Split single, two A sides from Assistant and Goodbye Wudaokou

By Henry Lipput

 Assistant’s Certain Memories and Goodbye Wudaokou’s Anything Of Us have been two of the most well-received albums of 2025. So it’s not surprising these Subjangle label mates and supporters of each other’s music have decided to combine their talents to each release a brand-new song as part of a (very) limited edition vinyl split single (30 copies total!!) on Bandcamp.

Not many do bittersweet better than Assistant and on their newest song “Flowers” the lyrics of a lost relationship are set against a pop tune.  “When we meet should we choose somewhere neutral/It won’t be fruitful if the memories are brutal/And will we hug or just there, awkwardly?” 

Unlike the Assistant song which imagines an eventual meeting of lovers, the Goodbye Wudaokou track “Sky Lantern” has no such thoughts and makes clear the two sides of the same coin these bands share. The Bandcamp page describes the song as “Intimate, mournful” and I  couldn’t say it better myself. “You only exist in the memory of a kiss/You only exist in the sun-whitened photographs/The ones I still cannot bear to see.”

Big Stir Records doubles down on the scary

By Henry Lipput

 “Are we being recorded?”

Last year the UK’s The Jack Rubies released two songs that fit perfectly with the Halloween spirt we’re celebrating right now. But both “Poltergeist” and “Phantom” were also metaphors for a relationship on the skids.

The band’s latest release, the great sounding “Are We Being Recorded?” (Big Stir Records) is even scarier because it deals with a real threat to more than just a couple of kids on the outs. The surveillance state is tracking our every move and there’s a real menace from hackers trying to get into our phones and computers.  Even the algorithms attached to the streaming services we use to watch our favorite programs and listen to our favorite tunes gather information in order to suggest what we should do next.

“You’re in my home sniffing ‘round/What have you found? Mr. Smith and Jones/Not your real names of course” sings the band’s Ian Smith (if that’s his real name). They go on to demand his real location but they already know and will delete his social media accounts.

Sounds like more trick than treat.

Chilling, Thrilling Hooks and Haunted Harmonies 

Did someone mention “Phantom?”

Chilling, Thrilling Hooks and Haunted Harmonies (Big Stir Records), is a frighteningly terrific new collection of Halloween-related tunes (including a spooky remix of "Phantom") interspersed with spoken-word horror stories presented as if Wolfman Jack was really a werewolf. The collection is a perfect accompaniment for your yearly candy and apple haunted house giveaways or your monthly neighborhood séance. (The collection is available on CD, digital, and a deluxe double LP in a gatefold package that unfolds to reveal a playable board game board.)

Speaking of hooks and harmonies, this Big Stir collection contains 21 tracks from the label’s artists. I could list my favorites but I'll just let the members of The Armoires tell you all about it.

You Needmores? We got mores!

By Henry Lipput

This is rocknroll. It’s a four-piece from Michigan playing both kinds of love songs within an inch of their lives.

SideXSide, the new EP by The Needmores (Lenny Grassa on vocals and guitar, Jason Neckrock on guitar, Jason Bowes on bass, and Eric Klisz on drums) is the follow-up to the debut single “Lookin’” that they gifted to us earlier this year.

And like the best rock and roll there’s both joy and heartbreak. The title song hits the ground running and the joy is non-stop: “Side by side/Anytime with you is fine/When you’re zoomin’ round the room/Singin’ that fine tune/Not sure what you sing/But it shoots me to the moon.”

The coin flips for impending heartbreak on “Let It Ride:” ” Three times you left me waitin’/Two times you stood me up/I’m here anticipating time in the sun/Gonna make it happen/It’s gonna take some time/Then I’m gonna let it ride.” (He thinks he's going to be fine when he breaks up with her but it doesn't really work that way.)

Maia Sharp is a tomboy (and many other things)

By Henry Lipput

Maia Sharp is a tomboy.

But Maia Sharp is also a singer; songwriter; guitarist; producer; sax player; percussionist; and player of keyboards, synths, and Mellotron. And she brings all of these talents to bear (along with friends who join her as co-writers, singers, and musicians) on her new album TOMBOY (maiasharp.com/shop).

“Tomboy,” the first track on the album and the leadoff single, is Sharp’s look back on her early years when what she wore to a party was noticed by others: "I'm the only one here not wearing a dress/They're all Audrey and Grace, I'm doing my best." Upon seeing Sharp "mowing the meridian in my t-shirt tan" a neighbor told Sharp's mother "what a nice young man." As she grew up and become more comfortable with herself Sharp has come to terms with all of this: "Tomboy/Not really this or that/Somewhere in the middle of it/Tomboy/Is it still just a phase when she stays a tomboy."

