Hana Vu – “22”

Next month, Hana Vu will release Romanticism, follow-up to her brilliant album Public Storage. Described as a “contemplative, coming-of-age indie-pop that mourns the impermanence of youth,” Romanticism will provide a collection of songs that are honest and vulnerable, with narratives unafraid to consider the existential side of identity and the true depth of affect and emotion, showcasing “how thrilling it can be to look directly at our feelings, to sing their sorrows and praise.” Following the album’s first single “Care,” which explored the subjectivity of individualized emotional experience, and “Hammer,” which doubled down on existentialism, the album’s third single “22” is about “the angst and dissolution of adolescence:

“Being young, there’s so much that I experience for the first time, all the time. But as I experience more things, I become more desensitized to those things…“You get wiser–– I feel quite wiser–– but less fervent, less hopeful….“‘22’ is about how I was paralyzed by grief and memories and by being 22; all at once a baby and the oldest I’ve ever been. But now I’m 23 and I’ll probably be 24 by the time I’ll get to perform this song for people.”

That realization and its underlying disillusion runs like a murky current throughout the track, Vu’s deep, sonorous voice floating above grungy guitars. The lyrics contrast the melody in vulnerability, in earnest desperation. “I’m just 22/ I just want to hold onto you” soon shows itself to have a double meaning, both wanting to hold onto herself, her own youth and personhood, as well as simultaneously wanting to risk that individuality completely in the seemingly irrevocable, that is, sharing her feelings with another. 

Romanticism is out 5/3 via Ghostly International. Pre-order it here. 

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photo by Andrew Yuyi Truong

Hana Vu – “Hammer”

Earlier this week, Hana Vu released “Hammer,” the striking second single from her upcoming album Romanticism. Described as a “contemplative, coming-of-age indie-pop that mourns the impermanence of youth,” Romanticism will provide a collection of songs that are breathtakingly honest and vulnerable, with narratives that are unafraid to consider the existential side of identity and the true depth of affect, showcasing “how thrilling it can be to look directly at our feelings, to sing their sorrows and praise.” Following the album’s first single “Care,” which explored the subjectivity of individualized emotional experience, “Hammer” takes the existentialism to another level: 

 I do plead with the world, or the universe, in writing. My writing of songs is where I feel inclined to ask questions and look for answers within myself. “Hammer” is one of the first songs I wrote for this record. It’s one of those songs you write to yourself amidst existential crisis. Maybe that’s what all songs are.

As is the case with all of Hana Vu’s discography, “Hammer” is a perfect amalgamation of catharsis and precision; a stable, yet evocative guitar melody allows for Vu’s vocals to radiate, her lyrics gesturing to the winding paths and spirals one goes down to try and find meaning for their thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. The instrumentals after the last chorus are earnest yet pensive, closing the track with an aura of subtle hope. Most gorgeous of all, in the lyrics Vu provides a stunningly cogent summary of existentialism in just ten words, words that philosophers and artists have undoubtedly been turning over for centuries: “And there is no answer / But I want one anyway.”

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photo by Andrew Yuyi Truong

Trinket – “New Hobby”

Today, NYC jangle pop outfit Trinket shared their stunning debut EP New Hobby. It is a remarkable collection of  charming indie pop tracks that beautifully summarize their song-writing journey thus far; in that regard, the title is meant to be taken as a joke, considering just how seriously the trio have been working on their craft over the past few years. Sound-wsie, they are a perfect mix of stoic 80’s guitar rock and self-aware postmodern pop à la Alvvays and Big Thief, centering on idealization and projection, hope and nostalgia. Vocalist and guitarist Madison Kate explained the importance of this debut EP: 

The songs from this EP all came about as my first few songs writing for a band. I started writing these songs around summer 2021. I had just gotten fired from a really terrible job, and was unemployed and really had time to throw my all into Trinket. Having that time to work on this band and record these songs felt like such a gift, and gave me the opportunity to really learn how to write, record songs, and manage my own band.

