Sekunderna - Hits [12"]

Artist: Sekunderna
Title: Hits
Format: 12” transparent violet vinyl
Cat#: Fika108SLP
Release date: 22nd August 2025
Bandcamp

Swedish punx Sekunderna return with their second album “Hits” in August - a record of shimmering power pop anthems delivered with a punk urgency in their native Swedish. A razor-sharp burst of melodic energy for fans of The Replacements, Martha and Hüsker Dü.

Recorded in the summer of 2024 at Stallet in Umeå with Henrik Wiklund and mixed/mastered by Jeff Burke, the cheekily titled Hits marks the next chapter for the band, influenced by the raw sound of The Marked Men, as they find escape from the monotony of work within the world of classic Scandinavian literature and cinema.

Fans of Sekunderna’s debut album will recognise the band’s raw energy and existential angst, but Hits also brings something new to the table: acoustic textures, bigger choruses, and a more nuanced sound, all while staying true to their roots. There are moments of sadness, joy, absurdity, and release—like on the first single “Se dig inte om,” a compressed powerpop anthem channeling betrayal and Eyvind Johnson references, or “Kedjorna faller,” set in a Aki Kaurismäki film.

The album’s artwork, created by collaborator Luc Simone, draws inspiration from Guided by Voices and old Swedish cinema aesthetics. Built from vintage magazine clippings and photos of workers in rural Sweden in the 1960s, it reflects the band’s respect for nostalgia, grit, and working-class storytelling. Catchy, heartbroken, and totally alive—Hits is the sound of Sekunderna moving forward without looking back. Turn it up. Let it hit.

Sekunderna are a four-piece from Umeå in Sweden, who combine the melodic instincts of Guided by Voices with the ferocity of Radioactivity and Ebba Grön. Their sound? Think glittering power pop riffs delivered with punk rock urgency—all sung in Swedish.

They formed in 2018, originally under the name Persona, to play punk rock inspired by the darkness of Ingmar Bergman films. Sekunderna (translation: The Seconds) refers back to short sharp punk songs, counting down the seconds before you have to pause your dreams to go to work, counting the seconds until you fall asleep. They sing about the everyday issues in a late stage capitalist society.

Sekunderna are:
Lars Sekund - Lead vocals, guitars
Johan Omen - Lead guitars, back up vocals
Tåme - Bass, back up vocals
Johan Fjellström - Drums

Discography: 
2018 - Persona EP (Luftslott Records, digital)
2020 - Paradiset EP (Luftslott Records, 7”)
2021 - Hjärtat EP (Luftslott Records, 7”)
2022 - Här har du ditt liv (Bloated Kat Records, Rockstar Records, Luftslott Records, LP)
2023 - Tiden är en dröm (Rockstar Records, 12”)
2025 - 4 Way Split (Bloated Kat Records Split LP)

Stanley Brinks - Happy New Year [12"]

Artist: Stanley Brinks
Title: Happy New Year
Format: 12" silver vinyl
Cat#: Fika109LP
Release date: 8th August 2025
Bandcamp | Spotify

Singer-songwriter and cult anti-folk troubadour Stanley Brinks returns with Happy New Year, a 10-song collection of lo-fi gems recorded in Berlin.

Happy New Year is a warm and celebratory record. Over simple rhythms and minimalist arrangements, Brinks delivers lyrics that oscillate between surreal humour, earnest wisdom, and playful melancholy. Happy New Year features contributions from longtime collaborator Clemence Freschard, plus appearances from Jyoti Sekhawat, Monica Kremidi, Rachel Lipson, Irma Ignatavičiūte, and Elisa Aseva, weaving together voices from across Brinks’ musical community. Their harmonies lend the songs a communal intimacy.

Stanley Brinks is renowned for his unique anti-folk style: both playful and suggestive, insightful and entertaining. Brinks was born in Paris, France, in 1973. He studied a bit of biology and worked as a nurse for a while. Half Swedish, half Moroccan, strongly inclined to travel the world, he soon began spending most of his life on the road and developed a strong relationship with New York. By the late 90s he’d become a full time singer-songwriter – André Herman Düne – as part of three piece indie-rock band, Herman Düne. Several albums and Peel sessions later and after a decade of touring Europe, mostly with American songwriters such as Jeffrey Lewis, Calvin Johnson and early Arcade Fire he settled in Berlin. The early carnival music of Trinidad became a passion, and in the early 21st century he became the unquestioned master of European calypso, changing his name to Stanley Brinks. Under this moniker he has recorded considerably more than 100 albums, collaborated with the New York Antifolk scene on several occasions, recorded and toured with traditional Norwegian musicians, and played a lot with The Wave Pictures.

