Hover Bored (press photo)
More underground sounds from the purveyor of all that is slightly left-of-field, Getintothis’ Mike Stanton unveils three more ace picks to wear in your head.
Grunge pop quartet Hover Bored have released new single Safe Side and it’s a fiery, exhilarating ride. Formed in Wakefield, but now based in Manchester, Hover Bored uncoil a whole slew of searing riffs, rolling bass, crashing drums and bratty vocals to create a fiercely infectious track.
Short (it’s just over 2 minutes long) and sweet, Safe Side arrives in a spray of fuzzed guitars and infectious hooks and departs just as quickly, leaving you wanting to lean forward and hit play again.
‘With our music constantly adapting, Safe Side captures the progression we have made over the past year,’ the guys explain. ‘It began as a throwaway idea until we made it the ending of another song. We fell in love with the energy that this small interlude brought to rehearsals and shows; so we decided to make it a full track.’
Hover Bored’s sound is a fuzzy concoction of modern grunge and scuzzed out power-pop and the four-piece bring to their recordings an urgency usually reserved for blisteringly loud live sets in grimy, sticky venues. The band’s star is ascending with a fiery tail of squealing guitars and crashing drums, grab on, it should be a fun ride.
Safe Side is out now.
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Soft Science (press photo)
Dream-gaze syndicate Soft Science have announced a new double A-side single Undone / I Don’t Know Why I Love You, to be released via Test Pattern Records. This includes Undone (featured here), the first single off the forthcoming third album Maps, and it is a gorgeously fuzz-washed slice of post-gaze.
Katie Haley‘s dreampop vocals are whisper-bliss-perfect, floating among dense and swirling guitar textures. Undone is full of spine-tingling flourishes and trance-like beauty, warping and waning into gaseous clusters of reverb. Recalling the likes of My Bloody Valentine, Soft Science find themselves flirting with large bonfire sounds and displaying songwriting prowess that is opaque yet has sparkling production.
‘Undone is essentially about loving someone through good times and bad. It is about accepting that although there will always be hard times in life, it makes things easier to go through tough days with people you love. For me, those times make me love them more. That unwavering love can be like a light,’ explains Katie.
Undone / I Don’t Know Why I Love You is released via Test Pattern Records on April 6 across the standard online stores and streaming platforms.
Hilary Woods (press shot)
Opening with an ambient bass roll and delicate piano, Hilary Woods‘ latest single Inhale slowly eases into life. This is dark and fractured minimalism and Woods‘ vocals are introspective and delicate lilting on the ebb and flow of the deep atmospherics. It’s as if her voice has been caught by the tugging wind and whipped around desolate hills arcing in and out of the ether. Inhale is widescreen electronics, stretching emotional sine waves to meet the horizon, never pulling back, just rolling with each beat. It is arresting and full of poignancy.
Growing up in an artistic household on Dublin’s Northside, Woods studied film and literature, dropping in and out of fine art school. In 2014 she returned to music to record in whatever free space was available in and around the city. This has culminated her releasing her debut solo album Colt on June 8, and it is an album that spans the acoustic and electronic worlds, an intensely personal journey through grief, abandonment, and mutating love.
‘Colt was created as a way to process and make sense of the everyday,’ Woods imparts. ‘As a means to speak with inner voices, explore aloneness, and understand the complexities of desire. As a vehicle for imaginative flight, as a quest for resilience and connectivity to the outside world, as a medium through which to journey into the present, to temper the mind and inhabit the body.’
Colt is out June 8 on Sacred Bones Records.
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