Title track “New Hobby” is an exhilarating amalgamation of sound; metallic, gritty guitars, deep, murky basslines, and quirky vocals all converge to create a mesmerizing pop track that feels lost in time in the best sense. Kate’s vocals are at once elastic and earnest, relaying a narrative centering around desperately wanting something “better” and “brighter” but also perhaps harboring the secret desire to succumb to fate. The guitars rage and burn, but there’s a dazzling undercurrent throughout the track that ultimately hints more at hope than fatalism.

New Hobby is out now. 

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Club Kuru – “Gone Like A Flower”

London-based alt-rock project Club Kuru have returned with “Gone Like A Flower,” their first new single in five years. It’s the latest since the release of their lovely sophomore album Meet Your Maker back in 2019, which solidified the seamless collaboration between Laurie Erskine and Laurence Hammerton as well as their signature aesthetic: precise dramatic melodies that evoke the irresistibly enigmatic. Everything about “Film Credits,” for instance – one of our favorite tracks from the album – from the smoky, hazy lounge groove to the free-flowing, lyrical stream of consciousness that was the entire last minute, works to evoke something truly, truly special and indescribable, an evocation that flows evenly through their discography. 

When it comes to Club Kuru, there has always been as much focus on the cinematic as there is on the auditory, and “Gone Like A Flower” is no exception; from its very first moments, it establishes a stunning immediacy through soft, jazz-inspired instrumentals (apt, as Erskine was a jazz pianist before forming the band). But it is truly the vocals that make this track all the more transcendent, relaying a narrative of idealism, memory, and impermanence. A gorgeous guitar solo closes out the track, offering a jagged edge to the nostalgia, rooting it to the earth rather than allowing it to float into the sky. 

“Gone Like A Flower” is out now. 

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Hana Vu – “Care”

Earlier this week, Hana Vu announced the upcoming release of Romanticism, her sophomore album for Ghostly International. It is the follow-up to her brilliant debut Public Storage, which we described back in 2021 as a perfectly balanced mix of grunge and dream pop perpetually at the razor’s edge of catharsis. Described as a “contemplative, coming-of-age indie-pop that mourns the impermanence of youth,” Romanticism will follow suit and provide an entirely new trove of songs that are breathtakingly honest and vulnerable, with narratives that are unafraid to consider the existential side of identity. Vu claims that “being a romantic is different from being a romanticist,” and clarifies her version of romanticism has “less in common with lovetorn ballads than it does with 1700s Europe, when artists called for heightened emotion over argued reason and sensory details over logical ones.”

In this vein, Vu explained that the “nexus of this album is indulging in these sad feelings, indulging in the senses.” “It’s just not commonplace in society that people really can value the beauty of being so sad, of feeling grief and heartbreak,” Vu states, which is a statement with which I am in complete and total agreement. In fact, it is precisely her unapologetic approach and fearless conveyance of these concepts that makes Vu’s music all the more necessary for today. Along with the news of the upcoming release came “Care,” the album’s stunning first single. Vu explained the inspiration behind it:

“I wrote this song while staring out the window wondering if everyone considered things as much or more or less than I do. Also ruminating on whether or not it mattered. Thoughts and feelings might be an eternally individual experience.” 

Built upon a stable, yet exponentially brooding melody, the track ventures deep into memory and resignation, attempting to uncover the true meaning of “care” while remaining careful to solidify it from “love” as a prerequisite. Vu’s vocals are honest in their incendiary delivery, and is most effective at the bridge, where the track shifts to an almost spoken-word admission that flirts with nihilism (“And you don’t care and that’s okay/ it doesn’t matter either way”). Ultimately however, hope, though it might be embedded to the point of near obscurity, is present nevertheless, and, in that regard, the thesis of “Care” is a simple yet devastating one: “Until I can find someone who cares/ I hope you remember.”