Allo Darlin' - Bright Nights [12"/CD]

Artist: Allo Darlin’
Title: Bright Nights
Formats:
12” vinyl (ltd edition dusky nights colour vinyl
black vinyl edition
sunshine Rough Trade Exclusive yellow on transparent)
Digifile CD
Digital
Cat#: Fika107
Release date: 11th July 2025
Bandcamp | Spotify
Fika Recordings [UK] & Slumberland Records [USA]

On their first new material in a decade, Anglo-Australian indiepop quartet Allo Darlin’ return with their upcoming album 'Bright Nights' in July 2025 and marking the return of their smart, beautiful pop music, with lyrics that resonate with experience and melodies that chime, echo and soar.

Missing each other and the music they made together, Allo Darlin’ started having group Zoom calls during the early days of the corona pandemic, and decided that when the pandemic was over, they would become a band again. True to their word, in early 2023, the band announced that they would play a couple of shows in October of that year in the UK, and the fan response was truly overwhelming. Tickets sold out in minutes, with fans travelling from all over the world, and the band had to upgrade their London show to a venue twice the size of the original. It seemed like their fans had missed Allo Darlin’ as much as they had missed each other. 

Bright Nights follows the emotional tides of the preceding ten years: “It’s an album from the heart, dealing with themes of love, birth and death, which are things we reflect more on than we did when we made our first album. I would hope that the album sounds timeless and joyous, at other times reflective and emotional” says songwriter and vocalist Elizabeth Morris Innset.

Drawing inspiration from a mix of classic pop, folk and country, Bright Nights picks up where Allo Darlin’ left off with the warmth of 2014’s We Come From The Same Place, and recalls the confident and sophisticated sound of their second album, Europe. “When I listen to it I think of the desert, but I can see the sea. The sweet sounds of summer’s bright nights in the Northern hemisphere, but an awareness that winter will one day return”.

The lilting first single ‘Tricky Questions’' exhibits Elizabeth's adept skill at taking specific experiences and creating something timeless and universally resonant, and recalls living in Florence. “The city was full of tourists during the day,” she recalls “but after 9pm, they would all go back to their hotels. That’s when the city came alive to me, and it felt like it was just for us.” 

This sense of place is also prevalent on the warm reflection of ‘Historic Times’, which paints pictures of quintessential Mediterranean European scenes while musing on the magic of love, acting as a perfect distillation of the songwriting that's led to a legion of adoring fans following Allo Darlin's journey to date.

While Bright Nights isn’t a country album, the timelessness of folk and country influences weave throughout the record. ‘My Love Will Bring You Home’ might be written about Elizabeth’s young daughters, but it’s a mother’s love song, disguised as a country love song. “It also makes me feel a connection to the place I come from, which is a country town in Queensland, Australia - if I think of myself as a country singer, it makes more sense that I come from Rockhampton.”

On 'You Don’t Think Of Me At All' bassist Bill Botting’s songwriting makes an appearance for the first time on an Allo Darlin’ album, exhibiting his brand of road-trip power pop that he's made his own courtesy of 2017's well-received solo album. “I'm nervous and excited to have this song on the record and I hope people will think of it as a sad banger! It's about the heart break and embarrassment you feel when you figure out someone you maybe think of as a dear friend, just doesn't think of you at all” Bill explains. “It marked a fun change in the recording process, letting someone else be in the spotlight” adds Elizabeth, “especially when that someone is Bill”.

‘Slow Motion’ showcases Elizabeth's Morris’ skill of crafting songs that are both vulnerable and poignant. “I wrote Slow Motion after reading Lucinda Williams’ autobiography. I wanted to try writing a song that was just telling a simple story. I wrote it in about 10 minutes, about a car crash I had while I was pregnant and my eldest daughter was in the backseat. It felt good to make a song out of a situation that was frightening, to turn that into art. The recording on the album is a live take, which we have found is the best way for me to record these types of songs.”

Allo Darlin's songs work because, to borrow from Don Draper's Kodak Carousel pitch in Mad Men, they take us to a place where we feel loved. Emotional trust falls, they often take us to parts of ourselves we've either suppressed or have yet to discover and then are always there to catch us if and when we get there. In a changeable world, the warm embrace of their new record is as needed as it is welcome.

