Listen: Biking Standing by Avery Friedman

Having appeared on BlackPlastic.co.uk back in January with her tribute to change and evolution, Flowers Fell, Brooklyn musician Avery Friedman has just unveiled her debut album, New Thing.

Taken from New Thing, Biking Standing is a slow and contemplative piece that resonates with a sense of nostalgia and reflection. Inspired by her struggles with insomnia, Avery describes flashbacks and memories. Describing a bike ride, she sings, ‘I was biking, I was standing, riding up the hill,’ before going on to hint at a deeper connection, ‘July nighttime, they played country, I stood and danced with you’. Avery paints a soft, vulnerable picture of human connection, the potential of romance on the tips of her fingers, as she gently plays guitar.

The song was created in response to Friedman’s experience at a country music show, prompting her to write a song with a simple C to G chord progression. Whilst both the song and the lyrics have a quiet sense to them, Friedman still manages to land a sucker punch of a chorus, as she eases into the song’s gently heart-breaking hook, ‘Don’t you worry about me… I can sleep in my dreams’.

Check out Biking Standing below, and look for New Thing, out now via Audio Antihero.

Listen: I Hate You, I Love You by Christian Alexander

Opening with baggy drums and a pair of crestfallen guitar melodies, Christian Alexander’s new single, I Hate You, I Love You, represents a time of upheaval in the musician’s life. Living in London but having grown up in Preston, England, Alexander found himself making the move back home amid a sense of general anxiety.

Deliberately showing its raw edges, like a fabric, the same signal of authenticity you may find on the inside seam of a pair of heavily worn selvage jeans, Alexander’s single was recorded at home, in the moment. The result is a performance that conveys a need for self release, and a strength of feeling that would be difficult to capture in a more polished environment. As he reaches the song’s chorus, Christian’s voice cracks, emotionally buckling beneath the strain, his truth no longer something objective, and instead a messy confusion of his contradictory feelings.

Alexander’s lo-fi, textural approach has garnered attention from the likes of The Face, Pigeons and Planes, Highsnobiety, Complex, Hypebeast and musicians including BlackPlastic favourite Mura Masa. Describing the experience of creating I Hate You, I Love You, Christian says:

‘I was in an anxious state, a pattern of feeling good and then getting anxious about something. I wrote the guitar and recorded the drums and then had an idea for the melody, but I was too scared to actually write anything. I didn’t want to put myself out there too much, I didn’t want my overthinking to take a hold of what I was writing, so at first I backed away from the idea. Then I thought fuck this. I went back to the studio and I remember not caring, just letting everything out. That’s where this song came from, with the “why do I try, why do I care” line.’

Watch: Dead Clade by HLLLYH

Back in 2008, I had just started working at a digital ad agency on Brick Lane, in London, and I was literally across the road from the East London location of music institution Rough Trade. Every week on music release day, which back in 2008 was Monday*, I would head to Rough Trade. Once there, I would flip through the new releases, listen to what the staff had playing over the shop’s speaker systems, and check out the CD listening posts. Most weeks I probably bought two new albums and, more often than not, these were releases I knew little about.

One of those little mysteries was HLLLYH, from LA outfit The Mae Shi. The group’s thrashy, trashy garage art punk shimmered with candy coloured neon, an energising combo of dirt and bright electricity. In mainstream culture, The Mae Shi’s closest brush with commercial success likely came much later, when HLLLYH’s opening track, Lamb And The Lion, appeared in the underrated Covid-era straight-to-Netflix gem, The Mitchells vs The Machines.

The Mae Shi have been teasing the potential of a new album since 2022, with founding member Tim Byron traversing California as he worked to engage former members and reassemble the band. In time, Jeff Byron came back on board as producer and engineer, as well as singer and guitarist. Ezra Buchla, Brad Breeck, and Corey Fogel also all return. The resulting forthcoming album, URUBURU, which was originally intended to be The Mae Shi’s last, began to feel less like the closing of an old book than the opening of a fresh one.