Romanticism is out 5/3 via Ghostly International. Pre-order it here.

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CD Ghost – “Somebody Else”

Today, CD Ghost shares their newest single “Somebody Else,” their second from their upcoming EP Vignette I. The EP will be Cody Han and Blake Dimas’s first major release since their gorgeous debut album Night Music released just last year, which we put on our list of our favorite albums of 2022. Written while the duo was split between Los Angeles and Beijing, Night Music was ultimately an ode to “solitude, change, and the passage of time,” with their signature brand of dark synthwave offering each track a hypnagogic, phantom-like aura that lingers – like moonlight reflected upon the surface of the ocean – well after the final notes. 

Built upon a fragile, diamond-like synth melody ensconced in a blanket of dense percussion, and Han’s echoed vocals relaying an anxious narrative of self-awareness,“Somebody Else” is ultimately cool to the touch, at once enchanting and haunting. “In my dreams I’m always somebody else,” Han admits, the synth swirling around the vocals like an icy winter wind; “deep in my subconscious I tell myself / That a part of me relies on pretense/ Buried in the lies I can’t comprehend.”By the track’s close, the synth towers above and is loudest of all, glowing bright and slightly formidable like a beacon of light, gesturing towards the eventual reaching of a monumental epiphany, the slow close to a dream, or, perhaps more like the abrupt end to a nightmare. But before then, he’s still trapped well within his subconscious, wading through the ghostly ether of reverie; “I’ll give you a call then, when I’m myself,” he promises. 

Vignette I is out 12/2023. 

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Truth Club – “Dancing Around My Tongue”

Last week, post-punk group Truth Club released their sophomore album Running From The Chase. It’s the follow-up to the Raleigh-based quartet’s 2019 debut Not An Exit, which first showcased their breathlessly acerbic approach to the genre, both in melody and vocals alike (just take one listen to the absolutely stunning guitar work in “Student Housing,” and you’ll see what I mean). In Running From the Chase, their sound has become slightly more cerebral, with a bit more emphasis on tone and atmosphere; all this results in an album that is, according to their label, “sweeping and sophisticated, balancing considered introspection with a stunning, newly expanded sound.” 

The beauty of our favorite track, “Dancing Around My Tongue,” is its somber optimism. The lyrics, sung in a unique register between a lethargic croon and melancholic, yet relieved sigh, relay a narrative of growth and introspection after a tumultuous period of emotional strife, all the while gesturing to the unreliability of language to express it; “the words they sting / dancing around my tongue,” frontman Travis Harrington explains, “try to hold the pace / of dancing around our love.” He speaks intimately to their situation, his partner’s efforts to heal them: “I know you tried to console / might have saved my life,” he admits, but “who knew I was rotting from the inside out?” The track, slow and murky at first, later brightens with the promise of new beginnings, beginnings that could only exist from a slow, careful processing of the past: “all the words we’ll sing,” Harrington explains, “are all the ones we solved / arranged in a new shape, dancing around this better place.” 

Running From the Chase is out now via Double Double Whammy. 

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Sooner – “Meaning”

Next week, Sooner will release their debut album Days and Nights. A focused amalgamation of dream pop, shoegaze, and punk rock, the Brooklyn group’s sound is lush and sonically kaleidoscopic, made even more otherworldly with Federica Tassano’s haunting, ethereal vocals at the forefront. “Meaning,” the final single from the new LP, follows already released singles “Pretend,” “Thursday,” and “Boscobel,” each showing off another shimmering facet of the diamond that is their unique, timeless sound. While “Thursday” and “Pretend” proved their upbeat, grungy side, “Meaning” seems to be a soundtrack meant for diving deep into one’s subconscious, with a murky, atmospheric aura slightly reminiscent of Slowdive and Cocteau Twins. While the lyrics may be “off the cuff and not intended to have deep meaning,” according to Sooner they “revolve around knowing your bad qualities but wanting peace in a relationship.” The vagueness of the narrative is perfect, in fact, as it only adds to this lost, dizzying feeling initiated by the instrumentals – especially around a minute in, where industrial-tinged instrumentals suddenly sharpen themselves against Tassano’s transformed vocals. “What you feel is nothing for me,” she laments towards the close, and yet follows with the repeated affirmation “it’s all right” as the walls of sound dissolve slowly, quietly. 

