The previous two posts have fixated on some of the great material from streams and music videos. All that’s left to cover is the full streams of EPs, splits, comps, and full-length efforts that have emerged in the three weeks or so that Heartbreaking Bravery has been on hiatus. Bookmark this page, rifle through the titles on display, and walk away with a handful of outstanding new music. Enjoy.
The last post to run on this site made note of yet another hiatus that Heartbreaking Bravery’s been forced to endure for nearly three weeks. Shifting focus from streams to music videos, this list compiles a host of outstanding music videos to emerge in the regular coverage interim. Bookmark the page and go exploring, everything here’s worth revisiting or finding for the first time.
It’s been a little over three weeks since the last regularly scheduled post appeared on this site. In that time, a whole host of excellent songs have been released. Below is a long compilation of some of the best of those offerings. There will be compilation lists in this vein for both music videos and full streams following this one. Following those posts, there’ll be posts featuring seven outstanding entries that have emerged in that time from each category. So, dive in, bookmark this page, and click around. A new favorite band’s always just around the corner for everyone, it’s just a matter of taking the time to look.
A lot of outside forces — from tour scheduling to a forthcoming move — necessitated a brief hiatus for this site. Heartbreaking Bravery remains a one-person operation (albeit, one supported by a generous community of like-minded people) so it can be difficult to keep pace when life gets hectic. That being said, it’s a project that’s always receiving attention, even if it’s radio silent for a stretch of time.
To that end, today will largely be focused on honorable mentions lists and a few abbreviated best-of’s for the material that was released during this most recent interim. A few releases will also get there own feature, like the item kicking today’s coverage off: Cende‘s outstanding #1 Hit Single which ranks among 2017’s finest offerings and stands as an exhilarating new chapter for one of today’s smartest basement pop bands.
Having already claimed this site’s Best EP of 2015 distinction, the anticipation for their full-length debut was considerably high. Propelling that anticipation to stratospheric heights by way of lead-off singles “Bed” and “What I Want“, had #1 Hit Single been anything short of masterful, it would’ve been a crushing disappointment. Of course, with the combined track record of the band’s members, that outcome was always far less likely than the inevitable: #1 Hit Single is a genuinely exceptional record.
Virtually everything on this record has been given an extreme amount of care and attention, the meticulous observation and clinical understanding of composition on every level elevates the record from simply being great to being a surprisingly understated genre classic. By taking their punk-leaning energy and suffusing it with classical underpinnings and some notably DIY leanings, Cende’s landed on something that feels fresh, familiar, and entirely their own.
“What I Want” standing as the perfect example of how the band’s marriage of punk, powerpop, hardcore, bedroom pop, and a variety of other sub-genres can not only exist harmoniously but congeal into a spellbinding whole. While that song’s unusually soft nature comes as somewhat of a curveball, the ensuing track puts the band back on an aggressive path that’s more attuned to their surprisingly vicious live show.
The back half of #1 Hit Single reaffirms everything laid out by its predecessor, encapsulating the band’s mastery over their craft and identity to an unavoidable degree. From the quiet insistence of “Void” — one of the strongest tracks on a record comprised of nothing but highlights — to the subdued melancholia of “While I’m Alive”, there’s not a false moment to be found. It’s a beautiful cap to a painfully honest and surprisingly poignant record about insecurity, uncertainty, and hanging onto shreds of optimism and resilience. Put simply: #1 Hit Record is the type of record you hold onto long enough to pass down to the next generation, hoping they do the same.
Listen to #1 Hit Single below and pick it up from Double Double Whammy here.
One of the most distinct pleasures of running something like Heartbreaking Bravery is the unsolicited submissions that wind up hitting home. Artists from all corners of the world, several of which using their own bedroom as their primary recording space, making music that deserves to be heard by so many more people than what music’s disheartening industry politics will ever allow. This site was created as a push-back against the idea that something needs to attract an excess of clicks to be featured and it’s why when something as oddly moving and quietly superlative as Honeyfitz’s “October Air” comes along, it gets its due celebration.
Elihu Jones, the mastermind behind Honeyfitz, has been making exceptional records for the past few years. Old Patterns, Honeyfitz’s forthcoming effort, looks to be the project’s finest to date and it’s highlighted by tracks like “In Circles“, “Dream Restless“, and “October Air”. The latter of that trio’s premiering here today with a gorgeous, simplistic hybrid clip that acts both as a hypnotic visualizer that underpins the passing of time as well as a straightforward lyric clip.
