Steven Wilson – The Overview
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Album Review: Black Foxxes – The Haar
Spotlight!: Fiona-Lee
Navigating that transitional period from your teenage years into adulthood comes with a lot of upheaval and uncertainty. There’s a million and one stupid mistakes we’d love to take back, painful encounters we long to forget, inner voices we’d love to silence, and moments where we felt completely lost and out of our depth. All this metamorphosis comes at a time in our lives when our emotions burn at their brightest. Loving deeper, grieving harder, our anxiety at its most paralyzing; all of it swirling around at once. With it being such a pivotal time in shaping who we are as people, emotions which are felt this fiercely deserve to be expressed with the same level of passion. All across her debut EP, Yorkshire singer/songwriter Fiona-Lee finds strength in vulnerability. The candour of her lyricism confronting insecurities out in the open to rob them of their power, her voice resonating with meaning across moments of tenderness, ferocity and everything inbetween. Continue reading
Top Tracks: Rationale – The Beginning
The foundation this site was built on is the joy of finding something new. Feeling a spark of excitement upon hearing a great song for the first time, like a door opening to a whole new world, and needing to share that sensation far and wide. Yet one of the pillars building off of that ideal draws on an experience just as potent as new discovery – the joy of re-discovering something you loved. When a great artist has been away on hiatus for a while, or their recent work has slipped your radar while you’ve been listening to other things, and suddenly you find yourself listening to them again and reliving all the past highs their music once brought you. Belwood favourite Rationale has had a fairly quiet few years since his self-titled 2017 debut, but ‘The Beginning’ feels like the perfect jumping on point for discovery and rediscovery alike. It’s awakened the place in my heart where my love for tracks like ‘Fuel To The Fire’ and ‘Prodigal Son’ has been lying dormant. Triumphant and bombastic, fusing soaring vocals, an earworm melody, and striking self-directed visuals, ‘The Beginning’ hypes you up to the level where you feel like you could take on the whole world. If this is indeed just the beginning, then consider me fully on board for whatever comes next.
Top Tracks: Eva James – Something New
The first step towards breaking out of a vicious cycle – whether that’s the burden of generational trauma, a string of toxic relationships, or even just our own self-defeating mentality – is being able to recognise it. The second, far more difficult step, is having the strength of will to make a change. These patterns repeat when left to their own devices; it’s only through finding the drive to put in the hard work, and nurturing the notion that you deserve better, that we’re able to turn things around. Combining an undeniable groove with warm and tender harmonies, in way that gives off a mountain of Maggie Rogers vibes, New England native Eva James lays out her own journey to find that confidence and inner strength with her new single ‘Something New’. This melodic musing on self-worth, showcasing her introspective and expressive songwriting style, is a promising taste of what’s to come, with her debut album Earth to Eva set to release later this year.
Top Tracks: Black Country, New Road – Happy Birthday
If there’s one sure fire way to win my heart – and earn a spot on my best videos list – it’s through stop motion animation. I just adore the tactile, tangible nature to it. The sheer amount of effort and dedication that goes into every frame. In an age of instant gratification, there’s something endearing about a craft that has so much time and consideration invested in it. The charmingly spooky video for ‘Happy Birthday’, which weaves a tale of two bird folk trying to escape a pair of hunters, offers a prime example. Intricate, meticulous, outlandish, beautiful, a little dark but otherwise full of heart – sounds like a perfect fit for Black Country, New Road. The track itself, a taster of their forthcoming album Forever Howlong out 4th April, feels like the band properly finding their footing again after the departure of Isaac Wood. Tyler Hyde’s vocals are bright and assured, Lewis Evans’ soaring sax more rousing than ever, all interwoven with an undercurrent of progressive folk that leaves me excited to hear what the rest of BCNR’s new record has in store.
Top Tracks: Kelcey Ayer – Different Planets
Walking a line between affecting ethereal beauty and a strange, eerie atmosphere, ‘Different Planets’ has a fittingly otherworldly feel. This solo outing from Kelcey Ayer, of Local Natives and Jaws of Love fame, fuses lush folk, electronic flourishes and hypnotic harmonies in such a unique and curious way. Penned for his newborn son on a baby blue ukulele gifted to him, the track finds a gorgeous dreamlike quality existing alongside something alien and uncanny – the latter aided by the surreal self-directed video which sees Ayer pursued and tormented by a figure in a wolf mask. The journey from a few notes on a child’s ukulele, to a track this deep and haunting, is a truly impressive feat of imagination and creativity. What’s more, somewhere wrapped up in all this, intentionally or subconsciously, lies a fitting metaphor for fatherhood. The euphoric sense of wonder that comes with welcoming new life into the world, and the unsettling realisation of all the responsibility that this new reality brings.
Album Review: The Lumineers – Automatic
Top Tracks: Hannah Grace – Try
Sometimes it’s all too easy to get swept up in “what-ifs”. The idea that there could have been a wholly different version of me, leading some richer life, had I not been so paralysed by anxiety. In being too shy to talk to a stranger did I miss out on meeting my new best friend? What remarkable opportunities passed by simply because I didn’t have the confidence to put myself out there? There’s no way to change the past, but the future is still yet to be written. If a better life was that close to your grasp once before, who knows what new changes for the better might be just one small step outside your comfort zone away. ‘Try’, the latest single from Belwood favourite Hannah Grace, is all about breaking out of the grip of fear and doubt one small step at at time. This beautiful ballad is a welcome reminder that for every outcome you fear, there are just as many ways each day can turn out better than you hoped. We can’t banish all our anxiety and insecurities with the wave of a hand, and not every chance we take will pay off, but it’s only through trying that we open ourselves up to new possibilities. Regardless of the outcome, every moment we’re able to silence our self-doubt, overcome our fears, and have a little faith in ourselves, is a triumph worth celebrating.
Belwood Music 