June 2026
male vulnerability on a bed of chord changes
The sand in the June hourglass is down to its final grains… can she (me) pull it off or has she pushed it too far this time?? Let’s power write this thing…
Last year esdeekid’s debut loitered around for months before suddenly blowing up, and there was a special sauce on his best song “LV Sandals” — his name is Vincenzo but he calls himself fakemink and he’s been releasing piles of singles for the past three years, fusing Scandinavian melodicism a la Bladee and Yung Lean with a tough-as-nails UK rap attack. He’s a mix of Indian and Algerian which makes for some inspired genetic mixology — more than easy on the eyes, and he got quickly gobbled up by fashion labels and established pop/hip hop stars. His speeded up vocals are more teenage bratty than menacing; in interviews he speaks with an on-the-spectrum cadence, but his confidence is locked in at a 10 (he called his first album London’s Savior, and the first track was “Kill Everything”). “Night , Blooming Jasmine .” is slowgraffitti’s not particularly obscure pick from his new one.
Lola at the coat check, a Venus on the boat deck
White fox in the night, white chocolate
I been killing this shit, now I'm so really rich
I've been going OD, I'm on top of this shit
I've been getting so big, everybody in my biz
Going live, I don't know who anybody is
I won life, so I really just wake up and live
I ain't tryna go Zouk, ain't tryna go LIV
Can't fuck with a girl if the club where she live (Uh)
Or if she go out showing hеr tits, like
Come herе and give me a kiss, like
You are my mine, and I am your bitch, like
I don't know if she just kissing for that— for that— for that Harry Winston
What I expect from a Belgian band, even in 2026, would be in the realm of harsh, electronic manifestations perfumed with Sturm und Drang I suppose. Sargeant au contraire trend toward the dusty mid-20s dream-indie of Chanel Beads and caroline, and do I detect a distant echo of the mighty dEUS? Reviews in the lamestream press drone on about their collaged quality or process, but I hear a band locking into their own unique autosnelweg drone and performing indie hypnosis, properly dosing a restrained melodicism.
I will be different things
Dreaming up everything
What an accomplishment
Among the grunt of men
All of the time we've spend
I like our difference
All of the time we've spend
Once in your life
Twice in your mind
Once in your life
Twice in your lies
I will be different things
Dreaming up everything
A body with no end
A war of influence
All of the time we've spend
I like our difference
All of the time we've spend on love
I like to think of myself as a big fan of and expert on folktronica, but the new ear album got me searching my leaky brain and the Internet for turn of the century parallels and I got nothing. It did get me dusting off old Y2K era German faves Kante (who turned out to be folky indie) and Jeans Team (poppy EDM). There’s Alex G, but he feels tangential to the matter at hand, and emerged much later. Anyway, we should talk about ear — their new one Rumspringa is quite vibey and mumbly and multi-textured, hanging out close to the ground, then shifting into colorful crescendos without breaking a sweat. It’s a deconstructed sound that you can dance to, or at least bob your head and cry to in your bedsit. It’s tweaked-to-heaven twee.
I could hardly look around
I'll collect my life, the bells are ringing
On the surface of the earth
In the corner of the bar
A presence in my life
Getting in the car
Could've been enough
But I couldn't get this far
The money that I spent
Only seven years apart
Gone, gone forever (Gone, gone forever)
And so then
The wrong direction
One plus one equals one
To resent what makes you stuck
Though I owe it all to luck
How to characterize Tara Clerkin Trio? They’ve got a dreamy, watercolor presence; they do slot into low end grooves but I think people only bring up trip hop because they’re from Bristol; zero sampling of the vintage RnB canon and they won’t give your subwoofer too much trouble. New one Somewhere Good is very good indeed and unhurried and highly experimental but finds its way to pop-adjacent neighborhoods — without lingering there.
You're leaping fields
I'm falling leaves
You're busy streets
I'm moving feet
You're calling me
Open window
Where will we go?
Somewhere good, I hope
With extra rs for easy googling, villagerrr generally go down easy, easy like Sunday morning. They’re Midwestern (from Ohio) and sound it, in a good way, splitting the soft difference between folk-rock and country like Free Range and Hovvdy, adorably earnest without drifting into corn. They serve male vulnerability on a bed of chord changes (and pedal steel) precision-engineered to make you cry. Lovely dark lyrics too. Enjoy them before those grubby British “Americana” fans genrify them.
Swimming, swinging, so low
So close to heaven, I don't think you'll show
Well, I'm dumb, I'm bad, I'm broke
I'm singing songs that somebody else wrote
I cried watching the TV
It felt a lot like healing
This song will be my enemy
My brain, it wants to kill me
I stopped and read a book
Like the first time since I was pretty young
And the pages touched my hands
And my feet felt like red flowers in the sand…
Kurt Vile was quite a sensation in my personal ‘10s, drawling his xanaxed-up Neil Young blues rock and if I’m not mistaken making me cry (I’m no cry-baby, I’m hard as nails me — but it does happen) at that legendary FYF Fest at LA Historic Park in the summer of 2013. How did we drift apart? Drifting is definitely his brand, but there’s heart and old-soul wisdom in those tides. He’s been putting out records ever since, and his sound hasn’t budged an inch, but his new one Philadelphia’s Been Good to Me finally got me calling him up again. The album is sprawling and full of ace tunes, including a ten minute long stunner called “99th song,” but “Chance to Bleed” is one for the ages.
