Crooked Words #02: Hilary Woods, Kara-Lis Coverdale, Marta Del Grandi & more
Crooked Words #02
Just when I try and rein things in a little, we get a week like this where everything I listen to sounds like gold. So here are some more crooked words on some songs that have cut through the noise and crept into my week...
Kara-Lis Coverdale had gone eight years without releasing an album, but today has shared 'Curve Traces of Held Space', the first song from her third (yep, third) new album of 2025. Released via the Smalltown Supersound label on November 21, Changes In Air is a five-movement work for electric organ, modular synthesis, and piano and is a re-working of music she originally wrote for an installation at Skarven in Oslo; "a floating sauna facing the expansive fjord which is heated by wood fire and solar radiation."
Suitably otherworldly, the minimal piece is a beautiful escape, a mesmerising instrumental that slowly envelops the listener as it rolls on for nearly eight-minutes.
One of my favourite albums of 2025 is still yet-to-be released, and comes courtesy of the Queens-based songwriter Hannah Pruzinsky, who makes tender-hearted music under the name h. pruz.
Produced by Felix Walworth (Told Slant, Florist), Red sky at morning – which is released November 7th via Mtn. Laurel – feels more fully-realised than what's come before, the gentleness of Hannah's songwriting and delivery elevated into bolder new territories across the record.
New single 'Krista' is indicative of this shift, the additional textures and tones adding an edge that feels wholly engaging. The accompanying video is also a wonderful thing too, and is made from footage from a homemade YouTube horror series that Hannah made with their cousin in middle school.
Another great record yet to see the light of day is the forthcoming new one from Hilary Woods, who will share the Night CRIÚ LP on Oct 31st, via Sacred Bones Records. Suitably creepy and creeping, the latest single from it is 'Taper', a slow-moving, dust-covered ballad, the oddly nuanced production setting the perfect backdrop for Hillary's gentle but unwavering voice to drift across.
Raising the spellbinding nature of it all, a children's choir comes in for the track's final section, an inspired moment that gathers up all the many spooky threads here to produce something genuinely mesmerising.
Fire Records (Jane Weaver, Vanishing Twin) have today announced a brand new album from Marta Del Grandi. The Italian singer-songwriter will release Dream Life via the label on January 30th and has shared brand new track 'Antarctica' as part of the announcement.
Citing both Talking Heads and Laurie Anderson as influences, the track is a succinct and sharp burst of skewed pop, Del Grandi's voice bubbling away of an energetic backdrop of colour and sound.
“Antarctica is a track that found its shape during a late evening solo session, when a melody I had in mind for days naturally fell on top of a sequencer I was playing around with,” Del Grandi says. “It’s a song that I particularly love, talking about climate and social injustice with a playful and non-literal language.”
Finally, following up on the excellent 'Time Measured in Moonflowers', which featured Cassandra Jenkins, NYC-collective Constant Smiles have shared another new song from their November 7th released new album, Moonflowers.
Another beautiful collaboration, new single 'Harriman' was written by Constant Smiles' drummer Nora Knight, and features experimental multi-instrumentalist Wednesday Knudsen, who adds gorgeous, drifting saxophone to the subtle and gently stirring number. Described by Knight as "simplistic in words, yet complex in what it hopes for", there's a palpable sense of yearning half-buried here, a kind of autumnal melancholy found in a season that is both an arrival and departure, in its own unique way.
View this full post on the GFP blog
Thank you for being here,
Tom.
