What We've Been Listening To...New Candys, Possum, Filth, Mush, The Novus, Roscoe Roscoe, Cowgirl, Scores

By Jon Milton

It’s June already! Wow, that’s gone quick. This year has already seen a couple of excellent psych-rock albums released in the form of Diagonal’s eponymous debut and Mt. Mountain’s ‘Centre’ and now another one has come along in the form of 'Vyvyd’, from Italy’s New Candys. Like Diagonal and Mt. Mountain the band sit on the more accessible side of the genre with a clean production values abundant throughout this record. There’s also shoe-gaze with a healthy nod toward Jesus and Mary Chain and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club going on.

​Brooding singles ‘Twin Mime’ and ‘Zyko’ kick off Vyvyd powerfully and the rest of the album moves nicely along, encompassing reflective moments on songs like ‘Begin Again’ and even bringing the blues on ‘Helluva Zoo’. All good stuff. 

Next month sees the release of ‘Lunar Gardens’ the new album from Canadian band Possum, and Friday saw them release the third and final taster in the form of ‘Guest of the Moon’. The band were new to me until last month but I was very impressed by their single ‘Clarified Budder’ and this new track sees them continuing to seamlessly meld psych rock with Jazz very nicely, across this wah drenched jam. Think King Gizzard, Soft Machine, Oh Sees, (seventies) Miles Davis  and Can coming together to give you some sort of idea of how they sound. We’ll have a full review of the album nearer the time of its release. 

Friday was a very healthy day for new singles overall. Promising young band from Stoke on-Trent Filth released their excellent second single ‘Fully Introspective: Love, Truth, Happiness’, which sits nicely alongside Mush’s laid back ‘Peak Bleak’, taken from their forthcoming RSD 2021 single.

If you’re unfamiliar with Filth, their debut single ‘Tangerine Dream’ out last year is well worth a listen and from the evidence here, they certainly seem to be a band to watch. If you’re unfamiliar with Mush, where have you been? 

For a more mellow, trippy and psychedelic take on Sixties music have a listen to ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ the second single by Roscoe Roscoe. If you prefer more of a cool Seventies vibe tinged with a bit of 90’s slacker rock, there's ‘Better With You’ the new tasty new single from Cowgirl, and if Eighties post punk with a bit of goth rock thrown in is more up your street you may want to check out ‘Castaway’ the new single from the Novus. ​The Novus are natives of Stourbridge, famous in the eighties for Pop Will Eat Itself and The Wonder Stuff, but this new single reminds me of another West Midlands based band, Balaam and the Angel, and a bit of Death Cult too. Big and swirly.

Concluding our round up this week is ‘Broaden Out’, the third single from Scores. The band are from LA and Kansas and Broaden Out is beat-driven indie-rock electronica, very much in the mode of Holy Fuck and Caribou. ‘The song is about coming to terms with the fact that some of the things I struggle with in my head, I may never outgrow’ says singer CJ Calhoun of the song’s introspective lyrics and its their best tune yet.