Some of the thoughts in "Tomboy" have filtered down into the love songs that follow especially the idea "not really this or that/somewhere in the middle of it." These songs provide shifting perspectives on love. For instance in the sad but lovely “A Fool In Love Again,” Sharp sings “I’d drop everything if I knew where and when/I could be a fool in love again/I’d be swept away in my reverie/Every word poetry, every note a symphony.”  

And although the equally lovely “Is That What Loves Does” is slotted earlier in the album’s track listing for me it’s very much the next chapter in the album’s story as it relays the dawning of how a new love makes one feel: “Same house, same street, same skin, same town/Same troubled world spinning around/But nothing’s like it was/Is that what loves does?” Sharp’s vocal is hesitant as if she’s afraid to even acknowledge what’s going on.

But in "Any Other Way" it seems Sharp is still not taking a side one way or another: "And if I find all the answers/It won't matter who's to blame/I'll just roll into forever/Knowing I'll never be the same." 

Which leads directly to the last track on the album, a beautiful, heart-felt cover of U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For."

Pop bliss

By Henry Lipput

Consequences + Detours (Big Stir Records) is the poptastic second album from the Michigan-based Crossword Smiles. And you would expect nothing less from Chip Saam (late of the much-loved and missed band The Hangabouts) and Tom Curliss (of Tom Curliss and The 46% -- of which Saam is a member).

The album kicks off with “Counting By Fives” and “Fall All Over Myself” a pair of pop rock gems. You can just imagine how cool it would be to hear these songs done live (as far as I know Crossword Smiles has only performed twice at the release concerts for their debut album and the new one).

Consequences + Detours is full of the kind of pop bliss and clever lyrics that aren’t often found together but this album has them in spades. For example, “Millicent” (one of my favorite songs on the album) is chock full of clever lyrics that are used to fully tell a story: “You bought a ticket on a plane/I’ll see you when you’re back from Spain/We can start a brand new deal/I don’t know where you went/but the money’s all spent/To what extent is it real?” The song also has a terrific arrangement with both mandolin and accordion up front in the mix.

For me, “Millicent” is in many ways a sequel to “Taking You To Leave Me” from The Hangabouts’ Kits & Cats and Saxon Wives album, a song about airports and leaving on a jet plane. 

“Navigator Heart” was co-written with Greg Addington (also of The Hangabouts and now recording as Suburban Hi Fi) and the vocals have an early Posies feel (before they went all grunge). “Looking for you/With my navigator heart/Still got a map/But I don’t know where to start.” Another favorite is “Girls Club” one of the many story songs on Consequences + Detours that recall the lyrical work of Ray Davies and Paul McCartney.

“Kismet” is a gorgeous straight-on love song about infatuation at first kiss and is the kind of pop classic written in the ‘60s. The essence of the song compares the feeling of a new love to the feeling that it was meant to be. “I know you go by something different/but for now I call you Kismet.”

“stay close by,” the first single from Tamar Berk’s new album ocd, is reviewed and there’s a video too

By Henry Lipput

ocd is Tamar Berk’s fifth album in five years and like her other four albums this one is self-released. It's out on September 5^th and available to preorder here.

According to Berk, the new album feels like her most personal and intense yet. “It’s raw, loud, messy, sometimes funny, sometimes devastating – just like my mind," she has said. “I called it ocd because I live in loops and overthink everything, but writing these songs helped me make a little sense out of that.”

The first single, and the first track on the album, “stay close by,” explores the idea of all the things we say we’ll do, things we think about but never quite get around to. And for me the fuzz that permeates its sound reflects the inability to move on, to even, as she sings in the song, do the most basic things like “get high” or “go for a ride.”  Lyrically and sonically the song gives on the feeling of being overcome by one’s world. "Stay close," she's singing, as she implores a friend to help her through difficult times.

The video gives an answer of sorts as it's the being out in the world and listening and playing music that gives her the ability to go on. And isn't it music that helps us to get through the fuzz and the brain clouds and helps us to go on? 

New Single and Video From Scotland's The Cords

 By Henry Lipput

Unless my ears have betrayed me "The Fabulist," the new single by the excellent indie pop band The Cords, is just as good as the hype.

