Candace Campana is everything you’d expect from an emerging country artist. She’s a singer-songwriter-multiinstrumentalist with a strong ear for melody and a penchant for finding beauty in negative situations. Fittingly, her debut single Pink Ink showcases all of these qualities.

Pink Ink is a moving story about serious illness and how something as simple as a tattoo can bring someone strength in the most troubling of circumstances. Packed with a subtle but unmistakable energy, this is an amazing and competent debut release.

Love songs are the backbone of modern pop music. When it’s all serene and nice, love songs are lovely. However, when things are going sour and the love is unrequited, love songs are among the saddest sounds imaginable. Somehow, they become even sadder when Nova Neon sings them, with latest track Stone to a Balloon channelling the sound of a heart shattering and bleeding as sultry blues vocals meet defeated guitar melodies and lethargic drum beats. This is heartbreak in its purest and most enjoyable form.

As frontwoman Bianca Lewis explains, “Stone To A Balloon is a love song about a broken relationship, where one person is fighting to keep it alive whilst the other one drifts… one person acts as the stone (the rock of the relationship) whilst the other is the balloon (the drifter). In a working relationship, the two counter each other harmoniously – but in this case, it’s the emotional realisation that it no longer works that drives the song.”

Yet feelings so sour have never sounded so good.

For as weird and unusual as their output tends to be, there is no denying that we’re pretty big on Trudy and the Romance. Lucky for us, the band is back with a blistering blues-rock track with the rawest emotion to grace the genre in many decades.

Maintaining the band’s usual strikingly distinct style and dissonance-flirting melodies, My Baby’s Gone Away is as bluesy as the title suggests. While there is always a sense of impending terror in the sound of Trudy, this time the terror has arrived and swept over the band. The instrumentation is vintage blues given the typical modulation treatment, but that’s nothing to write home about on its own – the vocal performance, on the other hand, is utterly heartbreaking. Few bands channel the raw, unbridled emotion that the band manage to here, sounding on the verge of crumbling into tears at any moment, and even fewer could do so with conviction.

From rumbling opening hook to the whimpering close, Trudy have produced arguably their most captivating piece to date. Every beat of the heartbeat-like drums is another nail through the listener’s heart so, for as great as this track is, make sure you go into it with emotions of steel.

Baba Ali is a young unsigned singer song-writer and producer whose single ‘Cog in the Wheel’ is a feature track on his upcoming album Nomad. This album collectively is described as ‘soulful’ and his lyrical themes throughout the music are from obviously personal experiences, which might initially sound quite at odds with the industrial-esque implications of the title.

Admittedly, the industrialism does extend marginally beyond the title. Industrial-esque soundscapes build underneath the vocal melody, developing from a single looped rhythm into a complex amalgamation of sounds. Despite this, the song keeps a soulful edge with funky-layered vocals and looped bass motifs. The track grows in body as it continues on with the continual addition of background noise and different synths intertwining.

What’s more, the constant beat definitely makes this a strong piece of music that gets you feeling pumped up and ready for the day.

Imagine a release that successfully blurred lines between soul, blues, rock and punk. Then imagine that it also threw in a little bit of a world music sound too. Sounds almost impossible, doesn’t it?

Well Lilith Ai not just makes this impossible task possible, but she does so in extraordinary fashion while calling for a feminist revolution. Her new EP Riot is the sound of rebellion that doesn’t care too much for musical form so long as the purpose is delivered coherently and effectively.

This leads to a multifaceted sound full of unorthodox transitions, such as from the blues crash of Hang Tough to the street-stirring rock rampage of title track Riot. Yet the whole experience flows unfalteringly from start to finish without it feeling jarring or awkward. It not only accentuates the songwriting prowess of Lilith but also the strength of her message. She is a woman on a mission and she accomplishes it.

The best thing is that her feminism is implicit in the music itself and therefore makes a stronger case for the cause. An overt scream or shout would make Lilith more of a fighter for rights than a spokesperson for a movement, which ultimately feels more beneficial. The real heart of her feminist punk lies in her accompanying book, the Riot Notebook. It’s a fantastic book containing poetry, lyrics and biting illustration that all serve as tribute to the Riot Grrrl movement.

Lilith Ai is a songwriter with a strong statement to make. Her latest EP and book prove she’s more than up to the task.

You can get a hold of the Riot EP here.

Whereas ‘Mirage’ draws a lot of it’s vocal prowess from the duet style delivery, this track is delivered solely by Lana Del Rey-reminiscent female vocals. The vocals are definitely the highlight of this track, with the ideal blend of breathless passion and well-worn haziness making this track effortlessly cool.

That’s not to undervalue the instrumentation though. The guitar lead serves us a tasty mix of psychedelia, blues and 90’s Britpop that somehow seems to not sound dated. Combine this with the constant plucked riff, a subtle bass line and an endless shaker and you have a perfect piece of psychedelia.

It’s hard to fault this track, other than it’s over in little over two minutes and leaves you wanting more. Luckily, we all know where the replay button is.

The track is released on 7″ on June 2 along with A-Side ‘Mirage’ (review here), but you can listen to the track here.

7/10

Have you ever had one of those days where you just want to immerse yourself, and get lost, in music? Look no further than ‘Mirage’, the upcoming single by Courtly Love.

A mesmerising blend of psychedelia and blues, ‘Mirage’ is an immersive experience that will captivate you and send you floating through a world of shakers and swirling guitars. The guitars sit somewhere between contemporary shoegaze-indie and vintage 60’s psychedelia, sounding equal parts The Horrors and Creedence Clearwater Revival.

The vocals hazily drift over the top of this, a male/female vocal split making the verses interesting and adding to the song’s lovelorn feel. And the way the two vocals come together for the chorus is also worth praising, adding emphasis and a sense of emotion to the chorus. The chorus itself is simple but effective, with the lyrics largely repeating “you are not mine” in such a way for it to get stuck in your head – the way a good chorus should.

It’s the perfect track to get lost in, and a fantastic piece of psychedelic blues. If you’re not listening to this, then you should be.

The track is released on 7″ on June 2, along with B-Side ‘For Your Love, I Get High’ (review coming up tomorrow). But you can stream the track here.

8/10