This week's essential new releases come from Van Zon, feeble little horse, Truthpaste, Adam Hopper & the Wimps and Search Results.
Above: Van Zon | Words: Elvis Thirlwell, Hazel Blacher, Lloyd Bolton
Each week we bring you the new tracks you absolutely need to hear. This week's list features Van Zon, feeble little horse, Truthpaste, Adam Hopper & the Wimps and Search Results. All Tracks songs are added to our On A Loop playlist, updated weekly.
Van Zon – 'More Than Happy'
Like witnessing the green rushes of spring shoot out of the earth at timelapse speed and bless the air with ambrosial scents, Van Zon's long-awaited second single is flush with positivity and prettiness. On 'More Than Happy' achingly pretty melodies, anteloping guitars and Ravel-esque clarinets and violins reveal the folkier, more classical-inspired ends of the Brighton band's ambitious compositional spectrum; by contrast last year's debut 'Cannon Fodder' showed their darker American Football-esque emo-bent. With the promise of more music in the not-too-distant future, the band gear up to grace the coveted stages of The Great Escape festival this May. And by this evidence at least, they seem more than suited to rise to that challenge. (Elvis Thirlwell)
feeble little horse – 'This Is Real'
Returning with a freshly zested lustre of feverish, mercurial proportions, 'This Is Real' sees Pittsburgh's feeble little horse toss and turn through a series of starkly contrasting textures and moods that are equal parts nightmarish, serene and everything in between. Expanding further on the noise-pop slacker sound that defined 2023 album 'Girl With Fish', on their new single the Saddle Creek signees present what they say is "an album's worth of ideas squished into 3 minutes", written during a long period of down time that followed a series of tour cancellations. Sandwiching screeching, annihilatory fuzz against gentler, dreamy lo-fi without hesitation, here they venture further into an experimental territory that is scarcely encountered but often aspired to in art, alighting at the intersection between mastery, risk-taking and simple curiosity. (Hazel Blacher)
Truthpaste – 'See You Around'
A wholesomely delicate and hopeful premiere, Truthpaste's 'See You Around' materialises as if from a frosty dew serenaded by soft light, lilting in perfect synchronicity with nature's quiet amble. The new track serves as both the Manchester group's debut single and the first song that they ever wrote together, releasing via London label Memorials of Distinction. Imbued with a reflective sentimentality born from formative years spent together in the city in which they formed, lead vocalist Esmé Herbert describes the track as "a blur of every existential thought and infatuation softened into a nostalgic mantra". 'See You Around' is built around a simple riff and coloured with a playful indie folk quintessence akin to more contemporary genre adopters like Tapir!, and it possesses an ineffable, understated magic, perhaps through its pervading warmth and vulnerability, ultimately making for a highly compelling debut. (Hazel Blacher)
Adam Hopper & The Wimps – 'My Friend Al'
'My Friend Al' is a sweet tribute to an old best friend, whose telephone number, Adam Hopper says, he can still remember to this day. The song is a rush of full-blooded rock, and it's a little more grandiose in arrangement than the sweetly minimal first singles that the band put out last year. An instant classic two-chord riff forms the core of the piece, over which doubled vocals arch with quiet epicness. The chorus is simply "www.", perhaps written in longing for that earlier phase of the internet age when we connected with friends via online chatrooms and phone calls, not amid the constant and overstimulating hyperconnectivity of today. Indeed, the conflation of an old-fashioned rock 'n' roll arrangement with this sentiment expresses a memory of the past that is knowingly apocryphal and thus idiosyncratically nostalgic.
In a wonderful turn, proving the validity of the initial conceit of the song, Hopper carves out a middle 8 with a recitation of said best friend's number. At this point Hard of Hearing Magazine are yet to verify if this number would still put us through to Al today. The single comes with the announcement of 'Remember to Have Fun', the debut EP from Hopper and his backing band, The Wimps. (Lloyd Bolton)
Search Results – 'Wrinkle'
Against a fuzzy wall of clashing guitars and slamming drums, on Search Results' 'Wrinkle', vocals yell a stream-of-consciousness diatribe that revolves around putting packed lunch in a Tupperware. The delivery, almost sarcastic in its apparent reluctance, evokes in a sense the spirit of Mark E. Smith without being purely mimetic. With every element of the song, the Irish duo elucidate that punk ethos of setting out a passionate case with self-denying minimalism. The chorus feels almost Strokes-like, though it retains an unsanitised quality, restraining pop relief with a tyrannically simple approach to melody, and more reminiscent in that sense of the early singles of Joseph K and Fire Engines. (Lloyd Bolton)
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