Our monthly playlist of the songs we've been digging.

Songs of May 2021

Babe
Everybody talks so loud
Fighting over time
drowning each other out
Bombs like tears are falling now
I guess we’re not so far from where we started
How I wonder
Is it me or is it you?
Who needs this more
Who’s making do
Babe
Babe
Things keep falling right outside
And the fear it grips and chokes me from inside
Pull on your arms like a frightened child
Though I know you’re just as terrified
Babe
Are we in love?
Or is it the drugs, babe?
Still never feels quite enough
Babe
Can hardly sleep when you lie with me
Stay up all night so I can hear you leave
‘Cause I am many things
But I’m not naive
Babe
No I won’t be the fool waking up to haunted sheets
Babe
And it’s all piling up at our feet
Dust and rubble gathering in heaps
I’ll get lost in you
You can get lost in me
Being lost is a bit like being free isn’t it?
Babe
It’s not you it’s me isn’t it ?
Babe
It feels like we’re getting older doesn’t it?
Babe

Written and Performed by feeo
Coproduced by feeo and Upcycled Sounds

feels like we're getting older doesn't it

Sand Fight

Chocolate Cake EP

Chocolate Cake

The Zolas - Let It Scare You

'5am' 
The new single from Manchester based indie band Freeda.

Released on Wednesday 24th February via SAM Records

Bandit - Peppermints Don't Hide Everything

Travel Guide

Eden Burns

BMH is the third single from Scottish folk-pop collective Randolph’s Leap’s forthcoming album Spirit Level.

“On one hand, it’s about the pretentious things people say to appear interesting. I found humour in the idea that the Big Momma’s House film franchise could be based on a critically-acclaimed and cherished novel (spoiler: it isn’t) and there are some digs at hipster culture. It’s also about a house not feeling like a home. Looking back, I reckon I was probably exaggerating the flaws in the house but I got a bit fixated on it, almost like it was haunting me or conspiring against me somehow.”

Spirit Level is an upbeat, melodic indie-pop album full of personality, catchy hooks and memorable lyrics, rich in textural, polyphonic arrangements, and capturing the infinite charm of Adam Ross, the leader of this 8-piece band.

As a core songwriter with a large ensemble, Adam Ross may draw comparison with Stephin Merritt or Neil Hannon, while mining the rich Scottish seam of Postcard Records and C86. And as with contemporaries King Creosote or Withered Hand, is unafraid of drawing on folk music’s story telling tradition, detailing the minutiae of life’s fluctuations, here packaged up in glorious, anthemic and energetic pop.

The titular ‘spirit level’ is a steady reference point over what had been an unsettled spell writing the album, with Adam Ross uprooting from a decade in Glasgow to a tauntingly lopsided house in rural Aberdeenshire, navigating his way through shifting phases in his well-being and happiness, and reflecting on the untimely death of two greatly admired acquaintances. That balancing act came in the form of music, in an optimistic, even celebratory, collection of songs.

Recorded over a period of a year in Glasgow with keyboard player Pete MacDonald engineering, mixing and producing the sessions at home, the album went off to mastering in the nick of time: the following night Pete’s flat went Up In Smoke in a massive fire, taking everything bar Pete (and his pet hedgehog, Frida) with it.

“The next generation of witty Scottish indie pop” The Quietus

“A band deserving of every shred of love and success which came Belle & Sebastian's way” The Scotsman

"The Jonathan Richman of Scottish indie" The Herald

Randolph’s Leap started out as a pseudonym for the solo output of Adam Ross, and now includes up to 8 people in the full live band. The debut Randolph’s Leap album, Clumsy Knot, came out in 2014, with another four live and studio albums and a handful of singles across labels Fence Collective, Olive Grove Records and Lost Map. In 2018 a touring theatre show called The Isle of Love was devised around the songs of Randolph’s Leap.

They’ve recorded several Marc Riley sessions, performed at Green Man, T in the Park, Indietracks, and The Edinburgh Fringe, and have toured with The Burning Hell and James Yorkston. 
The Randolph’s Leap name is taken from a scenic location on the River Findhorn.

Randolph’s Leap are Adam Ross (songs, vocals, guitar), Adam Armour-Florence (drums), Ali Hendry (trumpet), Andrew MacLellan (guitar), Fraser Gibson (trombone) Heather Fox (violin), Pete MacDonald (keyboards) and Vicki Cole (bass).

