Adrian Crowley "The Watchful Eye Of The Stars (Ba Da Bing)"
From Ba Da Bing Records:
One stormy night in Ireland, Adrian Crowley’s brother brought home a wounded crow. After taking care of it for a time, the crow flew away on its own, leaving an impression behind: Crowley wrote a story, which would later become the aptly titled “Crow Song” on this, his brand new record & ninth studio album The Watchful Eye of the Stars. He sings, “And I was joyous for you, but shattered none-the-less.”
Suffused with a hazy and surreal quality, Crowley describes Watchful Eye’s poignant narratives as those which insisted themselves upon him. After the fact, it seemed these songs came to him more or less fully formed. “It’s a beautiful and mysterious thing,” he says. Perhaps it is a tendency to hold onto memories (“It’s taken me so long to write to you / Well I just couldn’t find a pen,” he laments in “Bread and Wine”), that allows him to unleash them lyrically in completion. For Crowley, the creative process is an organic event rather than a practice he feels compelled to regulate or control. He approaches lyrics much like he does short story writing. “The songs straddle the conscious and subconscious world and some are even psychedelic in my mind, but to me they are all at once true stories and born of another place,” he shares.
In making the album, Crowley moved between studio and at home recording, while John Parish (Aldous Harding, PJ Harvey) produced. The pair worked from tracks made initially by Crowley on a charity shop ¾ size nylon string guitar or Mellotron: “In this way, John wanted to keep some of the magic of that first take”, says Crowley. Contradictions and complexities are left intact, initial recordings were limited to one or two takes, and the songs feel more like a dream recounted upon waking.
Matt Sweeney & Bonnie "Prince" Billy "Superwolves (Drag City)"
From Drag City:
They look like we do, and may live somewhat the same. Yet, they are multiplied. Where once was Superwolf, now are Superwolves. What world, REALLY are Matt Sweeney and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy from? A place of all-music, knowing no borders, no morals other than natural tribal lines to be violated in the name of love and light, for all together.
Yellow Ostrich "Soft (Barsuk)"
From Barsuk Records:
Soft is the gorgeous new LP from Yellow Ostrich. It takes its name from the lyric that stands as a thesis for the entire album, a beautiful and haunting rumination on the pitfalls and pressures of traditional masculinity and on band founder Alex Schaaf’s drive toward vulnerability and tenderness as core tenets of his being.
The album’s ten tracks represent the first new music in seven years to be released by Schaaf under the Yellow Ostrich moniker, since he paused the project to explore new musical identities on a handful of excellent self-released albums (from which much of the best music is included on the stellar compilation Like A Bird: An Alex Schaaf Anthology 2010-2021).
The result is a sound that feels warm and effortless, but packs a real sonic weight. Pitch-shifted vocals, subtle electronic treatments, and drum machines skirt the edges of an otherwise traditional guitar-band setup, adding more varied textures while hinting at wilder emotional currents underneath a placid surface.
On Soft, despite all the potential volatility of life lived with other people and the challenges of navigating our own self-inflicted limitations, Schaaf is beginning to feel content with the person he is… while remaining eager to keep growing. “I’m proud of the way I am,” he says, before adding, “even if my definition of that changes every day.”
E.R. Jurken "I Stand Corrected (Drag City)"
From Drag City:
Strange vibrations, queer notions – phantom memories of people and places we used to be. The debut album of E.R. Jurken unravels the gauze from old wounds with delicate pop fingers; just a touch of guitar and keyboards beneath and ever-swelling chorale, plumbing depths, tickling fancies and reaching for the light.