Smith & Cohen – Half Life (track by track)

Over almost three decades of collaboration, Karl Smith and Pete Cohen have continued to move through the seasons of life with the same quiet grace that has always shaped their music. From their days as Sodastream -an emblem of intimate, melancholic acoustic pop- to the present, the duo has learned to balance family, work, and creative urgency without ever losing their instinct for honest songwriting. Returning now as Smith & Cohen, they offer Half Life: an album that feels like a patient reflection on time passing, on growing older, and on the fragile value of everyday things. Letting go of the Sodastream name was not a rupture but a natural evolution -an act of awareness by two musicians who have always dared to sing their truth. And while the hallmarks of their sound remain -the warm double bass, the understated guitar, the soft melancholy woven through every line- the music here breathes differently. It is more spacious, more open, shaped by fewer collaborators and by the silences and distances that life inevitably introduces.

Continua a leggere

Sunlit – Beside (single and video premiere)

Sunlit

SUNLIT is the latest and most intimate incarnation of British songwriter and producer Joe Moore, a musician whose prolific output for Elefant Records since 2011 has traversed chamber pop, Italo disco, electronic pop, French 80s revivalism, and more. After over a decade of building worlds for other voices—The Yearning, Lia Pamina, Maddie Mae, Cristina Quesada, Julie Et Joe, The Perfect Kiss—Moore focused on a project in which he takes on everything himself, from composition to production to vocals. Launched just two years ago, SUNLIT revealed Moore at his most personal and unguarded. Where The Yearning leaned toward lush, ornate arrangements, SUNLIT moves with an austere elegance: dream-pop textures, shoegaze haze, folk-pop warmth, and crooner-like intimacy. Influences drift in from Cocteau Twins to Mazzy Star, from Lee Hazlewood to Beach House, but the emotional voltage is unmistakably Moore’s. In SUNLIT, Moore bares himself musically and emotionally more than ever before. His voice steps into the foreground, unadorned and honest, carrying songs that seem written for our inner worlds—for those private, infinite spaces we all drift through. SUNLIT is simplicity, radiance, and vulnerability woven into one: Joe Moore entering a new territory, and illuminating it from within. Today, TRISTE© presents the premiere of SUNLIT’s new single, Beside, ahead of its official release everywhere tomorrow. The track introduces the upcoming 2026 album with a striking sense of clarity and emotional radiance. Beside unfolds through reverberating tambourines, glistening arpeggios, and airy atmospheres that feel both weightless and profoundly human. What once was introspective in Joe Moore’s writing now shines outward—choruses that brighten the room, melodies that move like a slow-motion embrace. It’s a song of quiet liberation, capturing the fullness that emerges from emotional understanding and the tenderness of finally seeing oneself whole.

Continua a leggere

iiis – Chair (single and video premiere)

Arms / Chairs

Oxford-based slow-core trio iiis (pronounced ‘eyes’) are Hannah Bruce (they/any) bass, Paul Allen (he/him) guitars/vocals, Helen Pearson (she/her) drums/vocals. Formed in 2024, in Oxford UK, iiis have set about creating music that takes its time, often finding immersion in melodies that develop slowly, with Harmonies that weave in and out of each other and sounds that fray at the edges. Their debut EP, Slow Riot, was released in October 2024. The song Slow Riot was included on a compilation to celebrate 20 years of the magazine Joyzine. They have played shows throughout the UK, with notable support slots for Adwaith, Lewsberg and Nap Eyes. With a heavy emphasis on DIY, this latest release was recorded and produced by the band, creating tension and atmosphere in slow, heavy, intricate washes that rise and fall. Arms, the first song from the double A side, was released in September 2025 and Chairs, the second song, is due for release on the 5th of December 2025.
Gliding gently yet decisively between shoegaze and slowcore atmospheres, their songs feel as if Galaxie 500 and Low had met in southeastern England for a jam session.
You can listen to Chairs, the second track from their new double A-side single, in its world-premiere debut here. Play loud for full effect!

Continua a leggere

Vetchinsky Settings – In The Evening Light (single and video premiere)

In the Evening Light (video still)

Vetchinsky Settings is the quiet meeting point between two longtime maestros of British indie pop: James Hackett, the unmistakable voice of The Orchids, and Mark Tranmer, the composer behind GNAC and half of The Montgolfier Brothers. Together, they build songs like small, perfectly-kept rooms -soft light through thin curtains, dust drifting, memories laid out carefully on the table. Their album Underneath the Stars, Still Waiting (2019) unfolds like a film that never raises its voice. Divided into four movements – birth, love, grief, and death – it sketches a life in miniature, lingering on the pauses between events rather than the events themselves. Hackett sings with the tenderness of someone opening a letter kept too long in a drawer, while Tranmer’s arrangements glide with the calm, deliberate grace of late-evening streets after the rain. There’s a sense, throughout, of time slowing down: melodies that seem to hesitate before resolving, pianos that wander like thoughts half-remembered, strings that appear only when absolutely necessary. Nothing is rushed; nothing is overstated. The duo carries forward the tradition of melancholic British chamber-pop, but with a cinematic poise that feels both intimate and expansive. Vetchinsky Settings created a magnificent album that draws heavily from their respective bands’ work, offering languid ballads and dreamy, melancholic piano passages, sparkling and inspired pop melodies, and restrained, refined arrangements. A nostalgic vision of life that is neither meant to be consolatory nor cynical. Like life, indeed. Now they’re back with a glorious new single, In The Evening Light, which will be released tomorrow, November 28th. We’re honoured, though, to have it on world premiere here with the magnificent video made by Isobel Blank!

Continua a leggere

(Make Me A) TRISTE© Mixtape Episode 236: Joel Cusumano

Joel Cusumano (©Corey Poluk)

Joel Cusumano is an Oakland, CA based singer/songwriter/guitarist. A member of numerous Bay Area bands since 2009, Cusumano has touched on musical styles ranging from power pop to post-punk in bands such as R.E. Seraphin, Body Double, Sob Stories, and Cocktails.  In high school, he cut his teeth by teaching himself Elvis Costello chords and Jimmy Page riffs in his bedroom on his $100 Crate brand Stratocaster knockoff guitar. In college, Cusumano’s first band MSO worshipped power poppers such as The Exploding Hearts and Cheap Trick, and they were known as much locally for their ridiculous antics as for their music. Since those heady days, in addition to honing his writing, arranging, and guitar playing skills in various Bay Area groups, he’s sobered up, diversified his taste profile (he cites Franco Battiato, Magazine, and Yes as spiritual influences as much as the expected indie rock his music evokes), and of late crossed an ocean of regret, heartbreak, and alienation that informed his debut solo album Waxworld. The album is haunted by the ghosts of history (Cusumano demonstrates a keen knowledge of classical and Biblical references) and his own personal struggles, which included a trip in recent years to a mental hospital. But relax, it’s not a slog; Waxworld is classic pop/rock inspired by the songs below as well as other jangle pop/college rock faves such as Guided by Voices, Teenage Fanclub, and The Replacements. Anyway it’s easier to listen to his music than to explain it! Waxworld was released in October by Dandy Boy Records.

Continua a leggere