Assistant is a Brighton-based indie-pop band formed in 2001. The band, which has experienced lineup changes, reunited in 2020 after a long hiatus and has since released multiple albums, including In The April Sun (2020), This World Could Be So Much Fun (2021), and Certain Memories (2024). While the original lineup consisted of five friends who met through a Brighton forum, Jonathan and Pete began writing songs together again during the first lockdown, and Anne-Sophie rejoined for their second album after the hiatus.
Goodbye Wodaoukou is Manchester’s Mat Mills, making heartfelt lofi indie and dream pop, with hints of shoegaze and 90s alt rock. His first album, Mirror Skies, was released in 2024 and Anything of Us, came out in  August on the Subjangle label.
Now Assistant and Goodbye Wudaokou, have teamed up for a split 7”, each side showcasing a new single from one of the bands: Flowers / Sky Lantern is out now.

What Mat Mills says: “I can’t quite remember who came up with the idea, but as friends and mutual admirers of each other’s work, we’ve been looking for the chance to collaborate and this felt perfect. The Assistant track is a true indie pop hit, so I’m honoured that our track is its happy neighbour.”

What Jonathan Shipley says: “Bands don’t do split-singles enough. In fact, they don’t collaborate enough. Sharing ideas, resources and responsibility just seems the appropriate thing when you find people who inspire you or make you feel accompanied on your idiosyncratic journeys. The discovery of enthusiastic peers is electrifying. And in terms of songs we’ve been living in each other’s pockets for a while now, Assistant and Goodbye Wudaokou. It’s great to be on the same record”

Their Mixtape:

Goodbye Wudaokou picks: “It’s a real pleasure to be doing another Mixtape for the wonderful Triste. This latest song feels very different from those on the album and I thought it would be nice for the mixtape to reflect my influences in writing Sky Lantern”

Elliott Smith – Angeles

I could almost have picked any song from Elliott Smith’s first three records, which are all special to me. I was fortunate enough to see Elliott Smith on the Figure 8 tour in 2000, after which I really started getting into his earlier records. I love their sparse arrangements, the dull sounding guitars and his meditative vocals. I find this particular song from his masterpiece, Either/Or, to be quite mysterious and conflicted. 

The Declining Winter – August Blue

The most recent album from the Declining Winter is an astounding and emotional listen for me. An almost diarist account of grief and personal tragedy, the songs are made even more powerful by naturalistic way in which they are recorded – replete with the odd chair creak and guitar stutter. It’s real and raw without the need for any flashy additions. I love how August Blue builds from a few punctuated guitar notes to something totally encompassing. I’ve been listening to this album recently whilst driving around in the autumn colours.

Purple Mountains – Margaritas at the Mall 

It’s so hard to choose a particular David Berman song since there are so many masterpieces. I’ve chosen this one both to change the pace of the mixtape and because I think my song, Sky Lantern, hints at some of the same theological despair that David expresses here. Margaritas at the Mall has that knack, shared with many songs on the Purple Mountains record of being both achingly sad and catchily poppy. Berman almost makes the garish artificial colours of the cocktails drunk at the metaphorical mall sound appealing, which I suppose is part of the point.

 

Assistant picks: Jonathan

Felt – She Lives By The Castle

One of the bits of making music that is a mystery to me is the art of mastering. I’m trying to get my head round the idea of eventually doing it myself, but my attempts have been abject. But happily I also like the mastering stage as an opportunity to pull in the ears of someone you respect. We both opted to use Ben Holton for this single, as Mat’s a huge fan of his work and we both felt he did a great job mastering the last Goodbye Wudaokou LP. But what do you say when you hand over a track for mastering? I didn’t know what I wanted him to do with it, so I just referenced a pair of records that mean a lot to me. This song by the peerless Felt was the first I mentioned. It’s special to me because it does two very specific things. Firstly, it’s intimate and conversational – it feels like Lawrence is whispering directly into your ear, and I wanted Flowers to have that quality. And, secondly, it swings – the second half is so warm, so musical, so instinctive. Imagine being able to do that! We did try.

The Pastels – Night Time Made Us

This is the second song I mentioned. I think it has the same quality as the Felt track; incredible closeness and a sort of night-time, soul-stirring candle-warmth. I’m not religious but this song – and the Felt song – feel religious to me. You couldn’t write a lovelier song than Night Time Made Us. It isn’t possible. The percussive cymbal taps, the soulmusic horns, Stephen’s pensive vocal: “I wanted to steal something that was already mine”. The lyrics… lyrics are better than music, aren’t they? Not a popular view I know. “In the shed of my parent’s house I can always see / The world slowing into me”. Lovely. I live in a pastels-coloured world.

Goodbye Wudaokou – Glimmers

I know that when Mat was making his LP he was listening to a lot of The Rosslyns, a band we both love. But when we were making Flowers I was listening to a lot of Goodbye Wudaokou. I worked very hard personally on Flowers, trying to make sure the words were completely right, with no artifice, and trying to figure out how to sing it in a voice that was mine, so there was absolutely nothing between the words and the (hypothetical) audience. I tracked my progress against the stuff Mat does. I particularly love the way he always includes one line in each song which makes you stop, blink with admiration. On our song, the key line is “First I thought about the flowers that we grew / Then I grasped the intimacy we knew”, which justifies the song in my view. On Glimmers it’s “maybe the loves that constrain us are the ones that save us”. I could name lots of other bands that write beautifully on the subject of love, memories, the past – but none would be as relevant to Flowers as Mat.

The Single:

“Assistant’s song, Flowers, is perfect slice of sunshiny indie pop: glittering guitars, an infectious hook and moving lyrics. Both beautifully bittersweet and highly melodic, it was written during an emotional band retreat in Woodstock in January 2025. It’s about old friends healing, reconnecting, and facing the return to everyday life. Its just over 3-minute running time seems to chart the hope and uncertainty in rejoining those frayed threads of friendship. If Flowers ultimately rejoices in the new dayglow of reconnecting, Sky Lantern, Goodbye Wudaokou’s strikingly intimate offering, is a much more moonlit affair. A poignant rumination on absence and grief delivered in hushed whispers, it’s a melodic pop song at heart, but its sparsely unadorned and its acoustic arrangement prioritises emotional depth and rawness. It is a song Mat wrote about coming to terms with the world moving on as we try to deal with loss and fading memories. It too yearns for reconnection, but its prevailing image of a sky lantern drifting into the night leaves the ultimate result open to interpretation.” 

Flowers/Sky Lantern 7” split single is out now.
Certain Memories and Anything of Us are both out now via Subjangle. Look Here for more information on Goodbye Wudaokou and Here for more information on Assistant.