The Cords are from Scotland and comprised of sisters Eva (guitars) and Grace (drums) Tedeschi. After releasing a cassette and a flexi-disc their self-titled debut album will be out on September 26th as a co-release from Skep Wax in the UK and Europe and Slumberland Records in America.

"The Fabulist" is the album's lead-off track and its first single. The band's take-no prisoners sound and the lyric's take-no-crap from boyfriends recalls the '90s work of Juliana Hatfield with Blake Babies and her solo work (especially Sunburn and Hey Babe). 

And there's a video!!

Two from Tapete Records

By Henry Lipput

The latest solo album by Robert Forster and the debut album by  Britain's returning, reunited The Loft are recent releases from Germany’s Tapete Records that have caught my ears.

Robert Forster, Strawberries

As a member of the great band The Go-Betweens as well as his solo work Robert Forster has been known for his story songs. His “Born To A Family” on 2004’s Oceans Apart, the final Go-Betweens album, is a perfect example.  His albums since then have also included “Life Has Turned A Page” from 2019’s Inferno and “When I Was A Young Man” on 2023’s The Candle And The Flame.

On his new album Strawberries, “Tell It Back To Me” is a tale about two very different people getting together and over the years finding it difficult to continue to be a couple. “Breakfast On The Train” is unique in that it begins with an ending and then circles back with a story about a chance meeting at a rugby game when he remembers her from school and a night of love making that causes a family in the hotel room next door to complain about the noise. It’s a lovely, melancholy song and one of Forster’s best.  

The title song, “Strawberries," is a delightful duet between Forster and his wife and musical partner Karin Baumler especially because before the recording of the album The Candle And The Flame she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Although he was able to quickly record that album the result was a collection of songs that were literate and heartfelt with an underlying feeling of sadness throughout. So it’s wonderful to hear them have fun singing about a suddenly empty bowl of fruit while recognizing “it took time to recover/from the edge of the night.”

“Diamonds” is a departure in the sort of arrangement Forster has set for his songs with a free jazz interlude and shouted lyrics. Beginning with a riff that recalls “For What It’s Worth” by Buffalo Springfield, he sings “She put diamonds in my eyes/Changed the way I saw life.” What follows could be seen and heard as a strong declaration of his love or a cry of despair for the loss of that love. The sax follows a similar route with a lovely melody that turns into an angry, confused blast.

The Loft, Everything Changes Everything Stays The Same

For a band on the fabled Creation Records label in the 1980s that broke up in the middle of a song during a concert, The Loft has been very busy recently. After performing at the Glas-Goes Pop Festival last year they were invited to record a BBC session for the Riley & Coe show (released on vinyl by Precious Recordings of London who also put out a single with “Dr. Clarke” and “Got A Job,” a non-album B-side).

Now the original band members Peter Astor (guitar and vocals). Andy Strickland (guitar), Bill Prince (bass), and Dave Morgan (drums) have reunited and recorded their debut album Everything Changes Everything Stays The Same. “The Loft has always been just the four of us,” said Strickland, “and it’s a real thrill to be writing and recording and playing across the UK with the band again.”

You can hear this renewed focus on playing together on each of the songs on the new album.  The band has a clean, crisp sound that recalls four-piece bands in the mid-Sixties as well as the Britpop sounds of the 90s.

Despite being upbeat, the protagonist of the opening track “Feel Good Now” can’t wait for that feeling so just wants to start drinking now. A similar disconnect between the lyrics and the playing is on “Killer” with its dark message but a lovely guitar solo.

The mid-Sixties sound is most evident on “Dr. Clarke” with a lyric and guitar that recalls another song about another physician on a certain Revolver album.

The beautiful “Greensward Days” has the looking-back feel of a Ray Davies song from The Village Green Preservation Society or the opening songs of Preservation Act 1.

Poetry and Pop

By Henry Lipput

Being a writer can be a lonely business. Whether you sit at a desk in a fancy side room in a house or with a pad on your lap in a garret, you’re by yourself as you work to find the right words.

Brian Bilston may have started out in one of those situations but he’s now one of the most popular poets in England with half a million followers on social media, a bunch of best-selling books, and sold-out live shows.

But for all his success he’s never fronted a pop band. Until now. Word reached Rob Pursey and Amelia Fletcher of The Catenary Wires band (who also run the Skep Wax label) that Bilston had been seen wearing a Heavenly (also a Skep Wax band) T- shirt and they got in touch.

