March 2026

falling in love and having fun and getting your heart broken

So the good news is Altin Gün have a new one out, Garip, their first one without Merve, and I’m kind of circling it with trepidation the way I do with all my great adorations, a little worried they won’t be able to melt me like before, but “Neredesin Sen” is very good indeed — maybe a little more straightforward rock than the silly shiny peaks of Gece and Yol, but the mood has to be a bit somber, even for us fans, after losing marvelous Merve. In any case Erdinç Ecevit Yıldız is a visionary whose cult I would gladly join, or I guess I already have.
Şu garip hâlımdan bilen şiveli nazlım
My coy, accented woman who knows my strange situation.
Göğnüm hep seni arıyor, neredesin sen?
My heart is always looking for you, where are you?
Datlı dillim, güler yüzlüm, ey ceylan gözlüm
My sweet tongue, my smiling face, my gazelle eyes
Göğnüm hep seni arıyor, neredesin sen?
My heart is always looking for you, where are you?
Neredesin sen?
Where are you?

Lowswimmer does what the beardos classify as “folktronica,” and sort of takes the Bon Iver matrix and actually gives it even more layers and some autotune and ooh, something about it takes me back to that turn of the millennium hierophant homosexual replicant love and longing ballad “Kathy’s Song” by Apoptygma Berserk. I mean, minus the pounding gay rave beat. I gotta say, at some point I had banished my love for Bon Iver to a remote wood cabin, but revisiting For Emma, Forever Ago is giving me strange heteronormative pleasure.

Fire by Sister Irene O’Connor is devotional Catholic music like you’ve never heard before. She’s Australian and she first released it back in 1973; it’s relentlessly chirpy and pairs the traditional hymns and hallelujahs of the lyrics with a 60s pop music sensibility (and a reggae beat on the title track). Sister Irene played all the instruments herself, including a lot of cute/maddening synth organ — it’s simple, sophisticated and absurd all at once. It’s kind of like children’s music, but also achieves a disorienting, surreal vibe that would pair well with a slasher movie scene.
Christ came to kindle fire on the earth
The fire of God's love He brought to birth
Indeed this spot would be a sorry place
Without this fire embracing every race
Fire, fire
Burning, warming cold hearts
Glowing, purifying, showing
Where mankind can find true peace
Where mankind can find true peace
In every human heart a craving lies
To find the perfect being for whom it sighs
So Christ revealed this truth to you and me
Our hearts were made to love eternally

No way it’s been four years since Organ Tapes’ last album! On 包烟 (Yi Bao Yan) which apparently means “A Pack of Cigarettes,” he cements his reputation as the sweetest, saddest Chinese boy in of all of Canada. His natural voice dares to peek out from behind his signature autotune on this one, and it’s almost all in English. His lyrics are sketches from the frontline of love and war, raw but resilient, and the tunes are reliably heart-melting.
Now I′ve lived as low
Turned myself into simple
‘Cause I wanted to
Stand apart from other people
What are you into?
It was wrong, the impossible
But it’s made up
And it all came true
Yeah, it’s not the same as what you dreamed of
And freedom falls
Took your leave from what you′re made of
And you paid the price
At the, at the expense of life
We’ll make it alright

There’s been a microtrend of British sprechgesang bands of late, particularly Dry Cleaning who very much annoy me. Wet Leg too, and Spotify won’t stop feeding them to me, like an elderly neighbor who thinks you’re just being polite when you say no to their dubious jelly orange slices. It’s not the speak-singing per se, in fact the album that saved my life in 1998 when I was a mess is Philophobia by the mighty Arab Strap. And if I can get myself to get to the point, London’s PVA have won me over where others have not. Sporting a cover pic of someone’s well-formed bum, presumably vocalist Ella Harris’s, No More Like This isn’t posturing or reaching for cool with its talky ways — it seems to convey a state of exhaustion, or talking in her sleep. It’s No-Wave-informed introverted electronic; it makes you want to look inside; it’s minimalist and hypnotic but it does get theatrical; it’s poetry.
Good morning
Following the moon
Ambience again
Good morning
To the spit on the street
Fading kick in the distance
A night at Avalon
Ghost song
Good morning to the voice in my head
Rain over my head
Over my head
Good morning (over my head)
The breath I stole (Rain over my head)
Flames, dread, blistered skin (Over my head)
I like the way it felt (Over my head)
Head rush, screaming
Sun is on the clouds
Sun is on the clouds

OK, I’ve complained about this before and I promise I will again, but there are just so many artists out there to follow, like artists actually doing meaningful work. Back in my day the number of current artists you needed to know about was somewhere in the double digits — read Melody Maker once a week and you were golden. Nowadays it’s like keeping track of every little fishy in your sperm, and when you read band reviews online it feels like people have a deep understanding of the ethos and discography of each one of them. I hadn’t heard of Melbourne’s EXEK before, but they’re on their ninth album and there are motherfuckers online discussing their trajectory as if they were Radiohead famous. In any case, they’re great — hard to classify although the “post-punk” catch-all fits well enough. There’s definitely something of Wire’s dusty-dreamy alt-pop about them, particularly Albert Wolski’s vocals.
That’s a burly gate that you climbed
And honestly we hoped that you’d fall
That would make your entrance so much better
Into the best place on earth to discover
All forms of Japanese jazz
So unpack your bag you young jet setter
Side stepping over the water
Seen dribbling down some spiral stairs
Our lives are valuable too
Ain’t no miracle
Just an innovative approach
Approved and overseen
Our lies are valuable too

