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Lydia Hahm - The Leaves Are Still Green

"This is a folk pop song about enjoying the limited time you have with the people around you."

https://getmusic.fm/l/9Te1gi

#indiepop #singersongwriter #folkpop #music

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Various Artists - Start-Track - SAMPLER 2023

"Sampler '23 of cassette label Start-track.com"

https://getmusic.fm/l/OcAv68

#indiepop #shoegaze #emo #postpunk #lofipop #folkpop #bedroompop dream pop #sampler #loif #music

THE LOCALIST: FEBRUARY 2026 WRAP UP

Softcult—When A Flower Doesn’t Grow  (LP) 

Release Date: Jan. 30, 2026

City: Kitchener 

Genre: Grunge, Shoegaze

After delivering four exciting EPs between 2021 and 2024 and touring extensively during that same time, the sibling duo of Mercedes and Phoenix Arn-Horn have finally released their fantastically hazy debut full-length album. The project explores challenging and sometimes taboo themes such as mental health and misogyny through creatively contemplative and unapologetically honest song writing. 

CHURCH FIGHT— Self-Titled EP (EP)

Release Date: Feb. 13, 2026

City: Cambridge 

Genre: Skate Punk

This brand new five-piece punk rock band comprised of veteran musicians has come hot out of the gate with a high octane three-track debut EP that is guaranteed to incite a brawl. With a blisteringly high tempo consistent across the entire project, the band has put together a collection of aggressively catchy punk songs with intricate melodic guitar riffs as a key focal point. 

Daphne—Jeepers (EP) 

Release Date: Feb. 13, 2026

City: Kitchener 

Genre: Instrumental Pop, R&B

The exciting debut EP release from Daphne is fully instrumental and irresistibly groovy. Blending smooth R&B instrumentation with accessible melodies from popular contemporary music makes for an easy and enjoyable listen. The track list includes four covers: Dua Lipa’s “Levitating”, SZA’s “Snooze”, Justin Bieber’s “SPEED DEMON” and Sabrina Carpenter’s “Tears”.

A Horse Named Friday—Dana & Evelyn (Demo)

Release Date: Feb. 21, 2026

City: Kitchener

Genre: Chamber Folk

Eight raw and emotional live recordings preceded by six carefully delicate studio versions make up the collection of songs on A Horse Named Friday’s latest demo project. This listening experience breathes a sense of fresh perspective into the songs with the addition of the band’s stage banter and audience noise helping the listener to truly connect with the intimacy of the performances. 

KROKA— Have You Lost Your Mind? (Single) 

Release Date: Feb. 26, 2025

City: Kitchener

Genre: Desert Rock

Kroka is a three-piece rock band with a sound that is significantly heavier than expected based on their limited roster size. Their newest single features slow, heavy and fuzz-laden guitars as well as a gritty yet soulful performance from lead vocalist Richard Fenna. The song explores the idea of indulging in our distractions as an act of avoidance and the inevitability that we all must eventually address our problems.

Album artwork sourced from Bandcamp. 

@harrietrosemusic playing @yellowarchstudio #indie #folkpop #concert #livemusic #sheffield https://t.co/XAv0isy7zf
More at https://t.co/cGbkkwo6Jk https://t.co/f2LyuCTNzG

— Music-News.com (@MusicNewsWeb)
Mar 7, 2026

More at Music-News.com

The Pogues Play “Lorca’s Novena”

Listen to this track by Anglo-Celtic folk-punk banner bearers The Pogues. It’s “Lorca’s Novena”, a cut taken from their 1990 album Hell’s Ditch, their fifth record. By this point in their career that had started as an amalgam of punk rock aggression as it met with Irish traditional music and instrumentation, they began to wander farther afield stylistically speaking compared to their past albums. Rather than the Irish counties or London streets peopled by members of the Irish diaspora, many of the songs on Hell’s Ditch are set in more exotic locales.

“Lorca’s Novena” conjures the landscapes and histories of Almería in southern Spain, a region with a troubled history not unlike that of Ireland. Pogues frontman and primary writer Shane MacGowan’s time there to film Alex Cox’s Straight to Hell in 1987 helped to shape the song’s creation and expand on the band’s storytelling reach. Speaking of that movie, its star Joe Strummer sits in the producer’s chair on Hell’s Ditch. Strummer also appeared live with the band on the ensuing tour as a temporary member. “Lorca’s Novena” would appear on the Grosse Pointe Blank soundtrack, a movie for which Strummer would also provide the score.

