What We've Been Listening to...Sprints, Liberty Valley, Automatic, Horsegirl, Honeyglaze, Crows, Midlight

By Jon Milton

With International Women's Day taking place this week, female / female led artists have fittingly taken centre stage on the new release front, with Automatic returning after way too long with a new single, Sprints giving us an excellent EP, Liberty Valley with their debut (scroll down after this article) and new singles from Horsegirl and Honeyglaze. 

LA band Automatic released their cracking debut album 'Signal' back in 2019 but have been quiet since then in new music terms. New single 'New Beginning' picks up where they left off though with its low slung bass, cantering drums, icy vocal and blistering synth stabs. The track is taken from their new album 'Excess' and they'll be over in the UK to play London's Wide Awake Festival and dates in Brighton, Manchester and Leeds before they head off to Europe.  

Sprints launched their 'A Modern Job' EP on Nice Swan Records, and its really quite brilliant. Last years' singles 'How does the story go' and 'Modern Job' kick off proceedings and are joined by 'Little Fix' which came out in January and two new tracks 'Delia Smith' and 'Im in a band'. There is a lot of energy in this EP: its noisy, exciting and utterly addictive. The EP was produced by Gilla Band's Daniel Fox, and he's done a grand job too. Essential.  

'Sensational Horse Muzak Sound Noise Group From A City (Chicago)' Horsegirl are pretty new to me, but I like their new single 'Anti-glory'. It's taken from 'Versions of Modern Performance' which comes out in June and they're touring the UK and Europe in June/July. 'Anti-glory' has a bit of a 90's slacker indie vibe to it and we look forward to hearing more.  

We saw Honeyglaze support Geese last year at the Sebright Arms and were rather charmed by their songs. And charming is a good way to describe their new single 'Female lead', about dying one's black hair blonde and realising that it looks terrible. The song is short and sweet, and kind of reminiscent of a Velvet Underground where Mo Tucker sings.  

And what of the gents? Well, we won't dwell, but Crows have issued another impressive single from their new album this week 'Garden of England' and Midlight have given us 'Home', taken from their forthcoming debut EP. Garden of England is a proper 70's style rocker and one to do that funny 70's rocker dance to and Home channels that mellifluous early Coldplay (before they turned shit) vibe that they do so well and continues to explore the theme of anxiety about the future that has featured in their earlier singles.