Live Dates

5th April - Cologne PopFest, Germany
7th October - Nottingham, Old Cold Store
9th October - London, EartH Hall
10th October - Glasgow, Stereo
11th October - Manchester, Band on the Wall

Allo Darlin' were formed in 2008 after Australian Elizabeth Morris arrived in London and bought a ukulele from the Duke of Uke shop in Shoreditch. Like a whole host of Australian musicians before her, Morris had headed to London to realise her musical ambitions, a young woman with the small instrument in the big city with even bigger ideas.  Once there happenstance, chance encounters and a Bruce Springsteen cover for a compilation would all conspire to create the crack squad that has endured, Morris being joined by fellow Brisbanite Bill Botting and the British duo of Michael Collins and Paul Rains.

From its first line (“Will you go out with me tonight, lose it on a disco floor?”), their self-titled debut released in 2010 fizzed with the effervescent, intoxicating energy and excitement of the opportunities and experiences it offered. From frosty night buses through to fiscal inadequacy and everything in between, it was an album which presented the city as a blank canvas where everything was fair game for romanticising and celebrating, and a world where most of life's tribulations could be solved with the warm embrace of a loved one. Fresh, bright and unashamedly hopeful and idealistic, blissful exuberance ran through it like the sound of a band in love with being in a band.

Writing in his 1200 word essay on the album for Australia's The Monthly (later featuring in his writing compilation Ten Rules Of Rock And Roll), former Go-between Robert Forster suggested that the band “now have doors open before them”. Thus follow-up Europe could be viewed as the album The Go-Betweens dared them to make, culminating in the sparkling pop perfection (and throwback to Morris' native Queensland) of lead single 'Capricornia'. Their sophomore effort simultaneously looked at the Europe of her present alongside the Australia of her past, offering a stunning reflection on belonging and sense of place and a band at their most dazzlingly technicolour that built on the eagerness and immediacy of the debut with contemplation, sophistication and ambition.

Successor, 2014’s ‘We Come From The Same Place’ dwelt on belonging in terms of new beginnings and documented Morris' journey into a new chapter in her life, resulting in an album that saw her flit between the uncertainty of starting anew and post-resettlement confidence.

Allo Darlin's songs work because, to borrow from Don Draper's Kodak Carousel pitch in Mad Men, they take us to a place where we feel loved. Emotional trust falls, they often take us to parts of ourselves we've either suppressed or have yet to discover and then are always there to catch us if and when we get there.

Sekunderna - Vad har du gjort? [Digital]

Artist: Sekunderna
Title: Vad har du gjort?
Format: Digital single
Cat#: Fika108SG2
Release date: 11th June 2025
li.sten.to/sekunderna-vad-har-du-gjort

Swedish powerpop punx Sekunderna are back today with a new single “Vad har du gjort?” and announce their second LP “Hits”, coming out on August 2025.

Vad har du gjort? is classic Sekunderna: a razor-sharp burst of melodic energy for fans of The Replacements, Martha and Husker Du, about growing up in a small town and mostly hating it.

Recorded in the summer of 2024 at Stallet in Umeå with Henrik Wiklund and mixed/mastered by Jeff Burke, the cheekily titled Hits marks the next chapter for the band, influenced by the raw sound of The Marked Men, as they find escape from the monotony of work within the world of classic Scandinavian literature and cinema.

Fans of Sekunderna’s debut album will recognise the band’s raw energy and existential angst, but Hits also brings something new to the table: acoustic textures, bigger choruses, and a more nuanced sound, all while staying true to their roots. There are moments of sadness, joy, absurdity, and release—like on the first single “Se dig inte om,” a compressed powerpop anthem channeling betrayal and Eyvind Johnson references, or “Kedjorna faller,” set in a Aki Kaurismäki film.

The album’s artwork, created by collaborator Luc Simone, draws inspiration from Guided by Voices and old Swedish cinema aesthetics. Built from vintage magazine clippings and photos of workers in rural Sweden in the 1960s, it reflects the band’s respect for nostalgia, grit, and working-class storytelling.

Catchy, heartbroken, and totally alive—Hits is the sound of Sekunderna moving forward without looking back. Turn it up. Let it hit.