Hen Ogledd’s new one is just wild, and a sprawler — its provenance is folk I guess, and some of it’s in Welsh and it’s an overgrown garden of unfamiliar sound-foliage that to some extent reminds me of the kind of 70s pop-rock that was informed by prog. Like Supertramp or 10CC, or Genesis. [Genesis were actual prog — Ed.] Right, I know. I knew that. “End of the Rhythm” builds to a chorus that wouldn’t be out of place on the Hair OST.
Self belief made my flight
With bandits in the dead of night
To propose a plan just to a few billboards
Where communities do steal not from your brother
One boundary makes another
Abolition is recognition of the true human condition
(Shake) transcending (Shake) enclosure (Shake) collective (Shake) taking over
(Shake) we dance (Shake) with wild abandon (Shake) our circles (Shake) keep expanding
(Shake) keep whirling (Shake) keep spinning (Shake) get back to the beginning
There is a light at the end of the rhythm
There is a light at the end of the rhythm

Beverly Glenn-Copeland is like a hippy Nina Simone — a similar voice but none of La Nina’s dark edge; au contraire, Beverly is happy to run guilelessly into the cornfields of a world where all is joy. This positivity, paired with an old-timey sensibility (circa The Sound of Music) is more than ripe for camp appreciation. Bev has been at it since 1970, and at age 82 has an energetic, full-throated new one out, very much on brand with its title Laughter in Summer. So yeah, I mean I can’t help giggle at the wide-eyed-ness of it all but it’s also refreshing and honestly quite bold in its own way, so all respect to Mr. Beverly. And OK to be fair I believe I also detect a certain Scott Walker-esque goth undercurrent to all the innocence. Maybe the dark edge is there after all, in the subtext?
Glistening waters
Loons with their waltz on the lake
Love with each breath that I take
Here with you
Laughter in summer
How I remember
June through September
Here with you
You
My heart, my joy, my life
My homе on earth
Here with you

Hyperpop has grown from its scrappy little arty niche into cultural ubiquity, with waves of new artists stretching, bending, appropriating and refining it. Two Shell have been the genre’s touchstone in the ‘20s, crafting irresistible dance nuggets in dazzling new shapes. But they’re not to be confused with new kids 2Charm, who move the genre into a slightly more populist direction, emphasizing crystalline hooks and simple lyrics about falling in love and having fun and getting your heart broken, all firmly in the pop idiom. Their image is gay-bating, TikTok-ready, cute and silly boyreography with plenty of tatted, lean flesh and armpits on display. Their debut album star scum city is all you can eat bangers, no mash. prerogative and paris (to get you out of my head) are the tracks that jumped out at me first. On closing track arc de triomphe they lean in the direction of the delirious French dance genius of Cassius.

I first heard about Jessica Pratt back in ‘19 when an ex-boyfriend — actually I was never sure if we really were boyfriends — flagged her playing at Desert Daze. She made a good impression and all, she was touring her third album. But Asher White has gone back to her roots (Jessica’s that is) and recorded an album that covers her whole self-titled 2012 debut, song by song and wow, it’s gorgeous. Bizarre to think 2012 to a Zoomer has the same weight of nostalgia the 60s/early 70s had for me as a young adult. Anyway, early Jess was quite folky and Asher has some fun playing around with the arrangements and both iterations are just scrummy.
Well, the bed lies empty
Lord, I see your head hanging low with the bottle told
Well, inside was nowhere to hide, nowhere to hide them
And inside was nowhere to hide, nowhere to hide them
If you'd called or helped
Heavy heart flame from the bed that rains for the raiders
Comin' down when the game spun round
Keep me, darling, in your darkest hours
Like a mother made of stone
He sings low for the long pour
There's a hundred mighty men or more
And his eyes were so fixed on light
So fixed on the light
That right hand guide him too low
Guide him to down home at night
If he comes home, home, home
And do wrong, wrong wrong

Decades go by and Tinariwen keep sounding exactly like themselves. If anything their voices get a bit richer and more gnarled, like seasoned wood. New one Hoggar is not a progression, it’s just beauty and perfection like everything they do. Great driving music incidentally, whether it’s a camel or a Camry.

Apparat (Sasha Ring) last showed up on my radar back in ‘13 with the tasty Krieg und Frieden album. On A Hum Of Maybe, he’s still very much a master of mood and texture, crooning in falsetto Thom Yorke style over rich and varied audio landscapes, mining emotion. These New Puritans also come to mind as fellow travelers. This is dark, late-night headset music that demands your full attention and rewards it.
Air thick and walls too near
Clocks fold in on themselves, ooh
The doors lean, tired praise
Soundless sirens pressing in
The white flags that no one sees
Hold out quiet like a vow, oh
Cracked on, jitter loose
Pass the weight palm to palm
One step back, one step gone
I move the lines I used to hold
One step back, one step gone
One step back, one step gone
One step back, one step gone

Man oh man, I gotta post this thing and get back to important things but I would be remiss if I didn’t flag the new Baby Keem — Hykeem Carter is state of the art, killing it with ridiculously confident flow over sick, borderline WTF arrangements.
I'm havin' trouble with my 911
Smoke in your chest and I know it weigh heavy
I'm out of a ride, dog, you gotta come get me
Why she always talkin' like she understand me?
I fuck with the nerds, on stage, I go Lennie
I don't have family, so why keep a palace?
My nigga Dave bought so many watches
I went and got one and I didn't even dial it
All of the niggas around me is humble
I beat the odds, so I'm more prima donna

And my grrrrrl Aldous Harding has a new one out!