Crooked Words #8: Frances Chang, Juni Habel, Clémentine March, bobbie

Frances Chang - I can feel the waves

As she gears up for a two-week run with Cate Le Bon across North America, Brooklyn's Frances Chang has shared her first new music since 2024's excellent Psychedelic Anxiety LP.

Said new music consists of two new songs, 'I can feel the waves' and its accompanying b-side 'Marry', released via the ever-excellent RVNG Intl. label, who have released work from the likes of Oliver Coates, M.Sage, The Vernon Spring, Emily Sprague and much more.

Both Frances' work and 'I can feel the waves' slots perfectly alongside such contemporaries, winding its way through a full six-and-a-half minutes of drifting piano work, subtle percussive beats, and tender vocals that draw us further and further into her slightly splintered world.

The whole thing is gorgeous, managing to craft a mood that is both unhurried and expansive but also a snapshot of something magnified; zoomed-in sentiments that somehow look like a whole world unto themselves.

bobbie - I Could Call You

Snuck out in that strange void of time in the run up to Christmas/the new year, 'I Could Call You' is more than deserving of a lingering spotlight, even with the un-showy, almost elusive nature of its appearance.

Released via Orindal Records, it's a brand new single from Western Massachusetts artist bobbie, produced alongside Florist/Told Slant's Felix Walworth who continues to hover in the background of so much of my very favourite music.

This one is subtle and full of melancholy.The slow-paced, ambient-like introduction conjures a sense of distance and yearning before a word is even spoken – in fact it's a full minute-and-a-half before bobbie's voice drifts into the mix. That voice is equally captivating, a slow-burn timbre that fades into the sounds surrounding it, until we're not sure if we should be trying harder to pick out the specifics, or let the whole thing drift by until its out of reach.

Regardless, it all makes for something quite beautiful, and hopefully a precursor to something more fully-formed later in the year.

June Habel - Evergreen In Your Mind

Announced this week, for an April 10th release on the Basin Rock label, Evergreen In Your Mind is Juni Habel's first album in three-years, following the breakthrough success of 2023’s exquisite Carvings LP. A folk singer/songwriter from the Norwegian countryside, Habel carries that sense of imagery with grace, pulling notes and noises from her often-beautiful surroundings: "Songs were recorded in quiet corners of her home, on the piano in the school where she works, and it uses the physical world around her to provide percussion."

The lead single gives the album its name, and it's a striking introduction. The playing is subtle but delivered with purpose, and Habel's voice has always been a thing of quiet wonder; carefree on the surface but always digging into something unseen that hides beneath the surface, or too high in the sky to make sense of.

“It’s nostalgic. It’s about looking back and realising things will be different. It's about visualising something beautiful in your head that you keep clinging onto,” Habel says of a song that instantly frames her new work as a something special gathering on the horizon.

A must for fans of Vashti Bunyan, Sibylle Baier, Julie Byrne, et al.

Clémentine March - Powder Keg

And if all of that has lulled you into something of a dream-like state, then perhaps dive head-first into the brand new album from Clémentine March, a brand new album released today from the London-based songwriter. Pitched as a “kaleidoscopic collection of songs, influenced by jazz, folk, Brazilian music, 90s alt rock, disco and krautrock", Powder Keg is a vivid and varied record full of shifting tempo and colour.

Across its twelve songs, March pulls in a host of guest singers to join her for the ride, giving space to the likes of  Naima Bock, Sophie Jamieson, Katy J Pearson, MF Tomlinson, Alabaster DePlume, Dana Gavanski, Evelyn Gray and Wilf Cartwright of Tapir, and more.

If that all sounds like something unruly and rowdy – well, it is. Occasionally. But it's also brilliantly inspired, often quiet and considered, a trapeze-act of mood that bursts with ingenuity but one that holds a graceful balance throughout. It's also just a hell of a lot of fun; bursting with ideas, shimmering in bright light, an antidote to the sluggish nature of these strange days.

If you need something like that then take a big, deep breath and dive right in.

Happy listening.

Thank you for being here in 2026.