Sekunderna are:
Lars Sekund - Lead vocals, guitars
Johan Omen - Lead guitars, back up vocals
Tåme - Bass, back up vocals
Johan Fjellström - Drums

Discography: 

2018 - Persona EP (Luftslott Records, digital)
2020 - Paradiset EP (Luftslott Records, 7”)
2021 - Hjärtat EP (Luftslott Records, 7”)
2022 - Här har du ditt liv (Bloated Kat Records, Rockstar Records, Luftslott Records, LP)
2023 - Tiden är en dröm (Rockstar Records, 12”)
2025 - 4 Way Split (Bloated Kat Records Split LP)

Allo Darlin' - Cologne [Digital]

Artist: Allo Darlin’
Title: My Love Will Bring You Home
Format: Digital single
Cat#: Fika107SG3
Release date: 4th June 2025
Bandcamp | Spotify
Fika Recordings [UK] & Slumberland Records [USA]

11 years since the last Allo Darlin’ album, the Anglo-Australian indiepop quartet are back with a new record “Bright Nights”. The album is due in July on Fika Recordings (UK) and Slumberland Records (USA), ahead of live UK dates in October.

• Latest single “Cologne” out June 4th digitally

• Third track to be taken from their forthcoming album “Bright Nights”

• Bright Nights is their 4th album, and their first since 2014’s “We Come From The Same Place”

Out today is the new single “Cologne”, the third track to be taken from the forthcoming album following rapturously received tracks “Tricky Questions” and “My Love Will Bring You Home”.

“Cologne” was written for the band’s performance at the Cologne Popfest in April 2025, where it was received with warm enthusiasm. “Cologne” reminds us that songs can sometimes be prescient, sometimes wishful thinking, and that some cities are so beautiful that they deserve their own songs. A fizzy pop song about a spring romance written in winter’s darkest month, when the atmosphere is so cold that mother-of-pearl clouds appear on the horizon.

On their first new material in a decade, Anglo-Australian indiepop quartet Allo Darlin’ return with their upcoming album 'Bright Nights' in July 2025 and marking the return of their smart, beautiful pop music, with lyrics that resonate with experience and melodies that chime, echo and soar.

Missing each other and the music they made together, Allo Darlin’ started having group Zoom calls during the early days of the corona pandemic, and decided that when the pandemic was over, they would become a band again. True to their word, in early 2023, the band announced that they would play a couple of shows in October of that year in the UK, and the fan response was truly overwhelming. Tickets sold out in minutes, with fans travelling from all over the world, and the band had to upgrade their London show to a venue twice the size of the original. It seemed like their fans had missed Allo Darlin’ as much as they had missed each other. 

Bright Nights follows the emotional tides of the preceding ten years: “It’s an album from the heart, dealing with themes of love, birth and death, which are things we reflect more on than we did when we made our first album. I would hope that the album sounds timeless and joyous, at other times reflective and emotional” says songwriter and vocalist Elizabeth Morris Innset.

Drawing inspiration from a mix of classic pop, folk and country, Bright Nights picks up where Allo Darlin’ left off with the warmth of 2014’s We Come From The Same Place, and recalls the confident and sophisticated sound of their second album, Europe. “When I listen to it I think of the desert, but I can see the sea. The sweet sounds of summer’s bright nights in the Northern hemisphere, but an awareness that winter will one day return”.

Live Dates

5th April - Cologne PopFest, Germany
7th October - Nottingham, Old Cold Store
9th October - London, EartH Hall
10th October - Glasgow, Stereo
11th October - Manchester, Band on the Wall

For UK press: Liv at One Beat PR
For US press: Daniel at Force Field PR

Allo Darlin' were formed in 2008 after Australian Elizabeth Morris arrived in London and bought a ukulele from the Duke of Uke shop in Shoreditch. Like a whole host of Australian musicians before her, Morris had headed to London to realise her musical ambitions, a young woman with the small instrument in the big city with even bigger ideas.  Once there happenstance, chance encounters and a Bruce Springsteen cover for a compilation would all conspire to create the crack squad that has endured, Morris being joined by fellow Brisbanite Bill Botting and the British duo of Michael Collins and Paul Rains.

From its first line (“Will you go out with me tonight, lose it on a disco floor?”), their self-titled debut released in 2010 fizzed with the effervescent, intoxicating energy and excitement of the opportunities and experiences it offered. From frosty night buses through to fiscal inadequacy and everything in between, it was an album which presented the city as a blank canvas where everything was fair game for romanticising and celebrating, and a world where most of life's tribulations could be solved with the warm embrace of a loved one. Fresh, bright and unashamedly hopeful and idealistic, blissful exuberance ran through it like the sound of a band in love with being in a band.

