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This week’s new tracks: Squirrel Flower, Automotion, Yola | Pop and rock


Squirrel Flower

Flames and Flat Tires

We’re going to blame the trials of 2020 for Ella Williams – AKA Squirrel Flower – not being ranked up alongside the celestial likes of Angel Olsen and Sharon Van Etten. The songwriter released her debut album, I Was Born Swimming, at the exact moment everything changed for ever. Talk about timing. Flames and Flat Tires is a grunge-folk intoxicant that comes in at under three minutes but will stick with you for hours.

Automotion

Flight of the Screaming Baboon

If you’re named after John Lennon and your dad’s Liam Gallagher, the stakes are pretty bloody high when it comes to launching your own band. As the frontman of indie newcomers Automotion, Lennon Gallagher is more into aping the bleak post-punk sprechgesang of Shame than his father’s heroic howl. It works surprisingly well, with a moody treatise on dating apps, dignity and pornography spiralling into grubby little guitars.

Yola

Stand for Myself

The best thing to come out of Bristol since the rumour that Banksy is actually the scrawny one out of Massive Attack, Yola’s powerhouse vocals will pin you against the wall and make you rethink everything you thought you knew about the modern diva. Stand for Myself is builder’s tea for the soul: strong, warm and a bit of a wake-up call.

Chelsea Wolfe

Diana

In moments of boredom I like to imagine what would happen if Enya went evil and it turns out that sometimes Chelsea Wolfe does as well, if the furious Diana is anything to go by. Supremely sinister, this heavy dose of Celtic-adjacent metal feels like the sonic backdrop to a brutal battle in a field of heather.

Joana Serrat

Demons

Americana isn’t about where you’re from, it’s a state of mind. Just ask Catalonian singer-songwriter Joana Serrat, who sounds as if she’s subletting a bougainvillea-strewn Hollywood bungalow from one of the Eagles circa 1972. When she’s not propping up the bar at the Troubadour with Linda Ronstadt, Serrat is writing gorgeous tracks such as Demons, which balances vintage jangle with just the right amount of fluttering shoegaze.



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