New from The Wind and The Wave, Driven Snow, Glen Phillips, The Mandevilles, Automatic

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The Wind and The Wave: Keep Your Head Down

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Racing Hearts is TW+TW's first album since 2018's Human Beings Let You Down. The duo of Dwight Baker and Patty Lynn unveiled it at the very end of 2022 (although Patreon supporters had early previews). "Here’s the album we created during the pandi, half of it from within a closet during lockdown," they posted, adding that the music "uplifted us then, and we hope it brings some joy your way now."

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Driven Snow: Flickers Of You

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Irish musicians Kieran McGuinness and Emily Aylmer debuted as a duo in 2022. By then, they'd known each other more than 15 years, married and had three children. When the pandemic interrupted their other musical pursuits, they started writing and recording together. "It all happened quite naturally, and it wasn’t in any way a career step," McGuinness told The Irish Times. "In fact, it was the opposite, we were just playing songs to each other and seeing what we thought of them.” This song is described as "a musical exploration of the quieter parts of a long-term relationship."

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Glen Phillips: Stone Throat

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Here's a single from the There Is So Much Here, the new solo album by Toad the Wet Sprocket's frontman. American Songwriter says the collection is "similar in style to the music made with that band, save for the fact that the arrangements are somewhat leaner at times, the product of no more than two or three musicians playing per track. Nevertheless, the songs maintain an emphatic embrace, which, without exception, ensures instant appeal." This song looks at a couple in a new relationship: “The push and pull between longing to run away and wanting a strong home base can be a heavy tide," says Phillips.

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The Mandevilles: Wasn't Always

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This five-piece band from Welland, Ontario, plays straightforward rock-and-roll featuring Serena Pryne's vocals. Their new EP, Junkie, includes that previously released single and four new tracks, including this one. Pryne says of the track: "The idea is that you can be changed into something you no longer recognize as yourself. By a person or circumstance. It’s an introspective soliloquy – a plea to yourself. The rhythmic drum pattern hypnotizes.”

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Automatic: On the Edge

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Excess, the sophomore album from this LA trio, came out severan months ago, and we previously featured "New Beginning." The LP has been landing on some Best-of-2022 lists, prompting us to dip back into its "retrofuturist motorik pop" and include this track in our New Music bin for the start of 2023. 

Brand-new Bastien, Powerwalk, Pierce the Veil; almost-new Alvvays, The Smile

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Bastien: Green Garden

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This London band was formed just in time to be prevented from playing together by pandemic lockdowns. After remotely swapping tracks and developing their sound from elements of new wave, soft rock, psych- and jangle-pop, they were finally able to get together, and began recording and playing gigs. This single comes to us ahead of their upcoming debut EP, Stroud Green Stoop. Lead vocal/guitarist Seb Pettitt says “the song is a sort of meditation on social anxiety; how you can be excited for something and dread it simultaneously."

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Powerwalk: Lantern

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Three musician friends from St. Catherines, Ontario - Arih SK, Amanda Parker and Mark Hoerdt - "all love 80’s new wave music and thought it would be fun to plug in some synths and see what happens." So far, that's resulted in a couple of singles, including this brand-new track. Parker says it's "a song about being the bravest person in the room. Someone has to be willing to get to the light source in the dark.”

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Pierce the Veil: Emergency Contact

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New to our ears is this San Diego trio that's preparing to release its fifth album - but its first since 2016. Jaws of Life is due in February. This first single is based on "the concept of writing down the name of the person that you love as your emergency contact when you’re at the hospital. It's kind of a morbid form of romance. They are the one person who will be there for you when disaster strikes."

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Alvvays: After the Earthquake

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Photo by Norman Wong

We've been taking advantage of the end-of-year slow-down in album releases to pull more plums from not-so-long-ago releases - such as this track from Blue Rev, released in October. The band describes it as “a rapid fire recital of drive-thru breakdown, tectonic breakup and boyfriend in a coma brake failure.” Glad they cleared that up.

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The Smile: The Opposite

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We nearly let the year go by without paying attention to A Light for Attracting Attention, this year's release from the trio consisting of Radiohead's Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood along with drummer Tom Skinner from modern-jazz group Sons of Kemet. AllMusic called this track "an elastic groover" that finds "the trio locked-in as a formidable unit, with Skinner's drumming building to head-rattling levels as Greenwood's guitar noodling and Yorke's detached falsetto push [it] to bewitching heights."

Fresh sounds from Teepee, Death Cab for Cutie, The Beths, Left of the Slash, Umphrey's McGee

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Teepee: Blind Tomorrow

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The follow-up to 2021's Where the Ocean Breaks is due early in the new year. This is the first single from the yet-untitled album by the Czech dream-pop duo of singer-acoustic guitarist Miroslav Patočka and singer-electric guitarist Tereza Lavičková. It's billed as "an honest confession about sadness, fear, and anxiety."

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Death Cab for Cutie: Pepper

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A gentle breakup song is the latest single broken out from Asphalt Meadows, the tenth album from Benjamin Gibbard and company. The lyric is a forget-me-not plea to a departing lover, mixed with the realization that "I was a city you were only passin' through."

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The Beths: Expert In A Dying Field

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We featured a couple of early singles ahead of this New Zealand band's September release, and now we circle back to add the title track to our New Music bin. Songwriter-vocalist Elizabeth Stokes, guitarist Jonathan Pearce, bassist Benjamin Sinclair and drummer Tristan Deck "make music that has a sugar-rush immediacy and a craftsman-like attention to detail that invites close listening," writes Pitchfork. Here, the lyric compares one's intimate knowledge of an ex to a skill that's no longer useful. 