The result is Sounds Made By Humans (Skep Wax), a unique collaboration between the poet’s own voice and the pop sounds of a band to produce an album of “song-poems.” Pursey selected thirteen of Bilston’s poems and created melodies and arrangements.

Some of the songs are performed by The Catenary Wires, sung by Pursey or Fletcher and joined by Ian Button and Fay Hallam of the band.

Some of the tracks are spoken by Bilston.

And sometimes both things happen together and become songs by humans in perfect alignment, poetry and pop in a perfect collaboration.

Joy to the World! Like The First Time by The Bablers is reviewed and front man Arto Tamminen answers the Pure Pop Phive

By Henry Lipput

25 years ago The Bablers released their album Like The First Time – but only in Japan and Finland, their native country. After that the album, for all intents and purposes, disappeared.

But a few years ago their current label, the California-based Big Stir Records, has been releasing singles from Like The First Time which was only whetting the appetites of power pop devotees as to whether the entire album would be made available at a future date.

That time is now. Joy to the world!

For the first time Like The First Time (Big Stir Records) is out now for the whole world to enjoy. If, like me, prior to the album’s release you’ve only heard the great power pop bangers (like the opening track “You Are The One For Me” ) you’re really in for a treat because the ballads are just as good – and all together make the whole album a terrific listen. And although the Big Stir release has a new track listing and new mixes and arrangements we’re not dealing with what Capitol records did to The Beatles albums pre-Pepper – this is the album The Bablers want us to hear and the way they want us to hear it.

The album’s power pop rave ups are the sounds The Bablers have developed since they got together in the 1970s. Songs like “You Are The One For Me,” the Peter Gunn-with-a-bullet of “Thinking Of You,” and “Holding Me Tight Tonight” all show the band working at full steam.

On the wonderful ballads the band’s influences show but none of this takes away from what The Bablers have done with them. “Together Forever” recalls solo McCartney while The Bablers channel solo Lennon with “In This World.”

The Bablers’ Arto Tamminen answers the Pure Pop Phive

How would you describe your music?

Pop with a rock attitude… or as our slogan says: “The best possible organic pop music. No artificial ingredients.” We use no samples, no autotune – no artificial ingredients!

What/who are your major influences?

Each member of the band has different preferences. I was born and raised in a family where music was everywhere. Everyone played an instrument or sang in a choir.

My first influences were classical – from Sibelius (the Finnish composer) to Bach, Mozart, and the rest of those guys. I remember we had "go-to-sleep music" when we were very young, and I still remember falling asleep to those beautiful classical pieces. I started playing the cello when I was six, and it has stayed with me ever since – you can hear it on our new album, on tracks like “Where The Wind Blows Free.” So classical music is a big one!

Then came jazz, fusion, progressive rock, folk-rock, Irish folk, and all that British Invasion stuff – plus Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Wonder. I got into those through my older brothers, who had about 1000 vinyl records in our "music room," where we had a drum kit, a Vox AC30, a Gibson SG, acoustic guitars… and my mother’s piano, which I still use in our recordings!

Do you perform live? Do you have any upcoming gigs?

Not at the moment. But you never know! If something interesting comes up, we’re open to hitting the road. For live shows, we’d need a fifth member – a multi-instrumentalist – to make it possible to play all the tracks from Psychadilly Circus and Like The First Time. In some arrangements, four guys just don’t have enough hands. 😊

Everyone's pretty busy playing with other bands and working on recordings. Janne, our drummer, and Pekka, our bassist/keyboardist, are on the list of the top 10 most recorded musicians in Finland – and they’re constantly touring with top Finnish artists, so they’re really in demand! Hannu now works full-time in a recording studio. He also used to do a lot of touring and producing – which he still does.

Nevertheless - this is a secret - we are working on new Bablers material.

How do you support yourself so you can continue to make music?

I’m the only one with an "honest day job" at the moment. The others work with music 24/7. I used to be a full-time musician for almost eight years, but lately I’ve been working as a director at a copyright licensing agency.

What's your favorite album of all time  (that's not one of yours)?

I’ve never really thought about that. But if I had to choose right now, I’d pick Mstislav Rostropovich’s recording of J.S. Bach’s six suites for solo cello. It has everything!

Ticking Haze, the debut album from Shapes Like People, is reviewed and Kat and Carl Mann answer the Pure Pop Phive

By Henry Lipput

Ticking Haze (Jangleshop Records), the debut album from Shapes Like People, is rich with melodies, full of yearnings for love and a better life, and the offerings of a hand of support to lovers and friends.

