Affrontare i propri demoni per esorcizzarli, chiudere i conti col passato e ripartire verso orizzonti nuovi. Tale moto interiore, profondo e spesso sofferto, ha un suo tempo necessario, quantificabile solo in relazione al caso specifico ed è spesso legato ad un’urgenza espressiva che usa l’arte in genere e non poche volte la musica nello specifico. Negli ultimi anni spinte da un tale impeto si sono affacciate sulla scena cantautorale due artiste, entrambe inglesi, con molti punti in comune, ma anche tante differenze sia stilistiche che emotive.
The Bird Calls is the musical project of Sam Sodomsky, a writer (a Pitchfork contributor for many years), based in Brooklyn, New York. For a long time, he self-released lots of albums that he recorded at home with just his acoustic guitar and vocals. Since 2022, his approach has expanded and his albums have arrived via Ruination Record Co. Sodomsky released near 40 albums since 2011.His latest, Melody Trail, came out on February 7th, 2025. It features eclectic, colorful production by Ryan Weiner and the sharpest songwriting of Sam’s career. The lyrics are characterized by wry quotations, traces of frontier Americana imagery, and an inimitable cocktail of melancholy, nostalgia, humor, and stone-tablet wisdom about the natural rhythms of self-actualization and disappointment.
Dead Bandit, ghost punk dreams, began as a four-piece but eventually became a long-term project between two musicians, Ellis Swan and James Schimpl. They started making music together in the early ‘90s as teenagers. Now, Ellis lives in Chicago, and James in a small Canadian town in the Okanagan region. Influenced by bands like Fugazi, Slint & Bedhead, they’ve been making music for over 25 years, but it was only in 2021 that they released their first work entitled From The Basement thanks to the Italian label Quindi Records who discovered them almost by chance on SoundCloud. Their sophomore record, Memory Thirteen, was out in 2014. Being a dislocated duo, distance is a factor both in the creation and emotional aspect of their music. Up To Your Waist (that you can listen here on world premiere) is the fourth single from their third album, Dead Bandit, out on March 14th 2025, again via Quindi Records.
Sono molto affezionata a Ethel Cain. Ancora frastornata dal lockdown, nel 2022, passeggiavo nel verde della mia provincia, allora così odiata e che ora, domiciliata a Milano, mi manca terribilmente. Ascoltavo Inbred, e l’avevo appena scoperto. A gennaio 2025 è uscito il nuovo album di Ethel Cain, Perverts, e mi trovo di nuovo a camminare ascoltando Hayden Silas Anhedönia. Sono nove tracce, per ottantanove minuti totali di suoni trascinati, parole distorte, spesso rumori, sovente anche striduli. La prima traccia, Perverts, dura 12 minuti ed è suono puro.
Kristin Daelyn is a folk artist and fingerstyle guitarist from Philadelphia. Her debut album, Gardens & Plantings, was out in 2022. With Beyond the Break, her second full-length (out next February 28, via Orindal Records), her soaring, spectral voice sits higher in the mix, and her lyrics take center stage, incorporating imagery based on her love of poetry and a creative practice that draws from philosophical texts and exploration of the natural world. The songs themselves, Daelyn explains, are often designed to create inhabitable landscapes for the listener, an approach noticeable in the open-ended language of “Longing.” With this newly visceral approach, Daelyn brings to focus her evolution as a guitarist. Focused as much on melody as the texture of her playing, she favors chords that leave suggestive space between each note, dissonance that never quite resolves and adds a tender shadow to her major-key melodies. In the instrumental title track, she plays in collaboration with Dan Knishkowy (Adeline Hotel, Jackie West) on guitar and Danny Black (Good Old War, Gregory Alan Isakov) on pedal steel, resulting in a mood that blends the open-road psychedelia of William Tyler with the dreamy travelogues of Julie Byrne.
Indie Sunset in Rome 