Days and Nights is out 3/25 via Good Eye Records. 

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Tummyache – “Alive Again”

Tummyache is the moniker of songwriter/producer Soren Bryce. While the name may appear puerile, the sound is anything but; named after a main side effect of severe physical anxiety, the project began as an EP described as “honest and aggressive self-dive into a myriad of intra/interpersonal issues; as well as a reflection of the human condition through the lens of absurdism.” Her unreleased album, made in her parent’s backyard shed at the very beginnings of the COVID-19 pandemic, in part continues this narrative of absurdism and atmospheric sense of unease though shoegaze and ‘90s alternative rock, and “Alive Again,” arguably already one of the best tracks of 2022, takes this just a step further: 

“In 2018/2019 I was doing a lot of DIY touring which was an absolute gift with so many moments of joy, but also very difficult. I was experiencing some very bad things with my health that couldn’t be explained by just tiredness. I kept pushing on in denial of the fact I needed to stop and give my body a break. I played “Alive Again” on all these tours with disconnect, even though it was a song about the extreme lack of wellness I had…I really hope [“Alive Again”] conveys the place I was in when I wrote it back in 2019, and also encourages people to reflect on their own health and well-being, something that’s increasingly important to me.”

“Can I lay down my head/ until I feel alive again?” Bryce asks in a gorgeous croon at the chorus, floating on the stunning lo-fi shoegaze instrumentals evoking a vast sonic ocean. The percussion mimics the beating of a nervous, yet ironically lethargic heart, while the guitar blares like beams of dizzying fluorescent light. Along with the importance of self-care in times of intense emotional breakdown and bodily stress, the track is also inspired by “observations…gathered over a period of existential crises, mostly with societal structures of gender, popular opinion, general education and patterns of thought we cannot escape.” Towards the end of the track, the instrumentals grow larger, more impenetrable, until it feels as if it is something uncontrollable  – it is as if Bryce splits into a million pieces, her voice echoing from all angles. This sudden sonic disintegration speaks intelligently to the idea of consciousness, the fact that we can often feel as if our minds and bodies are not working in tandem. 

“Alive Again” is out now. 

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Allie – “Cast Iron”

allie, the diy project of Nashville-based artist Allie Cuva, has shared a stunning new track titled “Cast Iron,” part of Saddle Creek’s Document Series, a program dedicated to sharing exclusive records featuring unreleased music from artists outside of the label’s roster. Propelled by a soft yet firm unwavering guitar melody and calm, yet expressive vocals, the new track explores her “interpretations of the philosophical language and sentiments of certain people in her life,” and “meant to illuminate the fact that we as humans are often confused/misled about why we think, speak, believe, and act the way we do.” Cuva explained more in an Instagram post earlier this week:

Talented producer and new father Ryan Hemsworth sent me this gorgeous track to sing a few months back at a time when I’d been reflecting on the ways people communicate with each other, and how even with those very close to us, we sometimes struggle to say what we really mean. Words can be hard. 

Rather than focus on emotional abstractions outright, the track introduces tangible experiences and objects  – walking through “halls of hundred-year-old trees,” a lone “cast iron in the oven” – as logical jumping off points to begin thinking about those abstractions. “I think I know what you really mean,” Cuva repeats after taking in these moments, a moment of silent understanding, the beauty of saying less and doing more – as she says,  “oftentimes, there are clearer, more sober ways to represent ourselves.”

“Cast Iron,” along with B-side “Infinite Jesters,” will be out on vinyl on January 14. 

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