It’s appropriate that Ticking Haze begins with the song “Ambition Is Your Friend” with the lines “Don’t punish me for trying/Ambition is your friend” because Carl Mann, one half of the husband-and-wife duo that makes up Shapes Like People, is one of the most ambitious people I know of in the indie music industry. He began work on Ticking Haze after two years of work on last year’s Daysdream, a two LP, 16 song collection (and one of the best albums of 2024) from his other band The Shop Window (he sang lead vocals and played lead guitar, keyboard, and percussion and he also produced the whole thing).

Carl began writing song to pitch to other singers and asked his wife Kat, who works in the film industry, to provide female vocals so he could hear what it sounded like (Kat is no stranger to singing as she provided backing vocals to three of Carl’s songs on Daysdream). He decided to keep her vocals and went to work writing more songs for what would eventually become Ticking Haze.

With jangle-meister Carl at the helm and Kat’s double-tracked vocals on songs like the new pop classic “When The Radio Plays” Shapes Like People have a tendency to sound like Kirsty Maccoll covering a Smiths song.

Although “When The Radio Plays” and “A New Crown” are not set along side each other on the album’s track listing they are two sides of the same look at life in a city. In “When The Radio Plays” a woman watches the missed buses go by in the same way she has missed opportunities to find love. In the gentle “A New Crown” this woman has also dealt with buses but in a different way: “I’ve done time in the city smoke/Had to leave before I choked” and decides to leave for a life in the country with its “shade from an old chestnut tree’ and “blissful scenes with natural stone.”

Other highlights on Ticking Haze include the beautiful, hopeful “Weathering” with lyrics that work as life lessons and conjure up “weathering the storm” and “taking the breaks off.” And on the upbeat, alt-Country tune “The Ship Has Sailed” I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Kat and Carl were wearing Stetsons during the recording.

Kat and Carl answer the Pure Pop Phive

How would you describe your music?

Carl: It has elements of all the music we love - Janglepop, Dreampop, Shoegaze, Indiepop, and some have described it as having Folky vibes here and there. 

Kat: When we make music we’re not really thinking about genre, we’re just trying to create something we love the sound of. 

What/who are your major influences?

Carl: When we first started recording demos we’d sit and listen to all the albums and artists we both loved. We mainly focused on female-fronted acts to think about where we might want to take it.  

Kat: Here are some that we both love and may have inspired us - Alvvays, Sol Seppy, Agnes Obel, Weyes Blood, Lee & Nancy, Johnny & June, Isobel & Mark, Eurythmics, Carpenters, Jenny Lewis, Mazzy Star, The Sundays, Cocteau Twins. 

Do you perform live? Do you have any upcoming gigs?

Kat: At the moment we don’t have any plans to play live, but we’ll never say never.

Carl: Life doesn't provide us with much space for gigging, but it would be a joy to perform these songs. If we ever get around to it hopefully The Shop Window gents would step up and provide us with the band. 

How do you support yourself so you can continue to make music?

Kat: I work full time in the film industry, while Carl is focused on music and running the label. 

Carl: We’re about to start offering production, mixing, mastering, writing/collaborations and session guitar services through Jangleshop Records, so we’re in a little period of development before opening the books up. 

What’s your favorite album of all time (that's not one of yours)?

Carl: There are so many, but if we had to pick one album that is really special to both of us it would be It’s a Wonderful Life by Sparklehorse. 

Kat: Carl introduced me to this record when we first met, and all these years later we still listen to it. We instantly get transported back to that time. Plus, it’s just an incredibly beautiful album.

 

A Second Look, A Second Listen

By Henry Lipput

Certain Memories (Subjangle) by the UK band Assistant is their first album since The World Could Be So Much Fun in 2022 (there were three albums before that one all of which are also available from Subjangle).

The band for Certain Memories is made up of three members who have been onboard for all four albums: Jonathan Shipley (vocals and guitars), Peter Simmons (vocals and guitars), and Anne Sophie-Marsh (keyboards and vocals). Together this threesome makes a lovely, delicate, jangly sound that belies the darkness of some of the lyrics. It’s best described as a small group of friends recording in a small room making sure they don’t bother the elderly couple in the bedsit next door (except for the burst of fuzz guitar at the end of “My Phone Began To Ring”).

Certain Memories isn’t really a concept album but the major themes are the illness and death of a parent (Shipley’s mother) and how one gets through it. The album begins with “My Phone Began To Ring” with the lyrics relating a diagnosis no one wants to hear: “They said you couldn’t treat it with anything/That’s just life, that’s just death.”

