Editor’s Note: Anyone who says there isn’t good music coming out these days — and quite literally, every day — simply isn’t paying attention. Vanyaland’s new compilation feature The V List highlights the best in new music over the past month, pulling together the sounds that have soundtracked the website in recent weeks from our wide-ranging series of features. It’s all the stuff we’re bumping here at Vanyaland HQ, one new bop at a time.
Occasional Dreams, ‘Shimmer In Your Eye’
We don’t really listen to music these days. Instead, we merely consume it, like an ill-advised sprint up and down the buffet line, filling our plates with disjointed playlists and TikTok soundbites that ultimately leave us unfulfilled and aching. But every now and then a song hits and it gives us pause, mimicking a long-gone ritual of sliding a record out of its sleeve, carefully placing it on the turntable, hitting play and dropping the needle before falling back into the abyss of your favorite chair. “Shimmer In Your Eye,” the commanding summer single and instant 2024 SOTY contender from Occasional Dreams, has given us the kind of sensation that slows the world down, if only for five minutes. We don’t know what the song is about; we don’t have an artist quote to elaborate on its theme; and we hadn’t heard of this Liverpool band until a few, now seemingly distant, moments ago. All we know is that music can still captivate, and in rare moments like these, remind us what it’s like truly listen to a euphoric burst of artistic expression.
Certain Death, ‘Paranoid’
Sometimes you just gotta ride the riff and let it take you where it may. Certain Death know this too well, and while the Brooklyn rock band’s adrenalized new single “Paranoid” first takes us to a scary place, it has enough might n’ flight to come crashing out through the other side and back around again. The throwback rock and roll barnstormer hit the streams in August, and it doesn’t take long to reach a ’70s-flavored cruising altitude as it explores the seedy underbelly of city nightlife. “This song really speaks to the shared experience of overindulgence and paranoia in nightlife that is both repulsive and irresistible,” says singer Henry Black. “It’s all too familiar to anyone in a scene of artists pulling late-nighters.” Push the pedal on the floor and ride with Certain Death below, and be warned: New album Strange Garden is set for release this October.
Chainlacing, ‘Time Away’
The sound of New England autumn sometimes arrives in mid-August. This season it comes from Chainlacing, a New Hampshire duo self-described as “lo fi experimental gloom”, and that’s nothing we’re prepared to argue against. “Time Away” is the project’s remarkable debut single, and it expands a grayscale comfort over its five shadowy minutes, slowly blooming into the type of blissed out invitation that pierces with a rounded blade through the crisp fall air. A hazy blanket of truth trapped in your playlist’s usual lies, “Time Away” opens with a gentle acoustic and atmospheric tumble before a cascading guitar rev instigates a wave of noise, growing louder the further away it goes, opening a panoramic portal that constricts tighter and more focused with each ‘gaze of intent. Dive in now, and safety tuck it away for that first startling temperature drop that marks a welcome change of season.
Parker, ‘Eleanor’
We’re all prone to looking back at the past through a revisionist lens, often latching on to the good times and blissed-out memories and not the struggles and hardships that occupied most of our head space at the time. Parker have tapped into that sentiment today with “Eleanor,” a mountainous dose of kaleidoscopic alternative rock that comforts and cascades as it aches along its voluminous four minutes. The Northern Ireland trio out of Derry skillfully weave an avalanche of sound to echo how our memories don’t always line up with the reality of the time. It makes for one of the more intriguing offerings of the late summer, demanding repeated listens to absorb everything dancing from speaker to speaker as it ricochet across our fuzzy domes. “’Eleanor’, at its core, is a song about nostalgia,” admits Parker singer and guitarist Dylan Bradley. “It’s based on the idea of looking at your past through rose-tinted glasses — not seeing things for what they really are — and how our lives can often take a different direction than we initially planned.”
Morgan Saint, ‘Blazing’
The seasons may be changing, but the vibes are perpetual. And as we cling to a summer feeling while August fades from view, Morgan Saint keeps our mood as high as the sun with a propulsive late-summer alt-pop bop called “Blazing.” And while the glistening cloud dancer’s light demeanor glides along a path of blissful indifference, its lyrical content from the New York singer, songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist, director, and designer takes a different course, as it conceals a personal struggle by touching on the sadness found within a broken relationship and the tumultuous aftermath that follows. The duality of “Blazing” — bubbly and loose on the outside, beaten and bruised on the inside — reminds us of the old adage about checking in on friends to make sure they’re doing alright, especially the ones who give off the sense that everything’s just fine. Because what often stirs beneath the surface may be at odds with what’s clearly visible to those around us.