This song preserves the band’s traditional music meets modern rock influences. It’s characterized by mandolins, acoustic guitars, harmonicas, and accordions matched with the rumbling bass guitar lope and the menacing march of the snare on the intro. There is a distinct tonal shift on this tune when compared to many of their songs on past albums. It’s darker and foreboding rather than reflecting the buoyant aggression for which the band had become known by then.

As this song begins, it feels like a soundtrack to an unfolding drama about a coming menace that represents danger and struggle. Seeing as this tune conjures the violence of the Spanish Civil War and the oppression by Franco’s fascists, it stands to reason.

The “Lorca” in this song refers to poet and playwright Frederico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936) who was assassinated by Franco’s Nationalists when the fascist movement swept through Spain in the late 1930s and stayed in power until 1975. Before the war, Lorca had been a key figure in literature and art in Spain. Although he was celebrated and successful for many years, he was privately tortured in not being able to present himself as a gay man and a socialist without endangering himself. His country’s increasingly hostile atmosphere of strict social definitions of identity and political loyalties justified his fears.

The exact circumstances of Lorca’s assassination remain unclear. For one thing, his body was never found. When mystery, art, repression, and death characterize a story like this, folk mythology usually isn’t very far behind. It’s this poetic hook that MacGowan picked up on in writing this song about a tortured artist at the forefront of culture who is overcome by forces with the power to silence him.

Perhaps that sense of alienation was reflective of MacGowan’s own position at the time. He’d been in a downward spiral for a few years due to his worsening addiction issues. He’d missed shows and gave erratic performances that made him a liability to his bandmates at a crucial time in their development as their audience expanded. At the commercial peak of their career, having an unreliable frontman must have been a major source of tension. By 1991, MacGowan was out of the group that he once helped define.

Despite the personal turbulence in place when MacGowan wrote this song, it’s more likely that the themes found in “Lorca’s Novena” have more to do with how all artists must meet their times in relation to the state especially during times of political instability. The song is a reflection of the injustice and tragedy of Lorca’s death. But it’s also elegiac as a celebration of a voice that expressed the spirit of the nation despite the destructive political tides and social upheavals that threatened it.

The words really do suggest a novena, which is a series of rituals and prayers in the Catholic tradition to seek favour on behalf of the deceased while in a period of mourning. “Lorca’s Novena” conjures the suggestion of protecting the very things for which the departed once stood.

Mother of all our joys
Mother of all our sorrows
Intercede with him tonight
For all of our tomorrows

~ “Lorca’s Novena” by The Pogues

Even without the historical context, “Lorca’s Novena” makes a powerful statement about the integral role that artists of different perspectives and experiences play in the health of cultures and nations. It also suggests the idea that artistic works and expressions are powerful enough to threaten the hold that violent and oppressive forces have on citizens and the futures they strive toward. Why else would they ban books and demonize and even murder artists? Why else would they try to invalidate whole groups of people for whom their art was made?

Artists and their works are a reflection of and a path toward that future for which all citizens hope. They express visions of worlds better than the ones we’re in, and that dictators and their minions would prefer to keep from manifesting for fear of losing their power. Even when the artist is struck down, the ideals they stand for are that much more difficult to kill.

In 2001 and after a five-year span apart, The Pogues re-grouped as a live act with Shane MacGowan in front again. They stayed together off and on from then until 2014 before they called it quits again.

Shane MacGowan died in 2023. The following year, principal members Jem Finer, James Fearnley, and Spider Stacy regrouped under the Pogues name for a continuing series of shows.

You can learn more about Shane MacGowan at shanemacgowan.com.

For more about how important MacGowan was as an artist who gave voice to those of his culture and experience particularly in relation to power structures, check out this article that talks about all that, with selections of MacGowan’s songs to enhance it.

Enjoy!

MusikBlog präsentiert Bo Staloch. Wer da?

Bo Staloch, ein US-amerikanischer Singer/Songwriter aus Nashville (ursprünglich Austin, T......
#AbbyPowledge #BoStaloch#Americana #Country #FolkPop #News #SingerSongwriter
https://www.musikblog.de/2026/03/musikblog-praesentiert-bo-staloch/