British Birds - The Rallies - Purple Pilgrims - Loren Berí - Mel Denisse - The McKenzie FIX

British Birds - Scary Movies.

We have the superb new single 'Scary Movies' from the wonderful British Birds ahead of their forthcoming album. Chorley-based British Birds are Bobby and Emma Townson. Drums are by Dominic Lawson and bass is by James Robinson. It's another taster for their forthcoming album 'Murmurate, Oscillat' which is due 16 October. 

The single reminds us of The Kinks and The Sweet. Meanwhile, according to Bobby, "Scary Movies is a nostalgic road trip through memories of our grandad, who recently passed away, celebrating the unconventional influence he had on us through his own unorthodox interests. It gives a gentle nod to Ty Segall’s ripping guitar riffs, Black Sabbath-esque drum fills and the hazy vocals of Tomorrow Never Knows."

‘Murmuration’ is the low hum made by those vast, beautifully choreographed flocks of starlings as they simultaneously flap their wings and take to the sky.  Some people say that the frequency of this unique, rumbling, oscillating sound can cure diseases...  

One of the most exciting live bands in the UK, British Birds combine the garage-punk energy of Billy Childish, the wry English sophistication of XTC and the witty pop inventiveness of The Lovely Eggs.  Like the murmurating flocks of starlings, they create a unique sound, and might even be able to cure diseases.

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The Rallies - No Better Time (Album).

Released earlier this year The Rallies fourth album 'No Better Time' has only just arrived on our radar, thanks to the band contacting us themselves and we are really pleased they did, as this is such a wonderful fit for Beehive Candy. They tell us "On this album, we wanted to get a bouncy, sunny, pop feel just in time for summer to shine!" All we can do is agree.
 
The Rallies have a knack for writing deliciously infectious power pop tunes, seamlessly not missing a beat and delivering irresistible melodies with hooks that stick like glue. Their music might have a reminiscent retro sound that you swear you've heard before, but the final result is something quite new and original.

Four albums and forty-two songs later, The Rallies will be celebrating fifteen years of existence. Their signature sound remains intact, with songs immersed with heartfelt love for melody and uplifting intoxicating harmonies, apparent in every song.

Their previous album 'It Must Be Love' received exceptionally positive reviews, even selected the #1 Power Pop Album of 2023 by Power Pop News. For their fourth and most recently recorded album, No Better Time, they returned back to the same Seattle studio and producer, Johnny Sangster at Crackle & Pop!. If it's worked before in the past then why meddle with success!

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Photo - Olivia Renouf

Purple Pilgrims - Innocence Lost.

Purple Pilgrims have announced the release of their third album, Given to the Night, out on the 27th November via Flying Nun Records in New Zealand. Truths and secrets often reveal themselves at night, under the freedom of shadowy darkness, away from prying eyes. In creating Given to the Night, sisters Valentine and Clementine Nixon have crafted a world that drifts through the in-between: between dream and reality, between day and night and the undefined, and ultimately a world that embraces the discomfort of being untethered. 

A process that follows simplicity and intuition rather than pre-determined narratives. “We recorded songs as they appeared, which sometimes felt like catching light. Before we realised it we had a record”, the duo explain. The first single, ‘Innocence Lost’, is out today alongside a brand new visualiser made with the support of NZ on Air. The new track is a dreamy example of the duo’s signature kaleidoscopic sound.

As Purple Pilgrims, Clementine and Valentine Nixon make music that is at once classic and wholly idiosyncratic. Raised between New Zealand and Hong Kong, the sisters began performing in subterranean gallery spaces and music venues across Hong Kong’s abandoned industrial estates, with sets of experimental noise and futuristic dream-pop.

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Photo - Nate DiDomizio

Loren Berí - Stagehand.

The new single "Stagehand" from inventive New York-based singer-songwriter Loren Berí is released this week. The artist blends lush chamber textures with catchy indie songwriting, marked by inventive storytelling and a charismatic performance style. “Stagehand” is about abandoning exaggerated versions of yourself and finding unexpected beauty and relief in simply being yourself, even when you feel like you’re living backstage rather than starring in the story.