Yeah, now you got a chance to bleed now
With that old time, lo-fi, DIY, rock 'n’ roll nights
Now you got a chance to bleed now
In real time, from the heart, playin' live, band o' bros
Down South, East coast blues on a comeback
And I've been comin' back my whole damn life
Now you've got a chance to bleed now, you know it's true
With a microphone too hot too hold, scream into it like the days of old
My jelly b-b-baby, my roll, my roll, sweet mama, don't ya let that feedback fall
So open up and bleed, Kurt, things these days don’t seem to be connecting
Jesus CHRIST, I was gonna be surprised that Overmono are back already, but it turns out it’s been three whole years since Wales’ finest Tom and Ed got gushed about in these pages. That’s before most of my readers were even born! So they have a tingles-delivering one that got past me last year, called “Paradise Runner,” and now they’re dribbling singles ahead of a new album, including the sensitivo feminino hyperpop shivers of “Even Angels Ghost.”
Well done now
All calculated
Controlling
It′s your turn now
Oh, my bad
Don't play me
Make me scream with honesty
I′m lost, just say
Love the way you want me
Controlling
Let it be, let it go
Oh, my bad
I'm emotional
Always giving in my all…
Girl, I have so much more to blog about but my editors are already furious at me for pushing things down to the wire. I don’t know too much about Les Big Byrd other than their Spotify bio: “A four piece band from Stockholm, Sweden.” Oh, that Stockholm. What I do know is they have authored a little slice of Valhalla called “Big Flood,” which gives me those innocent Scandinavian pop shivers and escalates to a Dean Wareham-esque grungy guitar solo. Something about it brings to mind the dizzying heights of “Everything Flows“ by Teenage Fanclub.
I was at Newport in Sixty five
A brown bomber falling through the sky
And from Beijing to Berlin
Every bird has stopped singing
I feel it coming through in waves
This is the last big earthquake
Magnetic city's burned to the ground
And Big Ben's stopped ringing
That's when it started raining, that's when the rain began to fall…
I’ve rhapsodized about Bella White before in these pages and I probably will again — her 2023 album Among Other Things distilled everything that’s ever been great about country, from Patsy to Dolly to kd and beyond, and her new one A Sign in the Weather is even better. I hear echoes of Catherine Irwin of Freakwater in White’s world-weary lyrics and the throaty low end of her singing, but she also has an astonishing upper register. This is AOTY caliber stuff, one brilliant tune after another, produced for the most impressionable of ears rather than the pop charts.
There’s a distance ‘tween what I’ve done today
And what I said I’d do
Well, I do it all for no one
Not even me or you
And all I feel is blue
Should I surrender to this troubled way of thinkin’?
These days, I just don’t try
Well, I’ve hardly even cried
Though it’s boilin’ up inside of me
Should I just kiss this all goodbye?
Where can I go for to do
All the little things
Inside of me sing and I don’t want to
I swore that I was done
Now even I can’t outrun all that I used to
Thomas Bangalter pulled the plug on Daft Punk five years ago and one wondered what someone does in middle age after creating era-defining dance masterpieces at age 20 and a not-bad worldwide number one single with Pharrell Williams in his 30s. Lots of posh, Euro-cultural stuff it would seem. Case in point, he’s just put out a soundtrack for Mirage - Ballet for 16 Dancers, a Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève performance, and I’ve been tripping out on how “Part II” sounds like the ghost of “Da Funk” stomping around in the attic.
Aaron Maine AKA Porches just put one out that’s so got my ‘90s indie blues rock juices wetting my ripped jeans — not a million miles from from Kurt Vile’s jurisdiction, with notes of I wanna say Nirvana and Jonathan Richman and 60s garage. Recorded straight to tape, “Habit” is hitting my rock spot so accurately you could say it’s playing for my own secret France. That’s a World Cup reference. Go Iran! Aww… too late.
You got another thing comin'
When I see my muffin
Billy's in the backseat
Tammy is a model
Cocaine in my pocket
Miller in a bottle
You got another thing comin'
I got a bad flavor in my mouth for you
I got a bad craving for those things you do
You've been a bad rabbit far across the sea
But you got a bad habit of wanting me
I need to post this thing but I can’t not mention the latest brilliantly bizarre street art rap concoction out of Brazil, MAMA SUA PIRANHA (FUNKHALL) by DJ Maloka Original and the slowgraffitti-certified excellence of MC Lan. Martian percussion and spoken vocals skittering around with purpose, layered over a rather lovely repeating riff that sounds like a robot’s lament.
See you in July!!