| A look at the week's essential new singles also including Green Gardens, For Breakfast, Cowboy Hunters, Hiding Places and Wax Head. | | Y by James Barrett | Words: Grace Palmer, Hazel Blacher, Elvis Thirlwell, Lloyd Bolton | | | Raucous and energetic, Y return with their new single 'May', released via SO Recordings and Hideous Mink Records – a propulsive track that celebrates noise and power amid a tumultuous political landscape. The track's opening explodes with Y's signature cascading drums and abrasive guitar. Propelled by Sophie Coppin's deep, hypnotic vocals, 'May' is a release of frustration ahead of that month's election, with lyrics like "flowers grow, and flowers die in May". Harry Mchale's saxophone is a playful accompaniment to the passion-fuelled track – "a dance-why-you-cry-number", as the band describe it. Culminating in a climax of instrumentation and a sustained electric chord, 'May' once again affirms Y's refusal to be ignored. 'May' is the second release from the band's upcoming EP 'ENTER', set for release on 8th May. (Grace Palmer) | | Gia Margaret – 'Good Friend' | | Recalling the bushy-tailed, carefree optimism of those early noughties rom-coms that shaped our worldview as wide-eyed adolescents, Gia Margaret's new single 'Good Friend' is a twinkling gem of dreamy, trip-hop-steeped pop. Gliding through sunbeams, shimmering with the blissed-out harmonies of Imogen Heap and the balladic dream pop of Ivy or Avalon Emerson & The Charm, seamless melodies lilt over a slackened groove with an infectious charm and brightness. Margaret's upcoming album 'Singing' – due for release in April via Jagjaguwar – sees her reclaim her voice after a chronic vocal injury pivoted her work towards the pared-back introspection of ambient composition. "There was a time when I really didn't know if I would sing again. So once I healed, there was a lot of internal pressure to come back strong," Margaret says. "I didn't know who I was anymore. So it felt like beginning again, and reconnecting with these very old, old parts of myself." (Hazel Blacher) | | Green Gardens – 'Greeting / I Am Kind' | | At a time when tyranny and capitalist greed are slowly eroding our societal compassion and community, a sentiment as simple as embracing kindness is a poignant reminder of the tender threads of humanness that bind us together. Green Gardens' new double single 'Greeting / I Am Kind' embraces those very vulnerabilities that make us human, exploring the push and pull of yearning and benevolent affirmations that seek to steer us down a gentler path. Folk-fused indie rock opener 'Greeting' skips with a buoyant determination, drawing parallels to the bracing, pastoral indie twang of contemporaries ladylike. This contrasts against the slow, brooding post-rock build of 'I Am Kind'. Like a splash of cold water to the face, an invigorating, soothing crescendo of guitar and strings unfurls like a rhythmically tamed ode to caroline's 'Total euphoria'. This stunning new pair of tracks from the Leeds group arrives via Tiny Library records (22 Degree Halo, Far Caspian), and it precedes the start of the quintet's headline UK tour, set to culminate in London at the Windmill on the 24th March. (Hazel Blacher) | | For Breakfast – 'The Moon and Canyon Guide' | | If you're waiting 4 years to release a follow-up to your second EP – 2022's Trapped In The Big Room is still an excellent listen – you'd better have something mighty tasty up your sleeve. And an 8+ minute post-rock/romantic epic of sincerity, sublimity and pastoral wonder definitely, categorically constitutes a very full and delicious sleeve. Part BCNR, part Sigur Ros, and part Maurice Ravel, the return of London's For Breakfast – complete with a guest orchestra known affectionately as 'The Borkchestra' – is so rich with tenderness and vulnerability that it could be carrying the weight of four years' worth of love and loss on its wizened shoulders. Described as an epic about the mundane, with lyrics inspired by a ten year relationship between vocalist Maya Harrison and bassist Sam Birkett (they were written by the latter) 'The Moon and Canyon Guide' is distinguished, and it's beautiful. It's nice to have For Breakfast back. (Elvis Thirlwell) | | Cowboy Hunters – 'Shag Slags Not Flags' | | Feeling increasingly incensed by the sheer volume of St. Georges Crosses draped out of those local, archetypal Reform voters' windows? Cowboy Hunters see you, hear you, and have some pretty infallible advice for those staunchly xenophobic neighbours of yours. Bristling with uncompromising garage punk abrasion, the fast-rising Glasgow group's new single 'Shag Slags Not Flags' is a potent mix of brutish punk rock mettle and acerbic lyrical wit, opening fire at the cowardly 'keyboard warrior' patriots that increasingly plague our online discourse as the political dial shifts more to the far right. Quite possibly the perfect protest anthem to belt with your mates, 5 beers deep and thrashing gleefully in a sweatbox festival tent, Cowboy Hunters provide a vital pressure valve of humorous fury at a time when it's easy to feel powerless. 'Shag Slags Not Flags' teases the duo's upcoming EP 'EPEEPEE', due for release on the 20th March. (Hazel Blacher) | | Hiding Places – 'One Hand' | | The latest single from Hiding Places leans into their capacity to create wrought, atmospheric textures, taking the style to its extreme. Wound around a tight guitar lick, 'One Hand' is built of a locked-in repeated melody, which takes on so much longing in its incessant repetition. As distortion clicks on and synths swell in the instrumental breaks, you expect some reprieve, some transformation, only to find yourself back again with that nifty guitar lick. It's circular thinking in song form and the band make a virtue of it. In the closing minute, they begin to navigate a way out, fingerpicked guitars and cymbal flourishes like leaves crushed underfoot as we hurry on in our escape… only for that hook to come right back again for a truncated verse: "You took too long". We're not through this yet. With their debut album on the horizon, Hiding Places show a command of that form of close-mic'ed, Big Thief shuffle style that is so addictive and emotive, pushing it here to experimental lengths. (Lloyd Bolton) | | A twanging, frantic flurry of lysergic psych punk mayhem, Wax Head's 'Bug Doctor' will sweep you off your feet and into the pulsing heart of the mosh pit without any memory of how or when you got there. The new single from the Manchester group arrives alongside an announcement of their debut album 'GNAT', due for release in April via Sour Grapes, and it reveals a macabre insectological fascination with the most gruesome, fleshly inner workings of the natural world. Drummer and vocalist Lewis Fletcher elaborates: "I've always been drawn to the gross and the violent in my writing. I just struggle to talk about the sunnier side of life. I've tried so many times but it just doesn't come naturally. I'll buy books about quite dark subjects and figures and get loads of inspiration…" Wax Head will also be embarking on a UK and EU tour this spring, including a show at The George Tavern on the 28th May. (Hazel Blacher) | | | | |
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