Loren Berí is a New York-based singer-songwriter whose work blends lush chamber textures with catchy indie songwriting, marked by inventive storytelling and a charismatic performance style.

Berí's sophomore album, Stagehand will be released this year alongside a book of accompanying poems.The title track is a dreamy chamber pop embrace. He shares, “After the late night writing I got into this idea of a stagehand who’s convinced he’s a character in a play, unaware he’s just the person moving set pieces around in the dark while the actual characters stand frozen, waiting for him to leave the stage before starting an actual scene. Midway through I realized it felt like the completion of an arc that began with Alby’s Ghost. Where ‘Alby’ centers on this egoic, larger-than-life, limelight sort of character, ‘Stagehand’ is the opposite.

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Mel Denisse - Hunted.

The new single "Hunted" from Nashville based artist Mel Denisse is released this week. “Hunted” is a driving alt-pop/rock track that draws from dark romance themes that blur fear and obsession. It's dark, nocturnal, and atmospheric. She shares, "It’s a bit of a psychological game, blending obsession, fear, and desire towards someone or something that you are fighting one day, embracing the next. Things aren’t always black and white and this track explores a lot of those emotions.”

Nashville-based artist and producer Mel Denisse leans into duality, blending left-field pop with jagged alt-rock. With delicate vocals threaded through dissonant, distorted production, Denisse is drawn to the clash with her newest genre-defiant single, “hunted.”

Previous releases earned spins on BBC Radio 1’s Alternative Show, placement on Spotify’s All New Rock, and tastemakers from Ones to Watch note “I've learned to expect the unexpected when I put her on,” while LADYGUNN praised her “singular approach to alt-rock and pop, setting her apart in a saturated landscape,” calling it “refreshing, an essential listening for those craving authenticity in an age of imitation.”

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The McKenzie FIX - Wonder The World.

The single 'Wonder The World' is our first brand new music in two years. It's taken from our third album, which is coming out in early 2027. ''A driving, 80s-inspired synth-pop anthem with bright melodies and a pulsing bassline. 'Wonder the World' blends nostalgic new wave energy with reflective lyrics about time and wanderlust. Perfect for retro-aesthetic TikToks, travel vlogs, and late-night driving playlists.'' (Auramusic)

The McKenzie FIX is the Pop-Wave / Synth-Pop sound of musician-songwriter Ewan McKenzie. McKenzie has an eclectic collection of songs and releases behind his back. His music is kaleidoscopic and diverse - he is continuously finding new ways to express himself through a broad sonic palette.
 
Formerly Ewan was lead singer with the Edinburgh band Emporium, gaining traction with BBC introducing / BBC Radio Scotland, with reviews in national press. They were also awarded a grant from the Scottish Arts Council for their album 'Silver Brainwaves'.

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Owen FitzGerald - The McKenzie FIX - Landon Lloyd Miller - Partner

Owen FitzGerald - Don't Give Me A Pet.

Themes of dissociation are some of the major conduits running through Owen FitzGerald’s work. Somewhere in the narratives and world-building vignettes the characters that inhabit the universe of A deep clean you can count on! start with or wander deliriously into a state of bewilderment with the relationship to their own bodies, the utterly de-centering experience of being head-over-heels in love, the secret language of animals and plants and the atomization that the grist-mill of modern life inflicts.

Blundering through existential crisis after crisis, FitzGerald’s gives us a few anchors that tie us back to the physical space: feeding the dog, the biomechanical synchronization of a lover’s breath, the office politics of forest animals and core memories of singing out loud with friends. Musically, FitzGerald invites us to follow the breadcrumbs in the labyrinth of his knotty, surrealistic and, often, very funny and very dismal brand of Country music.

Of the single, Owen states, ""My family attended the 10am Mass at St. Raphael's every Sunday while I was a child. "Our" seats were on the left, and towards the front, if you were looking at the altar. I always held the aisle. After taking communion, a Catholic is supposed to kneel in prayerful contemplation until everyone has had their turn. Each week, dozens of congregants filed past me to and from the Eucharist. I kneeled and clasped my hands. I bowed my head low so no one would notice my open eyes. I stared at their shoes and pretended to pray. At a rate of about one second per pair, I logged style, brand, color, material, and condition and rendered judgement. My entire brain focused on sorting the shoes into "cool" and "not cool" while I tried to keep my posture devout. Honest to God, I've never told anyone about this game of mine until now."

