Listen: Impressions — Couch Prints

Impressions is the latest release from Couch Prints, an electronic synth-pop trio based in New York made up of Jayanna Roberts, Brandon Ton and Jacob Traux.

The vibe on Impressions is similar to the (now sadly defunct) Chromatics. In the verse in particular, there is a heavy David Lynch vibe — Roberts’ angelic, haunting vocal harmonies shimmer above the song’s instrumentation. With recording and production provided by Jake Aron, who has worked with both Solange and Snail Mail, the overall feeling here is one of understated brilliance.

With a somewhat threatening undertone, Impressions is a song about fear and about love, and the relationship between them. Every so often, the experience of falling in love is one of losing a part of yourself, and of losing a sense of control. Here, Couch Prints depict that experience, coupled with the desire of “wanting to slam the door before it opens”. Check it out below:

Listen: Déjà Vu — Ben Leit

Ben Leit’s Déjà Vu bubbles with a crisp, energetic buoyancy that gives me the urge to dance in public with my headphones on. It has an introspective feeling, but couples that with an extroverted energy — like the joke that no-one hears but you, leading you to laugh out loud in a room of straight faces.

Leit is a 22-year-old musician, a dabbler with a love for the very notion of variety, learning and experience. Ben began his musical journey from the point his father introduced him to Thelonious Monk, one of my all-time favourites, and the rest is history.

The eclectic taste enjoyed by Ben leads us to the kind of music we have here, on Déjà Vu. It is pop, it is soul, it is polished. And yet what it is not, is varnished. Because, yes, there is a difference: one is a deeper layer of abstraction, and Ben is right here, real and human and on the surface of this music, smoothing.

Déjà Vu is a love song, but it’s also a tribute to the feeling that both life and love tend to be cyclical… It can feel new, even whilst we know we have been here before.

Listen: Cold And Grey — Tuff Ghost

Cold And Grey is the new release from Californian native musician Tuff Ghost.

Tuff Ghost, real name Lena Brown, is a DJ, producer and vocalist. When not on tour with her band Foxy Panic, Brown spends time making music in her Echo Park studio.

Intended as a meditative listen and a psychedelic journey, Cold And Grey straddles the line between a downbeat slice of blissed out electronic pop and dark introspective experimental electronica. Brown’s vocals are reflective and earthy, but the distorted synths in the song’s bridge and chorus have an otherworldly, alien feel.

As referenced in the song’s lyrics, Cold And Grey is about that liminal state as we wake up, when you are neither fully awake and of this world, nor asleep. Depending on your prior dream state, that experience can manifest in many experiences and feelings, as Brown describes:

“Waking up from my dreams and discovering that I have a physical form can be anywhere from quite startling, to depressing, to a great relief. This song is for anyone who often feels themselves wavering between these different realities.”

Check out Cold And Grey below:

Listen: Laid — SINK

Crystalline and fractured, Laid basks in its own brittle sensitivity. Haunting vocals meld with electronics to create something that sound like a thick soup of FKA Twigs, Flume, and Apparat. The production glitters with detail, embellishing SINK’s vocal to create an emotive sound, and it conveys a depth and scale to the alienation SINK depicts, as the artist describes:

“I wrote this song when I was still in north Italy, when my music didn’t seem to have a purpose for me any more as I was feeling unheard, and I hope this will help others not to feel the same.”

I regularly find myself reflecting on the role time plays in our lives — how all our drama and anxiety stems from time… The finite scope of our experience, the inability to experience anything beyond the slim sliver of time we label the present, the subjectivity of the past, the unknowability of the future. Time is our constant and universal truth, and our overarching constraint. After listening to Laid, I was interested to hear how central time was to the song:

“Laid is about our relationship with time and the way we experience connections, goals, and anxieties. Perhaps time is our most ancient enemy and the social media reshaped it for us. It’s an intrusion, a violation.”

Check out Laid below:

Listen: Change My Mind — Anna Shoemaker

With the kind of stripped-back and vulnerable sound that I find irresistible, Brooklyn-based mucin Anna Shoemaker’s new single Change My Mind glitters with an incandescent earthiness.

Anna’s verse quivers with a human intensity — her vocal enveloped in space, as a guitar is plays gently, the squeal of fingers sliding up-and-down the fretboard almost elevated to the point of being their own instrument. With the chorus, however, Shoemaker’s vocal soars, a previously unexpected gutsiness flooding that space. Guitars take on a more aggressive stance, the folksiness of Change My Mind’s verse suddenly developing a grungy feel.

Anna originally gained attention for No Lie, Bitch Don't Kill My Cocoa Butter Kisses, her cover version mashup of Kendrick Lamar’s Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe, Chance The Rapper’s Cocoa Butter Kisses, Drake’s Girls Love Beyonce & Destiny's Chid's Say My Name. Since then, she has released two EPs, East Side and Everything Is Embarrassing, received support from Refinery29 and Billboard, and been featured by Spotify and Apple Music.

Despite her origin in that creative mashup, Anna Shoemaker has created a song that feels fascinating and surprising, yet free of gimmicks. Change My Mind is the third song to be lifted from her forthcoming debut album, due in 2022, and depicts a growing maturity and emotional intimacy. Describing the song, Anna says,

“It’s about being hopeful while also accepting and welcoming your emotions as they come. Writing this song really changed a lot for me.”

Check out Change My Mind below, and look out for Anna Shoemaker’s debut album next year.