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Left of the Slash: Two Minds One Head

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Guitarist Stephen Nemeroff founded this band in New York in 2005. After a long hiatus and a move to Los Angeles, he re-formed it and began work on an album in 2020. The result is Won, released in September. "It feels great to finally hear what’s been playing in my head for more than 20 years at the level it properly deserves,” says Nemeroff. He cites a wide range of influences, including Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Sonic Youth and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

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Umphrey's McGee: Escape Goat

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We dig back into Asking for a Friend to pull out a deep-cut gem. The story goes that the band held an online auction offering a song based on a topic of the winner’s choice. The top bidder wanted the song to be about missing old friends. Keyboardist Joel Cummings says the band-written song "was nailed in three or four takes" and contains what "might be my favorite vocal hook" by Brendan Bayliss: "And everyone you’ve ever held or tried to hold on to / They’ll make your burden brighter."

This week's picks: Madison Galloway, Chris Corey, Softlung, Tedeschi Trucks Band, Built to Spill

We're using this end-of-year time, when the record labels pause their releases, to catch up on some music we've missed in recent months, and to check out some new and emerging artists.

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Madison Galloway: The River

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We're catching up with this emerging roots-rocker from Fergus, Ontario. At 22, Galloway already has played hundreds of shows, including numerous festivals, and is preparing her second album for release early in the new year. This single combines bluesy guitar-rock with a prog-like bridge and a mystical lyric about learning lessons of history from a river goddess.

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Chris Corey: Storms We Face

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This new artist splits his time between his native Ontario and Western Canada, where he’s working on his debut album. He says the collection, to be released in a few months, "is really a mixed bag," combining strains of rock, pop, blues, country, folk and new wave. This single is billed as "a lush blend of 80’s-inspired synth hooks mixed with punchy guitars and sweeping melodies." It builds into a stadium-ready anthem.

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Softlung: The Other Side

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This is the second single from the latest project by songwriter-musician-producer S.J. Kardash. He was touring the world as the bassist for hard-rock band Reignwolf when the pandemic shut that down. "Picking up an acoustic guitar and looking inward, he began writing and recording in solitude," according to his publicity. "New songs poured out quickly." He tells Canadian Beats that this one was "written about feeling like the supporting character in your own story ... and realizing we’re all just trying to figure out our own script. And sometimes, to keep moving forward, we just need to tear it all up and start again."

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Tedeschi Trucks Band: Soul Sweet Song

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We don't do end-of-the-year "Best" lists, but the four-part I Am the Moon album has to be near the top of any ranking of 2022 rock releases. Songs from each part have been in our New Music bin through the year, and now we're adding one more from the fourth part, Farewell, released in September. As AllMusic wrote, the track "starts with rumbling congas, Gabe Dixon's piano, and Derek Trucks' slide guitar. [Susan] Tedeschi and Mike Mattison sing in resonant harmony about how the spirits of the dead leave indelible marks on those who remain, as lithe horns frame them."

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Built to Spill: Spiderweb

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When The Wind Forgets Your Name is the latest LP from the project headed for some 30 years by singer-guitarist Doug Martsch. Pitchfork writes that the "whole album is dotted with cool surprises," and that this track "gives way to one spirited twist after another ... with a generosity of intricately plotted melodies."

Our latest picks: Alastair Greene, Dentist, The Scarlet Goodbye, The Lone Bellow, Local Natives

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Alastair Greene: When You Don't Know What To Do

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After this veteran rock and blues guitarist released his latest solo studio album, The New World Blues, in 2020, he played six nights at Chicago's City Winery in a power-trio configuration - opening for bluesman Tab Benoit, who had produced the LP. Greene was joined by Benoit on drums and Corey Duplechin on bass. Now, highlights from those gigs make up Alive in the New World, due next month from Benoit's Whiskey Bayou label. We're glad to have this first single in our New Music Bin.

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Dentist: Understand It

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This time of year, when most new releases are Christmas records or re-issues, is a good time to highlight music that came out some months back. Here we dip back into this New Jersey band's September release, Making a Scene, for another taste of its punk-inflected power pop. Glide magazine says this track has "a beat that would fit right in to a song by The Go-Go’s. ... The melody is both fuzzy and bubbly ... Then you hear the lyrics and you realize that ... the song carries some weight. It’s particularly evident when you hear [Emily Bornemann] sing 'Suffering in silence is so sad / so I wouldn’t recommend it.'"

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The Scarlet Goodbye: Panic & Blame

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The third single from the project of two Minneapolis musicians - Soul Asylum founding member Dan Murphy and singer-songwriter Jeff Arundel - precedes next month's release of their debut album, Hope's Eternal. Their website says a chance meeting between the two "led the duo, whose careers spanned the same time frame but had essentially no other resemblance, to start writing and recording." The result is a fresh version of the soft-rock style that emerged in the 70s.

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The Lone Bellow: Cost of Living

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Singles from Love Songs for Losers began emerging this summer, but the full album just came out last month and included this smooth, soulful track, with Kanene Donehey Pipkin taking the lead vocal. She also took on the role of vocal producer for the album. “Singing together night after night for a decade allows you to understand what your bandmates are capable of, in a way that no one else can,” Pipkin explained. “There are so many different qualities to our voices that had never been captured before, and producing this album ourselves was a nice opportunity to finally showcase that.” 

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Local Natives: Just Before the Morning

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Stereogum calls this a "gorgeous, shimmering one-off single." It's the third recent single from the Los Angeles band, which released its last LP, Violet Street, in 2019. There's no word yet on whether another album is on its way. The group says this track "came from a burst of creativity after we finally reconnected in the studio. The song explores the cyclical nature of life and the many ways in which we begin again.”