"Don't Give Me a Pet" is the third single from the new album A deep clean you can count on! from the Durham based Country artist Owen FitzGerald. Swimming in similar conceptual and narrative waters as outsider-poet country artists like Cass McCombs and Simon Joyner, FItzGerald's nine song album on Sleepy Cat Records create distinct vignettes that tackle the dissociative effects of strained relationships with our bodies, falling in love, getting sober and surviving the grist-mill of modern life. These songs are shot through with similar philosophical and existential questions asked by artists like Glenn Campbell, John Prine and Bill Callahan.

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The McKenzie FIX - Don't Feed On Me.

Ewan McKenzie has an eclectic collection of songs and releases behind his back. His music is kaleidoscopic and diverse - he is continuously finding new ways to express himself through a broad sonic palette.

Following critically acclaimed self released songs 'Alone' and 'The Shining', The McKenzie FIX have launched their first album 'Pandora’s Box' through new label Crystal Seven Records . The  12 tracks  explore a surreal mixture of Gothic dream imagery with a distinctly 80's pop flair. 

There is a supernatural quality to the entirety of the record. Songs blend together into a vast kaleidoscopic array of colours. A true ear for melody appears throughout as there is a unique gracefulness to the way that these pieces unfurl. Layer upon layer gets applied with such care as the sound at times veers into the absolute symphonic.

By far the highlight of the album, blending its dark and light influences is the soulful third single 'Martin & The Artist'. The build-up of the piece feels gorgeous, from the synthesised strings to the otherworldly storytelling.

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Landon Lloyd Miller - Bluebonnet.

Confirmed for release on 4 March 2022 via the Twin Mesa label, The Wall Chargers frontman goes it alone to release this strident first collection under his own name. In anticipation of the release Landon has shared its first official single "Bluebonnet"; a tender, raw, confessional track that finds the singer opening-up about the tumultuous relationship with his father, to overcoming the mental pressures he has experienced as a touring artist.

The follow-up to recent teaser track, “Light Is Growing”, a song praised by Americana UK as “an uplifting dose of positivity", new single "Bluebonnet" finds Landon in an altogether darker and more pensive space. “You were only lying when you said why you’d never go. That’s alright. Only love lied so I’d never have to know" sings Landon through gritted teeth here.

A stark portrait of his father and an uncensored reckoning of his actions, Landon recalls of the intimately personal events behind “Bluebonnet”: "There was a moment when I was a boy that he swore to me he would never leave us and that he would always love my mother,". It was only a few years later that his father walked-out on him and his mother for good.

A song that finds an artist unafraid to face his demons and to tackle songwriting subjects others may find taboo, “Bluebonnet” also finds Landon admitting to the depression he has experienced as a traveling musician; opening a dialogue for countless other artists who have undoubtedly experienced similar feelings while out on the road.

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Partner - Time Is A Car.

Partner are back with a new single and video "Time Is A Car". It is a new single for a new era as we enter 2022 and the youngest member of Partner (Josée Caron) enters her 30s. This single follows Partner's Never Give Up (You've Changed Records) and their break out debut album, In Search of Lost Time.

A Message from Partner: "This is a song that we wrote while reflecting on the years that have passed and the way that the passing of time offers fresh perspectives. Fittingly enough it’s ready just in time for us to present it to you on Josée's 30th birthday. Time sure does fly!!

We had a distinct idea for the visual accompaniment to this track and we knew there was one person who could bring it to light; our beloved and frequent collaborator Lesley Marshall. However, when we were informed that the time to make a video was upon us, it seemed close to impossible that we would be able to make the trip to meet with her. While she is close to our hearts, we were separated by 4580km (2845 miles for our USA/UK friends). However, Lesley and the team at MAVN thankfully remained undaunted by such concerns. The result is one of our very favourite videos to date." - Partner

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