All of which leads us here, to the release of the new single Dead Clade, not by The Mae Shi, but instead by HLLLYH, which represents a step forwards into something fresh, yet still connected to the group’s past. As a song, Dead Clade is unmistakably the product of the same minds as The Mae Shi, with chunky riffs, Day-Glo melodies and an abundance of chaos and sugar.

It is unclear how representative of the forthcoming album Dead Clade is, and indeed it is the oldest song on the forthcoming album, with origins all the way back in 2009. Regardless, it hints at the fact that HLLYH’s sound has a little less of the overdriven electronic synths of the Mae Shi, with a feel that is just a touch softer in aesthetic. Which is not to say the chaos nor energy are gone — indeed they are here in abundance — they are just filtered through a slightly more naturalistic lens.

I sound my age in writing this, but I’m unashamedly an album person, and I miss the days of prising open compact discs and vinyl, with a sense of excitement at the possibility of what they contained. I’m grateful to have HLLLYH back, even if the medium of delivery lacks the mystery of my physical copy of The Mae Shi’s HLLLYH.

*It moved to Friday in 2015 and, arguably, the release of music took a further step towards irrelevance.

Listen: Oblivious by georgia, georgia

georgia, georgia is the musical pseudonym of Verona-born Italian artist Giorgia Piva. Having developed a passion for music in childhood, Piva is a self-taught musician, and she has just unveiled her new single, Oblivious.

Taking sonic inspiration from Phoebe Bridgers, Piva’s artist name itself is also both a reference to her own name, and Bridgers’ song Georgia, which itself opens with the line ‘Georgia, Georgia, I love your son’. Beyond Bridgers, Piva’s also draws inspiration from a cross-section of artists sitting at the intersection of rock and pop, all exploring a sense of emotional complexity, with influences that include boygenius, Clairo, The 1975, The Strokes, and Fleetwood Mac.

The result, here on Oblivious has all the deflated disappointment of Snail Mail at her best. What affects me the most here, however, is the beautiful fragility of Piva’s vocals, which evoke the stunning performance of the Sundays’ Harriet Wheeler. Despite these influences, georgia, georgia takes these touches of inspiration and combines them into something that sounds entirely her own.

Oblivious is very much a song about the internal experience, with Giorgia unpacking and exploring the process of learning how to work through emotional difficulties through therapy. Discussing the song, she says:

‘There was a moment during my therapy journey when I finally understood the nature of my problems, acquired the tools to face them, and realized what I needed to do to overcome them and grow as a person. But putting everything into practice is not always easy, especially at the beginning of a new relationship, with all the uncertainties and doubts it brings. I tried to appear strong and unshakable, but at the same time, not being known for who I truly am made me feel lonely and misunderstood. It's frustrating to know the right path to take but still find yourself stumbling over the same dysfunctional behaviors. oblivious captures this very feeling: my struggles with communication and facing problems during such a delicate time.’

Listen: Better Man by Egentid

The latest single from Malmö-based indie-folk band Egentid, Better Man opens with a harmonica, atop a gentle foot-tap of a beat and strummed guitar. That rasping cry feels appropriate aged, for a song that is all about the experience of growing, but perhaps also just growing older.

Egentid, which tellingly translates into ‘alone time’ or, perhaps, ‘me time’, formed last year out of meet-ups between dads based around an open preschool (i.e. one where the parents stay) in Limhamn. The impact of parenthood hums through Egentid’s music, and Better Man in particular. Written from the perspective of a new parent, now past 40, it highlights the desire to grow and be better, and how that pursuit benefits the self, and those around you.

Better Man slowly builds towards a swirling chorus of overlapping falsetto vocals. The experience of what it means to be a man changes as you grow, and there is something of my experience wrapped up in the shifting experience of Egentid’s new single.

Better Man follows on from Egentid’s debut single, Call You Back, which was released back in on 6 March, and both come from Sail On, the band’s debut, out on 28 March.