It’s elegant, clever, and uniquely absorbing in its construction but everything’s heightened by the song itself, which is sung with an urgent quaver and awash in pristine tones as much as it is noise damage. Clocking in at just under two minutes, it’s a testament to Honeyfitz’s penchant for coaxing maximal impact out of a minimal setup and it’s a beautiful window into one of today’s many great bedroom pop artists. This is exactly the type of effort that should receive a lot more praise.
Watch “October Air” below and pre-order Old Patterns here.
The genres of psych, shoegaze, and punk have all peacefully co-existed at various intersections throughout the past several decades but rarely have the three been as equally represented as they are on Havania Whaal’s “Supermoon”, an uneasy, five and a half minute triumph. Woozy tones drift in and out, the drums hit hard, the vocals fight their way through endless layers of reverb echo and a string instrument or two throw things even further off kilter.
Havania Whaal have been quietly gaining momentum over the past three years and everything seems to be coming to a head for the trio with “Supermoon” more than likely to pique a lot of additional interest. The song’s masterfully structured, allowing each element to both breathe on its own and congeal with the others to create an enormous sum.
Every second of “Supermoon” feels, impossibly, calculated and spur-of-the-moment, conjuring up an additional sense of uncertainty to accompany the light cognitive dissonance the production already does well to provoke.
It’s a fascinating and immensely enjoyable moment for a band that seems to destined to both keep its audience on its toes and keep their listeners happily engaged. Don’t miss out on one of this month’s most pleasant surprises.
Listen to “Supermoon” below and keep an eye on this site for more updates on Havania Whaal.
Only a short while ago The Holy Circle were kind enough to offer up a premiere for their “Polaris” music video. Today, a new premiere is on the table: the brooding, pulsating, melancholic “Early Morning”. Taken from the band’s forthcoming self-titled full-length, “Early Morning” is a characteristically dark piece of synth pop, underscoring the band’s gift with atmospherics as much as it highlights their penchant for forward-thinking composition.
A calm, steadily swirling vortex of mood, emotion, and quiet determination, the track represents another important step forward for the band, whose evolution has been a privilege to witness. Hypnotic and mesmerizing in all of the right ways, “Early Morning” takes on a complex narrative involving perceived beauty and hard-fought individuality, weaving it into a gentle dreamscape couched in some subtle menace, creating an absorbing tapestry that’s difficult to shake. A commentary on the emotional duality of burdensome expectation, “Early Morning” transcends its outward tranquility to become something that cuts deep. One of the band’s finest moments to date.
Listen to “Early Morning” below and pre-order The Holy Circle here as a download, from ANNIHILVS on CD, and from Black Horizons on cassette.
In the past week or so there were a handful of notable music videos that emerged from the likes of Simon Doom, Real Estate, American Lips, Jay Som, Andy Shauf, Slow Dancer, Chromatics, TERRY, Sam Mullany, and Andy Gabbard. All of them were entertaining for various reasons and all of them are worthy of repeat viewings. As is always the case, music videos weren’t the only thing finding their way out of the shadows. Songs and records were unveiled but nothing landed with as much impact as Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit’s “If We Were Vampires”.
Normally, the features on Heartbreaking Bravery are granted to either emerging or off-the-radar artists, musicians as established and widely-celebrated as Isbell pick up enough notices elsewhere. To that effect, something has to be monumentally moving for an artist of that type of stature to earn a feature. “If We Were Vampires” is, unmistakably, one of those pieces. Isbell’s made a habit out of writing those types of numbers, including one of the most devastatingly beautiful songs since the turn of the century in “Cover Me Up“, a heartfelt ode to his wife and collaborator, Amanda Shires, who served as a constant reminder life was worth living.
If “Cover Me Up” centered around the conceit of Shires acting as a necessary rebirth for Isbell, “If We Were Vampires” subverts that narrative and explicitly focuses on how Shires’ presence will either make life unbearable to navigate if she passes first while recognizing that the trade-off will be worthwhile because she’ll have been there up until that point. All of those emotions are magnified considerably when taking into stock the various accounts of how Shires legitimately saved Isbell from a variety of vices that could’ve potentially ended his life. As the best partners tend to do, Shires not only gave Isbell hope but gave him a new lease on life; for Isbell Shires and his very life are inextricably intertwined to a stratospheric degree of intensity.
That love’s something that’s been present throughout his recent work and has been clearly evident in his banter (he nearly reduced an entire crowd to tears at Prospect Park in 2015 just talking about Shires, while she was on hiatus from performing to deliver the couple’s first child). In a recent interview, Isbell mentioned that when he first performed “If We Were Vampires” it was legitimately hard for him to make it to the end and admitted that’s still occasionally the case as Shires watched on with a mixture of pride and genuine understanding. They’d just run through the song and it was impossible not to notice Shires’ loving gaze as the two harmonized carried just a hint of sadness, the chorus’ final line “but one day I’ll be gone or you’ll be gone” likely hitting uncomfortably close to home.
