art-rock

I like this a lot. Mary in the Junkyard’s debut opens with ‘Mantra III’, which sets sparse, atmospheric instrumentation to a single repeated phrase, ‘It is yours babe, you deserve it’. It isn’t quite a fake-out, but it might give you the wrong idea: the rest sticks a touch more closely to conventional structures, without ever becoming predictable. ‘Blood’ and ‘Seek and Destroy’ make an interesting contrast. Both start with a knotty post-rock riff before the fragile vocals emerge, the former full of lust and longing, the latter more fearful, at times enraged.

Clari Freeman-Taylor’s vocals are distinctive and quite twee; they sound like they’d blow away in a stiff breeze. It’s a love-or-hate voice, and it won me over. Parts of the album hark back to ‘00s and ‘10s indie: ‘New Muscles’ (apparently written about the drummer joining a gym) reminds me of Tune-Yards’ off-kilter approach, while other aspects of the album’s the instrumentation and orchestration variously recall Grizzly Bear, Beach House and Arcade Fire. But this isn’t copycat music, and there’s plenty of variety. The band’s influences run from folk rock to post-rock, so they’re never far from something atmospheric, occasionally foreboding.

Lyrically, it covers rebirth, metamorphosis and toxic masculinity (‘Crash Landing’ is about men keeping their emotions locked away), alongside Freeman-Taylor’s potential past life as a fisherman. Her best friend in that life was a mouse, and closer ‘Mouse’ is about the pair meeting again, both reincarnated as people. That’s her on the cover, in full prosthetics, as the fisherman.

Cameron Picton’s first record outside Black Midi (a band whose shtick I never totally warmed to) and a tonal world away from Geordie Greep’s The New Sound, whose calypso pastiche left me cold. My New Band Believe is the Windmill alumnus I didn’t expect to like. Almost entirely acoustic, built from strings, woodwind, harpsichord and pianos stacked into something that keeps tilting underfoot, it has the orchestral curiosity of Van Dyke Parks without the kitsch. “Love Story” sits in the middle like a small domestic scene that won’t quite hold still. The whole thing is intriguing in a way I’m still working out, which is the better kind of intriguing.