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| Photo - Leo Cicero |
London four-piece Speedial today release new tracks 'Perfume' and 'One Half' previously only available as part of a limited-run 7" vinyl released at the band’s sold out headline show at Windmill Brixton last month. The new songs mark the band’s first new music since their 2025 debut EP 'Light Of The Late Night'. Pulling from jazz fusion, post-rock and off-kilter indie, Speedial build songs that constantly mutate in motion. Dual vocalists Serena Garrod and Millie Kirby drift between conversational intimacy and explosive release, while Monarch Vavrechka’s spectral saxophone lines weave directly into the band’s dynamic rhythmic core alongside drummer Joe William Killick’s fluid, shape-shifting percussion.
Produced by the band's trusted collaborator Joseph Futak (Tapir!, lilo), 'Perfume' unpicks guilt and resentment, whilst 'One Half' explores family, distance and emotional inheritance. Moving between hushed, suspended passages and sudden bursts of tangled noise, Speedial fold jazz-informed rhythmic interplay, wiry guitar lines and uneasy melodic tension into something both intimate and volatile.
Speaking on the release of the two tracks, Serena Garrod said: "Perfume is about empathising with someone that hurt me, because I had hurt someone in that same way before. That puts you in a really weird position where you can’t simply be angry at the person because you know exactly where they’re at. Some of that anger you transfer to yourself too, because now you know how it feels to be on the receiving end, and there’s a lot of immediate self reflection that has to come from that."
"One Half is one of the many songs I wrote about my mum when she moved back to her home country of Thailand. Leading up to her moving, she had this spark in her that I hadn’t seen for a really long time. That was wonderful to see but it equally triggered this guilt that I have for her staying in a country that doesn’t treat her well, as she had to look after me here growing up. The song explores how she’s hurt me, not trying to erase that but to be empathic towards it and acknowledge how much care she extends to me at the same time."
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| Photo - Hilde Solli |
Acclaimed Norwegian singer/songwriter Sondre Lerche today releases euphoric new single 'Follow The River' - a flamboyant 9-minute pop-odyssey that captures the Norwegian songwriter in an unabashedly romantic, ecstatic state of mind, energised by renewed faith in love and life. 'Follow The River' marks the second reveal from Lerche's newly announced eleventh studio album 'Acrobats', out 21st August via PLZ / Virgin. 'Acrobats' - his first full-length of brand new music in over four years, marks the return of the beloved Norwegian artist with an album that’s bold and bombastic; a polarising reflection on the dichotomy of finding love while in times of soulless global unrest and unfathomable human atrocities.
Originally beginning life as “quite a small and simple song”, new single 'Follow The River' gradually expanded into what Lerche describes as his “very first disco odyssey” - a sprawling nine-minute epic in its full album form, packed with ever-new scenes, encounters and experiences. Each of its six verses zooms in on the profound and mundane details of two lost dreamers meeting and falling in love through music, scent and taste, on breezy bar visits and through sticky, sweaty city streets in summer.
“This one doesn't make excuses for being completely overcome with feelings of love and desire,” says Lerche. “So naturally I thought, ‘I need a gospel choir on this,’ because it’s almost indulging, maybe, as an act of defiance, in the beauty of two humans finding each other, reveling in all the little, mundane moments of that.” Featuring a rousing gospel-style choir and adlibs from singer Suzanne Sumbudu, 'Follow The River' stands in striking contrast to much of the wider 'Acrobats' album - unashamedly upbeat, optimistic and love drunk in all its glory.
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| Photo - Tony Nelson |
Today, the GRAMMY-nominated trio Semisonic return with “Don’t Give Up Yet,” their first new single release following their critically-acclaimed 2023 LP Little Bit of Sun, which marked their first studio album in more than 20 years. The song is the first in a series of singles the band will be releasing over the next year. “Don’t Give Up Yet” is a deeply personal message of hope that Dan Wilson began writing for a friend in crisis that expanded into a universal reminder to hold onto hope and remember the fight is far from over.
About the song, Dan Wilson explains, “I started writing ‘Don’t Give Up Yet’ for a friend of mine who was going through a terrible chapter. I wanted to tell him he still had time and there still was hope. When I got to the second verse, I realized the song was about something else, too – the fight against the dark philosophy that has stormed our country, our institutions, our freedom, our peace. That’s when the line ‘A king on a throne, Tyrannicus Rex,’ suddenly arrived and my band had a very different song on our hands.
My friends have asked me why it’s ‘Don’t Give Up Yet,’ rather than simply ‘Don’t Give Up.’ I tell them that the ‘yet’ means this: ‘Keep trying - don’t lose heart - you’re so close! Keep your hopes alive, because you’re going to make things better in the end. As they say in baseball, it’s not over yet. So don’t give up yet.’ My wish is that someone who hears the song will take heart and remember that there is still time and that if they keep trying, they’re going to change the world.”
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| Photo - Odinsauga |
Okay Lindon shares the first single/video from its forthcoming self-titled full-length for Lost in Ohio. Dustin Smith had this to say about it: 'Pinto vs. Pinto' was originally the result of a songwriting challenge a bunch of my friends did during the covid lockdown. Our friend Noah mailed us each a torn page from the 1978 Book of Lists and we each had to write something from whatever we got. The one I got had this two or three sentence anecdote about a wrestling heel named Stanley Pinto that gets tangled in the ropes entering the ring and is counted out before the match even starts.
On the surface the Stanley Pinto story is almost a joke, but I kinda saw this angle where maybe we could have a little sympathy for this guy, so I painted him as a tragic character instead of a punchline. That felt very on brand for us and made it a good fit for this record. Fourteen years after their last full-band album, Okay Lindon return with the record that finally gets to carry their name.
The self-titled Okay Lindon is the fourth proper full-length from the Cincinnati band, and the first to feature the full five-piece since 2012's Everything Will Work Out Fine. It serves as both a reintroduction and a vindication: a melodic, searching, unpretentious Midwestern rock record from a group that sounds less like they are trying to recapture something than finally trusting what was there all along.
The first three Okay Lindon LPs, released between 2009 and 2012 and mixed by Jason Martin of Starflyer 59, were tracked meticulously and with great care, but with members now spread across 60 miles of Ohio and Kentucky, the reunion started almost by accident. Singer Dustin Smith proposed a simple structure: meet the first Sunday of every month, bring one mostly-written song, and see what happens.
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