It’s that juxtaposition of life with someone you love that makes dying a more acceptable fate. It’s a heavy concept that Isbell toys with masterfully here, envisioning both himself and Shires as vampires, content to play it cool because they didn’t have to account for that impending destination waiting on some unknown horizon. In the very next stanza, Isbell discards that scenario entirely, surmising that “time running out is a gift” and pledging every last one of his seconds to be offered up in the service of the woman he loves, a woman that both saved his life and gave him a reason to live. It’s earnest, it’s heartfelt, it’s deeply empathetic, and it stands proudly as another heartrending masterpiece from one of our generation’s finest songwriters. Hit play and keep the people you love close enough for them to know they give other people’s lives just a little more meaning.
Listen to “If We Were Vampires” below and pre-order The Nashville Sound here.
The project’s first EP, Never Going Home, was good enough to land itself a spot on Heartbreaking Bravery’s Best EP’s of 2016list and, if Just Give In would have been released on its own instead of as a package, the feat likely would’ve been repeated this year. Since that half of the equation has already been accounted for and exhaustively covered, the attention here will mostly focus on the package release’s other half: Just Give In.
Most of the songs released from the more recent half have already been featured over the past few months as well, either as an individual song or as a characteristically striking music video. “Fix“, “More Like You“, and “Love Is Dead” all earned headlines while English consistently earned feature slots in this site’s Watch This series. The remaining songs that haven’t been covered as in-depth as the others are as follows: “Other Lives”, “Birthday”, and bonus track “That Thing”.
“Other Lives” kicks the entire affair off with the kind of pulsating, sweetly melancholic energy that’s come to define English’s material. It’s a typically breathtaking track that breathes a gentle life into the proceedings, setting a hypnotic tone at the record’s onset. English delivers a wistful vocal paired with a downtrodden but resilient narrative that never allows itself to feel too burdened. It’s in that divide where English has found a calling and “Other Lives” stands as yet another definitive example.
“Birthday” finds English in a slightly peppier mode than usual but still finds a way to incorporate a dream-like structure that enhances the song’s more ambient elements. It’s tightly composed and masterfully executed, cementing English’s growing reputation as a songwriter of an extremely high caliber. Just as importantly, “Birthday” plays up Just Give In‘s quiet optimism, its sequencing allowing for maximum impact, suggesting English’s talents extend beyond the songwriting realm.
Just Give In / Never Going Home‘s gem of a closer finds English embracing an ’80s influence in the most definitive manner imaginable. Elevating the warm synth beds to the forefront and utilizing them as the driving force of “That Thing” opens up some room to demonstrate just how versatile English’s music has become since the songwriter’s debut. “That Thing” also perfectly wraps the record, providing it with a perfect dichotomy; the song looks towards the possibilities for the future while celebrating the past. Overall, the release should stand as a monumental effort for English and hopefully propel the songwriter to even greater heights.
Listen to Just Give In / Never Going Home below and pick it up from Polyvinyl here.
A lot can be released in a week’s time. Fortunately, that means there’s a lot of room for excellent material, like the music videos Lydia Loveless, Kamikaze Girls, Kino Kimino, Duncan Lloyd, Sløtface, White Reaper, Mise en Scene, TV Sets, Angelo De Augustine, Guerilla Toss, Thick, and Brightness made public. More than just music videos surfaced, though, and — as always — a lot of what cropped up came from unheralded or barely-known artists. Hermetic was one of those projects but Postscript, the project’s latest full-length, proved that they’re worthy of recognition.
A duo comprised of Eric Axen and Bart Newman, Hermetic find success on Postscript by meticulously mining a lot of aspects of post-punk, bedroom pop, and their various niche hybrid offshoots that tend to get overlooked. From Albini-esque production and tones to palpable nervous tension to the dynamic composition, Postscript never comes across as anything less than ridiculously historically-informed. Hermetic’s done their homework and it shows from the record’s surprisingly heavy opening track, “Fault-Finding Mission” which brings to mind both acts like The Wrens and an innumerable slate of shoegaze-leaning projects.
Following Postscript‘s ridiculously impressive opening statement are a cavalcade of tracks that throw a variety of punches, finding clever ways to land each blow. Hermetic rarely dips out of insistent mid-tempo mode throughout the course of the record and it creates an absorbing accumulative effect. Everything from the ambient swirl of “Relics” to the moody mid-song turn in “Withering” is elevated because of the record’s tonal consistency. Each track has something to offer and stands out on its own but they create a much larger whole together. It’s an outstanding release from a band that deserves a lot more attention. Hit play and leave it on repeat.
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