With every successive album she makes, Carla dal Forno‘s songwriting becomes clearer, more upfront, and more emotionally direct. She actually intended her fourth solo effort to be more abstract, perhaps closer to the mystery-shrouded experimental work of her earlier group F ingers, but as she was writing the songs, she found that they only made sense when she wrote about her emotional experiences in plain language. Her recording environment also helped shape the directness of the songs. Instead of living in a busy city, she had relocated to a small country town which offered stillness and solitude, making it easier to reflect on her life situations and focus on the truth. That said, even though Confession lays deeply guarded feelings bare,…
Category: dream-pop
When deary, the dreampop three-piece composed of Ben Easton (guitar), Dottie Cockram (vocals, guitar) and Harry Catchpole (drums), named their debut album Birding, it wasn’t just as an homage to our feathered friends, they were referencing the sense of expansion, wonder, and abandon their music evokes. They chose the title to draw attention to the direct impact humans have on the world around us, whether that be nature, or ourselves.
“I got really into reading about birds and all these historical stories and poetry about them,” says singer/guitarist Dottie. “You find these beautiful images of birds that represent hope, but they’re also animals. Some of them, like vultures and crows, are a sign of death to some people. They represent all these different…
Minneapolis trio Spaceport is back with their second album Cut the Lake, with many missing their first offering Window Seat (2023).
Maybe this time around that initial slip will be corrected, as the band’s creative force, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Arianna Wegley, seems be in full form.
Spaceport’s sound might be in that nether ground many indie bands operate in these days – the subdued guitar rock full of quality melody hooks, with added elements from elsewhere.
Spaceport’s added elements though cover quite a wide ground – on that indie rock base they add folk, classical, and ambient/electronic sounds. Of course, the possibility of a sound mess is there, but Wegley and her band seem to swim…
One of the clearest examples of an album that crafts a strange and beautiful world not quite like any other is Rocketship’s 1996 full-length debut A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness. Even upon arrival, this was an experience unto itself, and 30 years later, these eight songs of bittersweet bliss still feel new.
Rocketship spiked their deliciously melodic indiepop with buzzing organs, spacey interstitials and motorik repetition, aligning them with mid-90s peers like Stereolab and Unrest. “A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness” is an album of unrepentantly vulnerable melodies, unusual seventh chords, lingering ambient interludes, and soft sentiments released at a time when unfriendly, self-conscious punk rock was the order of the day…
Kiss Facility is the duo of Emirati-Egyptian singer and songwriter Mayah Alkhateri and producer Salvador Navarrete, aka Sega Bodega, close collaborator of Shygirl and Oklou. Together, they make spellbinding Arabic alt-pop that bridges elements of shoegaze, trip-hop, post-punk, and deconstructed club. The result? A gothic romance with all the poetic gravity of Arabic songcraft and none of the hang-ups of tradition. KHAZNA, meaning “treasure” or “vault” in Arabic, contains passages of unerring devotion and romantic mysticism alongside vows of mutual destruction such that Kiss Facility’s khazna begins to more resemble an impassioned prison.
The springy synths and chugging guitar riffs that open “Lynch” are promptly assuaged by…
Everyone who proselytises will eventually tell you that the truth sets you free. On her debut album Buck Wild, Indian (Pune-based) artist Karshni splits herself open: sometimes with a surgeon’s meticulousness, sometimes like a violent, rabid cannibal, utterly disinterested in suturing herself back shut, intent on ravaging the person she once was – all in the service of ‘getting real’, both with herself and her listeners.
In the last eight-odd years that she has been making music, Karshni has developed an indie-darling, melancholia laden sound-bed, then abandoned it, floated across collaborations with her peers, lending her voice to records that span the distance between avant-garde hiphop and shoegaze, and now brought herself…
London-based, Wrexham-raised artist Art School Girlfriend releases her third studio album Lean In, via Fiction Records. Armed with the freedom and space to experiment, Lean In was self-produced in her own East London studio and sees Art School Girlfriend set to move from cult bedroom artist to one of the UK’s most vital artist/producers operating at the moment, tackling alternative rock, electronic pop and experimental ambient sounds in her most cohesive work to date.
