Browsing Tag

The Cranberries

Morgana harrowed the psyche with their synthesis of emo, punk and grunge in ‘Two Broken People’

Posted on 2 February 2024

Sometimes two broken pieces come together to form a cohesive whole, but more often than not, the sharp idiosyncratic shards find a jarring way of exposing raw wounds. Far from your archetypal vignette of heartbreak, Morgana’s single, ‘Two Broken People (Make Hell Feel Like Home)’, approaches the narrative from a position of mutual position of imperfection. If you’re tired of black-and-white expositions of good and evil and want to find the fucked up fabric of the human psyche in sound, Morgana is a breath of non-dichotomous air.

With the visceral harmonies striking against the momentum in the rock chords as they dig deeper into the narrative and the drums deepening the tumultuous edge to the organically authentic single, Two Broken People is as affecting as the alt-90s hits from the likes of The Cranberries and Skunk Anansie. Through the grungy synthesis of punk and emo, the Kent-based trio, the single retains a signature that could only be scribed by the volition of Morgana.

Vocalist and guitarist Amy Morgan is a natural frontwoman. The mix of her expressive confidence and candid vulnerability ensures their singles don’t just resonate; they harrow the psyche. Dill Taskar (bass) and Tim Whittingham (drums) notably seem to feed off the fervour in her delivery to orchestrate a tight yet brashy riff-driven coalescence of chaos and cultivation.

Two Broken People will be available to stream from February 2nd; stream it on SoundCloud first.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

MidAmerican Elevator are dream-pop love fools in their latest single, Ivy

Posted on 27 September 2022

Ethereal enough to give you goosebumps, the Chicago indie-rock band MidAmerican Elevator’s latest single, Ivy, is an idyllically evocative masterpiece through the entwining of Cranberries-Esque vocal harmonies and artful percussion that chimes through the relentlessly mellifluous guitars.

Lyrically, Ivy captures the retrospective turmoil of realising that things weren’t as they seemed due to the misleading actions of a protagonist that couldn’t keep up the façade of charming perfection. Ivy makes it clear how much aural evolutionary room stands between The Cardigans’ Lovefool and this twilight-lit spectre of sweet naivety that the world would be infinitely more insufferable without.

Check out MidAmerican Elevator’s latest single, Ivy, on YouTube.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Texan trio, Tough on Fridays take us through a tender transition in their indie pop track, Growing Pains

Posted on 26 August 2022

With hints of the Cranberries and other iconic 90s pop contemporaries, Tough on Fridays delivered nostalgia with a cinematic edge that could make their latest single, Growing Pains, the highlight of the OST for the next coming-of-age Hollywood blockbuster.

The momentously oceanic single is definitive proof that the Texan trio has come a long way from where they started five years ago as an angst-driven duo. Lauded for their energetic performances and acclaimed in their home state, it is only a matter of time before Tough on Fridays reach the heights they are destined for. Growing Pains is undoubtedly one of the finest testaments to their songwriting tenacity to date; getting carried away with the simple yet efficaciously magnetic chords is pretty much non-optional.

Tough on Fridays’ latest single, Growing Pains, is now available to stream on SoundCloud.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Mallaigh Ashton made the alt-90s her own with her latest dreampop single, With a Song

Posted on 4 March 2022

NYC-hailing singer-songwriter, Mallaigh Ashton, made the alt-90s her own in her indie dream-pop release, With a Song. Reminiscences of Mazzy Star are there, but nothing about With a Song feels fractionally assimilative. There’s a real sense that part of the alchemy in this track is from Ashton’s creative passion and unfiltered poetry spilling into a mic.

Her vocals get just enough prominence in the release to give the cutting lyricism on in-love-anxiety a firm hold on your heartstrings but there’s still enough synergy with the soft shoegaze guitars to give With a Song an almost phantasmal mellifluous air as it alludes to just how fragile love can make you.

As a staunch shoegaze fan, it is always daunting discovering new up and coming artists borrowing tones from the alt 90s, but the cynicism soon faded after hitting play on With a Song. Mallaigh Ashton is a matchlessly breath-taking artist.

With a Song is due for official release on March 4th; you can check it out for yourselves via SoundCloud and Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Dream-Rap? Is That Even A Thing?

Posted on 2 December 2017

Even with the amount of new music being made every day, with sheer weight of collective imaginations, the genre splicing experiments, the fusing and fusion of styles Garrison Carver seems to be on to something new here. Yes, there is a trippy trap beat, a cool R&B vibe and a rap delivery but that is then cocooned in something totally unexpected. Around these more expected elements he wraps a dream-pop haze, chilled psychedelia and electronic washes.

It’s confusing, but experience tells us that is a good thing, expectations are made to be subverted, rules are made to be broken and new musical horizons are their to be explored and DD does all of those things and more. Blissed out hip-hop? Ethereal R&B? Dream-rap? Are those even a thing? The fact that you have to invent whole new genres to put the music in is an indication of just how original this music is and how singular and lateral Garrison Carver’s thinking is.