We have a fascinating, thought provoking & addictive new track “Panopticon" from Los Angeles-based singer, songwriter, and visual artist Savannah Pope. “Panopticon” examines the lingering power certain people can hold over us long after a formative experience has ended. Written from Pope’s own history with body image and sexual trauma, the song captures the disorienting feeling of still being watched, measured, and judged by ghosts.
The accompanying video is a piece of art. Drawing from Rococo painting, chiaroscuro, fashion editorials, dressing-room mirrors, and what Pope gleefully calls “Rococo drag,” the video holds fantasy and brutality in the same frame. A measuring-tape sequence turns the scrutiny of the dressing room into a surreal examination of how bodies are observed and constructed. Like the song, the film is lush, severe, beautiful, and unexpectedly funny.
Savannah Pope is a Los Angeles-based singer, songwriter, and visual artist creating at the intersection of art rock, cinematic pop, glam, cabaret, and performance art. Known for her opera-like voice, immersive visual worlds, and visceral songwriting, Pope has supported Andy Bell of Erasure across North America, performed three sold-out nights at Los Angeles’ Fonda Theatre, and sold nearly 100 tickets for her New York headline debut at Joe’s Pub.
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August are a four piece indie folk band from the UK. During the lockdown of 2020 Chris Carey and Sara Murray started writing songs together remotely as a therapeutic activity. Both had been in bands in their twenties and never lost the passion for making music, but careers and families had made it hard to keep it going.
They soon had an album's worth of material and were joined by multi instrumentalist and solo artist, Simon Hedges ( formally of Airbus), and drummer Matt Cowley ( Dreadzone, Tony Christie. Big Boy Bloater and his solo project, Tremsprings). Simon then introduced the band to the incredible producer, Luke Oldfield, who produced their first album, Not the 90's at his legendary Tilehouse Studios.
Their new EP Midlife is also produced by Luke Oldfield. The three songs on the EP challenge traditional, accepted and ingrained narratives around female power and value, and question who gets to be the narrator of our human story. The song is inspired by a visit to Delphi and hearing the story of the women who were chosen to be the oracle. They were women in their 50's and they lived an average of 7 years. The cave they made the oracle made prophecies from was on top of a crack in the earth, where poisonous gas escaped and gave the woman hallucinations and altered her voice. And over time it killed her.
I was 53 when I visited the site and the story of these Pythia, as they were known, hit me as a powerful metaphor for all women's lives under patriarchy. They were given elevated spiritual positions but had no freedom. They were given power but no agency. There are no records of these women so we don't know their names.
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| PHOTO - NATALIE NGUYEN |
Hamilton, ON-born singer-songwriter Ariana Fig shares her debut full-length album, So Long, Sinnerstate!, a vibrant folk-pop collection that explores identity, ambition, and the winding road between who we are and who we’re still becoming. Marking her first full-length release after two independently released EPs, the record finds Fig expanding both her songwriting and sonic palette, pairing deeply personal reflections with stories inspired by literature, film, and imagined perspectives to create her most universal body of work to date.
“In a time for music where it seems like pumping out quick and fast singles is the way to go, I think there’s something pretty punk rock about releasing an album independently in 2026,” Fig says. “I’ve made two EPs under my own label, and I thought it was time to tell a larger story and let people know more about who Ariana Fig the artist is through my music.”
The album’s lead single and title track, “So Long, Sinnerstate!,” was inspired by the music she was listening to while writing, particularly MJ Lenderman’s Manning Fireworks and Briston Maroney’s JIMMY. It’s a nostalgic track that reflects on the dreams of her younger self while looking toward the future with equal parts uncertainty and hope.
Centred on navigating identity, So Long, Sinnerstate! marks a turning point in Fig’s songwriting. Rather than writing solely from personal experience, she drew inspiration from books, films, and imagined perspectives, allowing the songs to speak beyond autobiography and resonate on a broader level.
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| Photo - Danielle Macleod |
Scott C. Park returns with Revival, an ambitious album that finds the Scottish songwriter at his most confident, playful and sonically adventurous yet. Veering between wiry indie rock, psychedelic pop, folk melancholy and ragged alternative rock, Park trades introspection for instinct, creating a record where every track inhabits its own vivid world while remaining unmistakably his own.
While Park's debut album Crossing the Line chronicled the emotional fallout of leaving his faith, Revival looks towards what comes next. Rather than dwelling on loss, the record is about rebuilding: rediscovering joy, creativity and the values that remain once old certainties have fallen away. "My first album was about leaving my faith," Park explains. "This album is about rebuilding—not a value system in terms of ethics, but rebuilding what gives me joy, what gives me pleasure, and how I feel about feeling that pleasure.”
Revival was shaped by a deliberately stripped-back approach. Park abandoned the heavily layered demos of his previous record in favour of live performances, resonant drums and arrangements that allow each song's character to shine: "I wanted each track to have more definition, each one to be more of a vibe unto itself—like an arrow rather than a club.”
That philosophy runs throughout the album. The sardonic indie rock of 'Marlene' sits comfortably beside the psychedelic pulse of 'That's Love', the knotty, rhythmically restless 'Nananaw' and the swaggering sleaze of 'Preach', while songs such as 'Porch Golfing' and 'Pepperblack 40' introduce outsider protagonists with warmth and humour. Elsewhere, 'Work of Art' and 'No-one's up in Heaven When I'm There' confront the lingering effects of religious repression and loneliness, before the title track brings the album to a bittersweet, cathartic close.
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