Old Moon, the solo project of Vermont based musician Tom Weir, creates music that blends lush textures with classic indie-pop songwriting - all with a distinct post-punk edge. Weir began releasing music under the Old Moon name in 2020 and has kept up a steady stream of solidly prolific releases over the last few years. His latest full length Cities of the Plain is full of chiming guitars, introspective lyrics, and moody atmosphere that tells a story of self improvement over its 9 tracks. Old Moon is set to release a new EP titled Under All Skies in September on Relief Map Records. This new release sees Weir put a heavier emphasis on songwriting and narrative, with a Springsteen-esque approach to storytelling woven throughout his blistering dream pop.

OLD MOON - Dark Blue Morning

Twangy atmospheric indie-rock from Providence. mems. NOVA ONE 

FFO: MJ Lenderman, Band of Horses, Friendship

Artist Bio~
A.S. Wilson grew up in an oilfield town south of New Orleans, and his songs are marked by the place – in their attention to the little indignities of love and work, a stubborn preoccupation with religion, and an abiding sense of impermanence. After a decade spent in bands across the Midwest and Southeast (Strange Bedfellows, Bad Hand), along with a stint in divinity school, Wilson found himself in New England in 2018 without musical community. This newfound solitude led to a renewed commitment to songwriting, leaning on lifelong touchstones like David Bazan and Magnolia Electric Co. while incorporating recent explorations of shoegaze and folk music developed in other projects. The result is a collection of largehearted indie rock songs which, through their close attention to texture, space, and narrative, incline toward tenderness.
The album’s title, Convinced Friend, comes from the Quaker term for conversion. The songs all center on this process of becoming convinced – of weighing the evidence and committing to a way, a person, or a life, with a clear look at the uncertainties that remain. For Wilson, this means coming to terms with a fact: life’s limitations – whether inherited or chosen – are not objects for regret but rather the frame that gives our lives meaning. “In writing this record, I always returned to Jack Gilbert’s line about having ‘the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world,’” Wilson says. “That sense of not allowing suffering to make us solipsistic, but instead open us towards others and the world, was vital at a time when I was coming up against some looming doubts about what my life was adding up to.”
In this spirit, Wilson connected with Casey Belisle (Nova One, Burr) to flesh out the songs as a band, and then to Big Nice Studio, a converted textile mill in Lincoln, RI, to record them. Bradford Krieger (Horse Jumper of Love, Ian Sweet) served as producer over the course of quick and collaborative sessions, in which the three musicians took the long-still bones of songs and gave them depth and heft, recovering the joy of musical community Wilson had been missing in the writing process. From the motorik pulse of album opener “White Collar'' dissecting the alienation of modern work and wellness, to the dusky waltz of “Safeway'' addressing lingering questions of long-term commitment, to the pensive and layered arrangements in “Open Bloom” and “When I Go”,  the album incorporates a wide swath of dynamics centered on lush guitar work and a clear lyrical voice and resolve. 
Convinced Friend takes a close look at the fissures between the lives we imagined and the ones we live. The songs, taken singly and as a whole, cohere into a clear-eyed and quietly hopeful work: a steady prod at a heavy mind, intent on cracking it open.

Convinced Friend - Taken Apart

Keep It Together

Lost Film - Replaces

Lost Film - Notion

Lost Film - Exist

Lost Film - Big Talk

Lost Film - Little Things Forever

SAILOR DOWN - Maybe We Should Call It A Night - out 8/16/24 on Relief Map Records

"The process of writing “Vacation” was different from that of every other song I’ve written- for one, it was written collaboratively, with Nat (our drummer and recording engineer) in his parents’ basement studio. I had brought a couple of riffs that I was working on earlier that day, and we worked together on the structure. On my drive home that night, I wrote the lyrics over our demo track, which was a novel experience for me. The lyrics are mostly about the nervousness when you’re about to enter a new relationship, when it feels like you’re on the diving board but haven’t quite jumped off yet. It kind of feels like a bottle episode, written in one day about that very day." - Chloe Deeley, Sailor Down

Sailor Down - vacation (forgive me, evan)

SAILOR DOWN - Maybe We Should Call It A Night - out 8/16/24 on Relief Map Records