Starting off with a looped beat, followed by some ambient sounding synthesiser, Doing Laps is an interesting track to start the album. It feels almost dreamlike with Art School Girlfriend’s whispery sounding vocals, with a backdrop of ambient synths, almost new age…
“Hypnosis Tapes” opens with a vacuum cleaner played in reverse — an inside joke, apparently — before the fuzzy guitars and humming synths layer in, stacking blips and pockets of sound until you realize you’ve stopped paying attention to anything else. Mute Swan named the opening track appropriately. It immediately puts you into a trance.
That pull defines Skin Slip, the Tucson band’s sophomore album and the final recorded work of founding guitarist Thom Sloane, who passed in 2024. Frontman Mike Barnett has said these are their best songs, Sloane’s best playing. He’s not overselling it. The album was recorded before Sloane’s death, and it sounds like a band locked in — joyfully testing how far their sound can stretch and change shape without losing their identity.
When Crimson Whisper emerged out of the ether in 2024, it was with an EP of synthy, metallic textures, muscular live drums, and gossamer vocals, making for a giddy version of shoegaze that incorporated some dream pop and post-punk vibes. As intangible as their sound was the lack of background on the project. That EP, Flutter, was followed the next year by a mini-album and another EP. The Shelflife label stepped in to give the band their first label release, Flutter & Beautify, a track-for-track compilation of their two EPs. Meanwhile, it was revealed that Crimson Whisper consists of San Francisco-based singer Na Lim and an unnamed member of an “established shoegaze band.” The mysteriousness extended to Beautify, which on occasion incorporated…
“Hypnagogic” is a word that refers to the unique space between sleeping and dreaming, and it’s not surprising that the term has been used to describe the music of Greg Jamie. Hailing from Portland, Maine, Jamie’s music is often an odd, woozy, and unsettling place, but his songs also contain warmth and comfort, as if he’s your guide through a dark place just before dawn. His debut album, Crazy Time, was a seductive, lo-fi gem, and the follow-up, Across a Violet Pasture, covers much of the same territory, but with a broader scope and greater ambition.
Jamie, who sings and plays guitar and synth, is joined primarily by Colby Nathan, who produced the album and also contributes bass, synth, guitar, and vocals (and was also a crucial….
Jackie West has a feathery soft voice, the kind of instrument that might not wake you up fully if you heard it in your while asleep but rather inclines to infiltrate your dreams. This second full-length, the second also to be released on her husband Dan Kniskowy’s Ruination record, makes an impact without excessive volume or drama. It sheathes cool-toned melodies in delicate layers of vocal and instrumental sound.
West says she wrote and recorded Silent Century as a mostly solitary effort, one that allowed her to examine and incorporate the dialogues that played out in her head. It is populated by many voices, then, but also the same voice, or perhaps the same person in many different ways. Thus, the heady country holler of “Overlooking…
These days the term singer songwriter has grown in its scope from just a solo artist with an acoustic instrument and introspective lyrics to a solo artist that basically has a mind of their own and goes anywhere where their fancy, inspiration, and inventiveness take them.
You can add to the latter Delaney Bailey, who after millions of streams has readied her debut album Concave, an album where she seems to care very little about neat musical labels and genres, covering a vast ground between dream pop and everything else, keeping that introspective music and lyrics concept fully intact.
And she may be doing it all instinctively, but she seems to have a deep musical background that she has transformed into music of her…
After building momentum over a few years of local shows and an international tour, Hong Kong shoegaze quintet Lucid Express returns with their second album, Instant Comfort. Blurrier and less glossy than their 2021 debut, the new record is situated at the sweet spot of screwed-down dream pop, ethereal vocals draped over lush guitars and synths, with a few tense, discordant edges.
Instant Comfort was recorded in the band’s studio, an island within an island, perched in an industrial district outside central Hong Kong, with views of both skyscrapers and the Chinese border. It’s a sanctuary from the grinding realities of the city, and their music likewise plays like a delicate and immersive retreat, a space that feels temporarily above reality. Vocalist Kim Ho’s…
It’s all blurring together. Ambient is emo now. Rap sounds like harsh noise. Drum’n’bass is basically bedroom pop. And Ben Bondy, who until now has primarily dealt in disorientingly dubby ambient music, has emerged with something resembling a singer/songwriter album, but not quite. Bondy, a New York/Berlin-based producer who’s made a name as part of the latter’s cozy Kwia collective, has built a sprawling body of work across a number of labels representing the bleary haze of the left-field electronic underground. West Mineral Ltd., 3XL, Motion Ward, Quiet Time — if they deal in grainy, dissociative soundscapes, Bondy has probably released something for them. Across his scattered releases and DJ sets, Bondy’s demonstrated a voracious, shapeshifting…
“Three people will die listening to this album,” the Bandcamp description of Nashpaints’ first record since 2020, Everyone Good is Called Molly, reads. “Zzz they will endup in the same place.” There’s no backstory to Finn Carraher McDonald, only mystery and angelic voicings spread across decaying pop tapes with a butter knife.
