow-burning, impassioned sound, 'Gasoline' reflects on the aftermath of a relationship where love has faded, and acceptance begins to take its place. It captures the moment when holding on no longer makes sense, even while the feeling still lingers. Speaking on the single, MUKI shares:  
 
“'Gasoline’ is my debut single as MUKI, and it’s deeply personal. With ‘Gasoline’, I wanted to capture the tension of a relationship that wouldn’t survive despite every effort. It’s a breakup song, but one about acceptance and moving on.”


============================================================================

Mollie Elizabeth - The Yesters - GALVEZTON - Jillette Johnson - Malia Rogers

Mollie Elizabeth - Dog Eat Dog. Mollie Elizabeth returns with a new song that deepens her distinctive sonic and visual universe, weaving ee...