“Song For Jill” fits in between “My Phone Began To Ring” and the following song “Jill Is Fading.” After a stint in the hospital, Shipley tells his mother “Mum, I know you’re on the mend/I hope you’re feeling better.” But on “Jill Is Fading” the joy of Shipley's recent nuptials knocks heads with the death of his mother: “This was supposed to be our year/And she’s fading, there’s no explaining/it’s amazing, Jill is fading/And the pain is appalling/No amount of warning/Can prepare.” Helen McCookerybook, a friend of the band, provides vocals and plays melodica to, as the album notes say, “lend warmth and joy to a devastating topic.” (The mix on the Certain Memories is by McCookerybook and another mix of the song by Tom O’Leary, another friend of the band, is available on the Assistant Bandcamp page.)

Sophie-Marsh takes the lead on three songs that are dotted throughout the album: “Overwhelming,” “Before And After You,” and “Tread.” “Before And After You” has an acoustic guitar, a treated French vocal, and a beat that recalls Massive Attack. “Tread” may be about someone missing in her life, another tenant in her building, or a ghostly visitor who leaves “A print in the dust/At the edge of my mirror.”

But it’s “Overwhelming” that provides a connection to the rest of the album as it’s a different take on a partner’s loss and their attempt to get through the day, day by day. Sophie-Marsh sings most of the lyrics but Shipley joins in for “I don’t know what I’m going to do/But I’m glad I have you.”

Simmons sings “Raking Leaves” about the joys (and perhaps boredom and frustration) of gardening and seasonal duties. “I’ve been raking leaves/Ever since November/Just raking leaves/Goes on forever.” But when he sings “I don’t know what I’m doing it for/Is it just a metaphor/Or just a chore” it’s hard not to think of the line from “My Phone Began To Ring:” “You get so sick of tests and trials/When no one says anything good.”

“I’m So Much Better” is in the middle of the album but might have fit better to close it as the song provides a positive look at where Shipley might be as time goes on. Dreaming of an earlier time in his life, “at the edge of waking up/I felt the earth beneath/I had to smile and stick around a while.” Throughout the song he repeats the line “Won’t you come and hang around with me?” which can be seen as an invitation to his family but also to the listener.

Why is this post called A Second Look, A Second Listen? A few days after Certain Memories was announced back in December with a release date of January  (and as with most Subjangle releases the entire track listing was available) I wrote a short appreciation of the album (called Sadly Beautiful after the Replacements song) and said it was “an early entry for one of the best albums of 2025.” Well here it is April 2025 and as far as I’m concerned it is officially one of the best albums of 2025.

The Pure Pop Singles Club 2025 Edition #1

By Henry Lipput

I have a bunch of new albums on my list to review but I thought I'd start things a bit slower this year with a look at three recent singles that have caught my ears.

"Lookin'", The Needmores (Bandcamp)

Michigan's The Needmores released "Lookin," their debut single, last month (it's a free download on Bandcamp). In an email announcing the song's release Lenny Grassa (guitar and vocals) said "I’m not going to bore you who we kinda sound like or who we were influenced by. I’m sure that can be figured out by listening to the song." But don't bother just listen to this really cool track. (P.S. The Needmores are touring as the support act for Jeremy Porter and the Tucos so catch them live if you can.)

"She Looks Good In Black," Chris Church (Big Stir Records)

Chris Church's "She Looks Good In Black" is the first single from his new album Obsolete Path (out on March 28th also from Big Stir and when you get it -- and you really should -- you'll also get to hear 11 other terrific tracks including "I Don't Want To Be There").  The song has a melancholy country rock feel as Church's narrator gets his heart broken by a real-life goth girl who goes off to see a Satanic band. It's not just the music but the whole life style she's bought into and when he says "she's never coming back again" it may not be the girl he fell in love with that shows up.

"The Whole Endeavor," Push Puppets (Bandcamp)

"The Whole Endeavor" is the second single from the Chicago five-piece Push Puppets. Their new album Tethered Together is going to be released on May 16th and will also feature their first single "All Together On 3." Both singles are sad pop gems and "The Whole Endeavor" (the great leap forward in beginning a relationship) seems to be a combination of "Some Enchanted Evening" and/or a tale of two ships that pass in the night (and the line "Stray dog lying in a dumpster fire in an apartment" deserves some Walrus-like strings although there's a neat synth run right before it).