Spirit Level

Randolph's Leap - BMH

Buy the Album: raremonk.bandcamp.com
Written and Recorded by Rare Monk
Engineered and Mixed by Victor Nash at Destination Universe!
Produced by Victor Nash and Rare Monk
Mastered by Gus Elg @ Sky Onion Studios
Artwork by Madeleine Tonzi

Cuneiform

Staying Sane

Having personally witnessed firsthand a tragic incident on the London Underground, this song acted as a kind of catharsis. The song expands the occurrence into a fictional narrative around the central protagonist. An ode to the fragility of human life and the importance of leading our best lives despite the cards we're often dealt.

Reset

Sirens

Where The Roads Don't Go

Brightside is the second single taken from the EP "Unemployment, Broken Bones, Death, Baby", out May 14 on VÅRØ Records. Damen is Danial Bin Ismail Ärlig (vocals/guitar), David Nordell (bass), Adrian Gejrot (drums) and Gustav Bondesson (guitar). 

Facebook: www.facebook.com/damenmusic/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/damenmusic/
Contact: hello@varorecords.com

Brightside

Damen - Brightside

ALI BARTER: A SUITABLE GIRL

Growing up is kind of like a pop song.
The structure is familiar; you know how it goes. But the ebbs and flows — the bold, uplifting highs and softly-tread lows — they’re quite another thing to really feel. Australian musician Ali Barter knows all about those pop-induced moods.
From the heart-stirring catharsis brought on by the anthems of her youth, to her own candid musical outpourings today, the artist understands a thing or two about capturing frank, sometimes messy emotions in memorable song form.
Her debut album,  A  Suitable Girl, is the result. And a new generation of music fans get something they need now perhaps more than ever. A kind of mirror. A voice that says simply and authentically “I get it.” Ali Barter is that voice.
The former choirgirl and triple j unearthed winner has been in no great rush to push out a full-length album. Sin ce 2015’s  AB-EP she’s been busy living, and it was through living that she captured a couple of formative years worth of emotional growth. But the kind of scruffy growth that only comes through raw honesty — imperfect and unfiltered.
On her debut single ‘Girlie Bits,’ it manifests in frustration. Written on her holiday in a moment of beachside insecurity that most people could relate to, Barter says she was thinking “’I’m not skinny enough or not pretty enough’ and it just f*cking pissed me off that I was thinking that way.”
With its wry lyrics on gender expectations and bold, burning rallying cry of “you don’t understand what it’s like to be a man,” (uttered by an ex in a moment of amorous ignorance, apparently) the track is already being blasted in thousands of bedrooms across the country.
The melodic sway of ‘Cigarette’ conjures the puncturing experience of romantic invalidation (“I’m not the girl you wanted me to be”) with graceful command and rattling guitar. Meanwhile ‘Please Stay’ captures the gentle pleading of a woman feeling messed up and craving affection, with an adeptly Nina Gordon-like, almost cinematic affectation — both sweet and muddy.
In fact, those filmic sensations are the curling, pulsating waves Barter rides across the whole record. “I kind of wanted to write an album like a movie soundtrack,” she says. “When I have too much time on my hands I imagine what part of the movie each song would play in.”
The scene in which ‘Live With You’ plays would be right at the film’s climax — a revelatory moment that calls for long, breathy vocal highs and blistering guitar solos. The kind of song that could make anyone burst into a liberating run while out walking.
 
The honeyed crescendo of ‘Tokyo’ on the other hand, showcases Barter at her most vulnerable, emotionally — hurt and even hopeless. Yet there is power even here. With her heart on her sleeve and electric guitar strapped, Barter’s poignant yet common meditations become her listener’s medicine.
And in that sense, the entirety of  A Suitable Girl, with all its nuanced emotional snapshots, becomes one big cleanse. Kind of like the feeling you get when you cry bittersweet tears at the peak of your favourite movie.
Takin g its name from Vikram Seth’s novel, A Suitable Boy, the album is also about the power of self-acceptance. Like rock music, that’s a power that reverberates. It can spread out and touch listeners like a wave. And it’s as simple as “owning the thoughts that go through your head,” says Barter. “I have them, you have them. We can let them go.”
She continues: “I just want a song that makes me feel good. I wanna know that the chorus is going to lift me up, and it’s going to be big and bright. Like a release.”
And if that involves turning up the volume, jumping on your bed and screaming the lyrics, even better.
Ali Barter’s debut album,  A Suitable Girl, is out now.

We are not music snobs. We prefer music connoisseurs.

Chocolate Cake

Ali Barter

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