Album Round-up: 20/06/2025
Welcome to another album round-up!
There's a few really lovely releases out today, from earthy peacefulness to polished exuberance. As always, dig in below and I hope you find something new to discover here...
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Scratch It by U.S. Girls
In just ten days, Meg Remy and her band — Dillon Watson on guitar, Jack Lawrence (The Dead Weather, The Raconteurs, Loretta Lynn) on bass, Domo Donoho on drums, and both Jo Schornikow and Tina Norwood on keys, as well as harmonica legend Charlie McCoy (Elvis, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison) — recorded Scratch It live off the floor with minimal overdubs, mixed to tape.
There's always something in a U.S. Girls record to dig your teeth into and here it's the incredible 12-minute centrepiece that is 'Bookends'. Patient and probing, it's a wonderful piece of work, surrounded on both sides by reminders of just how vital Meg Remy can sound when it all falls into place.
Listen on Bandcamp here
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Second Circle The Horizon by Sally Anne Morgan
Honestly, I'd forgive you for tip-toeing away from "haunting psychedelic Appalachian folk drone" but to do so here would be a travesty, because this new album from Sally Anne Morgan is supremely lovely. Invoking "the rhododendron thickets, creeks and mountains of her local landscape in Western North Carolina" it's just wonderfully wholesome instrumental music; a summer-sweet roving that brings together all manner of instruments from hurdy gurdy, synthesizer, fiddle, banjo, electric and acoustic guitar, piano, and more to craft something still and plaintive and beautifully sincere.
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Planting By The Signs by S.G. Goodman
There are approx. 3000 words on this wonderful album, shared via our long-read conversation with Goodman earlier this week. Suffice it to say that this is something very special; a gorgeous collection of country songs that look at love and loss and the decline of our natural world, in ways that feel big and bold and always beautiful.
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Raspberry Moon by Hotline TNT
If you're in need of something a bit noisier, Hotline TNT are back with a hefty dose of shoegaze-y emo. The Guardian call it 90s indie rock, Stereogum call it power-noise-pop, so imagine something that drives right through the heart of all those descriptors. It's good, really good! The first album they've written as a full band, it does feel like a big step-up from what's come before; a bit more expansive, a lot more heart.
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Unknown Beyond by Tan Cologne
On their third album, the New Mexico duo of Lauren Green and Marissa Macias look to the intangible to make sense of the tangible. An album that "embraces the beauty of timeless uncertainty", it's a reaction to personal loss of family, friends and childhood homes and comes wrapped up in dense foggy atmosphere, captivating layers of sound, all punctuated by moments of beautiful, blissful release.
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Ipsa Corpora by Nathan Salsburg
Best known on these shores due to last year's wonderful collaboration with James Elkington, which we featured in our Curious Listening zine, Nathan Salsburg is a guitarist, composer, and frequent collaborator with the excellent Joan Shelley.
This new release is one single piece, forty-minutes in length, and it's absolutely, and supremely, peacefully, magical. Go get lost in it and escape the world a while.
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