Lead single “Boyfriend First” is this seven-minute mass of swirling noise with guitar streaks you’d have to break your nails just to make. There’s a lot of color in here even as the static fattens and the synths undress, because McDonald has melodies coming out the eyes. “Boyfriend First” sounds more like Natalie Imbruglia covering Deerhunter-or maybe it’s Deerhunter covering Natalie Imbruglia-in a sewer tunnel than the Duretti Column…
Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys build a captivating sonic world tinged with intimacy on Pale Bloom. The Berlin-based band’s seventh studio album maintains a hauntingly atmospheric quality, ultimately honing the gothic art-pop sound the group have become known for.
Opening track ‘Bloom’ establishes the album’s persistent eeriness, initially playing with the melodies and lyrics of nursery rhymes. This almost ghostly nostalgia for childhood is evoked throughout Pale Bloom, supported by a mesmerising viola part courtesy of Jean-Louise Parker. The song’s instrumentals build, combining strings with electric guitar effectively. Like its title would suggest, ‘Bloom’ unfurls organically – a manifestation of slowly…
Numero present ’90s shoegaze band Should’s ’98 debut ‘Feed Like Fishes’ + 10 period bonus tracks.
The folks in Phoenix’s Half String talked up this trio when they were Austin, TX’s shiFt (before they moved north to various universities and gave up their name because of another band called Shift). And it’s easy to see why: Should would have fit perfectly into Arizona’s former “beautiful noise,” post-dream pop scene.
Even without the interestingly sedate but grasping cover of the Wedding Present’s “Spangle” (and, on another record, 18th Dye’s “Merger”), their sound makes it apparent that they can match the English in pairing inventive, modern guitars to lulling tunes for nighttime singing. You could see “Sarah Missing” appearing on a Slowdive…
Bug Teeth’s debut full-length arrives softly, building and scrutinising loss down to its fine veins, even as it gazes upward to the skies.
With a title drawn from Robert Hooke’s 17th-century scientific text magnifying the minutiae of living forms, Micrographia zeroes in on the subtleties of grief, familial memory and the burden of loving someone who is gone.
At the heart of the album is the rupture of PJ Johnson’s life when their mother died suddenly in 2021 which left them unmoored and desperate to make sense of the absence. “Tapeworm” questions if her mother would prefer no children if she were to live her life over, “With time again would you give it up / A sacrifice / Would you give me up?” It’s a crippling place to begin.
The warm sounds of folk guitar provide the roots of Tessa Rose Jackson’s first album under her own name, time-travelling from Bert Jansch to R.E.M. to Sharon Van Etten in every strum and squeak. The Dutch-British musician previously recorded as Someone, creating three albums in dream-pop shades, but her fourth – a rawer, richer affair, made alone in rural France – digs into ancestry, mortality and memory.
The Lighthouse begins with its title track. Strums of perfect fifths, low moans of woodwind and thundering rumbles of percussion frame a journey towards a beacon at “high tide on a lonesome wind”. The death of one of Jackson’s two mothers when she was a teenager informs her lyrics here and elsewhere: in ‘The Bricks…
British duo Insides made their debut with 1993’s Euphoria, a sensual set of ambient pop songs filled with airy guitars, intricately crafted beats, and provocative lyrics about intimate relationships and emotional tension. The distinctive album was praised by critics and remains a favorite of dream pop aficionados, and the duo have sporadically released new recordings, including the 2021 full-length Soft Bonds.
Insides’ elusive and icy electronic pop explores the darkest, seamiest corners of love and sex – their songs capture the emptiness and hostility that surface when the afterglow fades, ugly scenes punctuated by eruptions of violence, waves of self-loathing and caresses that are cold to the touch. Singer/bassist Kirsty Yates’ vocals…