Led by Massachusetts artist Chloe Deeley, Sailor Down is set to release the new EP Maybe We Should Call It A Night later this Summer which confidently explores new waters on the first fully collaborative collection. Here Deeley and co. lean into influences that may previously have been overlooked as bedroom pop or folk but at this tempo and volume are clearly Kinsella inspired. Lead single "Vacation" wastes no time as alternately tuned Fenders lure in and ricochet across an earnest chorus of "happy to be here over-analyzing/I don't wanna let you down". The self recorded six song EP showcases a modest tasting menu of indie rock genres be it twee, emo, or the synth-pop detour of "Just Asking" - however the tracklist is once again bound together with consistently poignant lines like "some of us were made to melt into water/but that's a heavy thing to say when we're out on a Friday". The latest release from the New England four-piece feels like a celebration in finding their footing and being okay with not always being okay.

ffo: Rilo Kiley, Into It Over It, Soccer Mommy, Blondshell

Sailor Down - just asking

College classmates Sadye Bobbette, Ryan DiLello, Julian Snyder, and Jono Quinn met at a liberal arts school in Upstate New York though it wasn’t until a 2019 trip to a drafty cabin in the Berkshires that the four piece found inspiration for their namesake and started a band. Blending the experimental folk tendencies of Yo La Tengo with jangly noise pop textures of contemporaries Real Estate or Courtney Barnett, Otis Shanty have quickly become indie rock mainstays in their new adopted town of Boston. Following the heels of last year’s Early Birds EP, the group are now readying the release of their upcoming album Up On The Hill this Fall on Relief Map Records. For their sophomore album the quartet went to nearby Big Nice Studios (Horse Jumper of Love, Squirrel Flower, IAN SWEET) and though there is a connection to the collection on the EP, there is also an expansion both sonically and lyrically.

Now in their mid-twenties, the slacker rock influences still shine through as does a level of poignancy in partaking with peers. On the single “Nobody’s Party” singer Sadye Bobbette quips “speaking over is not speaking up/anything will fly with the roof detached”. Additionally, on “Pipeline”, the multi-instrumentalist who splits duties between guitar, trumpet, or synthesizer, exercises restraint by asking, “Do I stand a chance to give you all the thoughts that I wish to/You can’t take something back when it is said”. The same restraint is highlighted in the instrumentation and level of musicianship on the 9 track collection. Brief swirling moments from DiLello’s pedal board make their cameos and lift songs like “Seasonal Apprehension” without carrying them away. It’s on cuts like these that the rhythm section of Julian and Jono also showcase their dynamic knack for locking in a groove and pushing tracks near psych-rock territories. Sometimes it’s obvious that a band forms around a single songwriter and at others coalesce uniquely together and it’s clear that Otis Shanty are the rare latter.

ffo: Real Estate, Courtney Barnett, Men I Trust, Kurt Vile

RELEASES - Otis Shanty - Up On The Hill | 2024 (cassette)

Otis Shanty - Why Do I Care?

Otis Shanty is a dynamic and whirring four-piece rock band from Somerville, Massachusetts. Sadye Bobbette, Ryan DiLello, Julian Snyder, and Jono Quinn met at school in Upstate New York and wrote the band’s debut EP “Space For Good Things” from a cabin in Otis, Massachusetts. Two years later, the band released Suite 33,  a “dorm room homage” said Sound of Boston who noted that the band “possesses a musical prowess that stretches far beyond the campus.”

On Early Birds, Otis Shanty presents a refined sound that blends elements of experimental folk songwriting with shoegaze and noise pop textures, drawing on stylings of Kurt Vile, Courtney Barnett, Real Estate and Yo La Tengo. On the album’s title track, the band “leans into a slacker-rock aesthetic with apt lyrical accompaniments that exude a self-confident vigor as dreamy vocals, light synths, and jangly guitars beautifully converge.” (Obscure Sound). The band “checks all the indie-rock boxes on the swimmy, shoegazy,” Daylight Savings (BuffaBlog) and Inch Away was one of WBUR’s favorite Tiny Desk entries. In its essence, Early Birds, provides four songs that “build a calming ambience [which] transports you to the serene tranquility of the dawn effortlessly.” (Lost In The Manor).

Otis Shanty - Nobody's Party

Taken from the upcoming Oh, Yes album Crooked Wine Smile out February 26th on Relief Map Records.

Oh, Yes - Broken Arm No. 2

Relief Map Records
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est. 2021

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