Writing in his 1200 word essay on the album for Australia's The Monthly (later featuring in his writing compilation Ten Rules Of Rock And Roll), former Go-between Robert Forster suggested that the band “now have doors open before them”. Thus follow-up Europe could be viewed as the album The Go-Betweens dared them to make, culminating in the sparkling pop perfection (and throwback to Morris' native Queensland) of lead single 'Capricornia'. Their sophomore effort simultaneously looked at the Europe of her present alongside the Australia of her past, offering a stunning reflection on belonging and sense of place and a band at their most dazzlingly technicolour that built on the eagerness and immediacy of the debut with contemplation, sophistication and ambition.

Successor, 2014’s ‘We Come From The Same Place’ dwelt on belonging in terms of new beginnings and documented Morris' journey into a new chapter in her life, resulting in an album that saw her flit between the uncertainty of starting anew and post-resettlement confidence.

Allo Darlin's songs work because, to borrow from Don Draper's Kodak Carousel pitch in Mad Men, they take us to a place where we feel loved. Emotional trust falls, they often take us to parts of ourselves we've either suppressed or have yet to discover and then are always there to catch us if and when we get there.

Allo Darlin' - My Love Will Bring You Home [Digital]

Artist: Allo Darlin’
Title: My Love Will Bring You Home
Format: Digital single
Cat#: Fika107SG2
Release date: 7th May 2025
Bandcamp | Spotify
Fika Recordings [UK] & Slumberland Records [USA]

11 years since the last Allo Darlin’ album, the Anglo-Australian indiepop quartet are back with a new record “Bright Nights”. The album is due in July on Fika Recordings (UK) and Slumberland Records (USA), ahead of live UK dates in October.

• Today Allo Darlin’ announce their new album “Bright Nights”- out July 2025

• Bright Nights is their 4th album, and their first since 2014’s “We Come From The Same Place”

• New single “My Love Will Bring You Home” out today digitally

Out today is the new single “My Love Will Bring You Home”, the second track to be taken from the forthcoming album following April’s rapturously received “Tricky Questions”.

On their first new material in a decade, Anglo-Australian indiepop quartet Allo Darlin’ return with their upcoming album 'Bright Nights' in July 2025 and marking the return of their smart, beautiful pop music, with lyrics that resonate with experience and melodies that chime, echo and soar.

Missing each other and the music they made together, Allo Darlin’ started having group Zoom calls during the early days of the corona pandemic, and decided that when the pandemic was over, they would become a band again. True to their word, in early 2023, the band announced that they would play a couple of shows in October of that year in the UK, and the fan response was truly overwhelming. Tickets sold out in minutes, with fans travelling from all over the world, and the band had to upgrade their London show to a venue twice the size of the original. It seemed like their fans had missed Allo Darlin’ as much as they had missed each other. 

Bright Nights follows the emotional tides of the preceding ten years: “It’s an album from the heart, dealing with themes of love, birth and death, which are things we reflect more on than we did when we made our first album. I would hope that the album sounds timeless and joyous, at other times reflective and emotional” says songwriter and vocalist Elizabeth Morris Innset.

Drawing inspiration from a mix of classic pop, folk and country, Bright Nights picks up where Allo Darlin’ left off with the warmth of 2014’s We Come From The Same Place, and recalls the confident and sophisticated sound of their second album, Europe. “When I listen to it I think of the desert, but I can see the sea. The sweet sounds of summer’s bright nights in the Northern hemisphere, but an awareness that winter will one day return”.

While Bright Nights isn’t a country album, the timelessness of folk and country influences weave throughout the record. ‘My Love Will Bring You Home’ might be written about Elizabeth’s young daughters, but it’s a mother’s love song, disguised as a country love song. “It also makes me feel a connection to the place I come from, which is a country town in Queensland, Australia - if I think of myself as a country singer, it makes more sense that I come from Rockhampton.”

Live Dates

5th April - Cologne PopFest, Germany
7th October - Nottingham, Old Cold Store
9th October - London, EartH Hall
10th October - Glasgow, Stereo
11th October - Manchester, Band on the Wall

For UK press: Liv at One Beat PR
For US press: Daniel at Force Field PR

Allo Darlin' were formed in 2008 after Australian Elizabeth Morris arrived in London and bought a ukulele from the Duke of Uke shop in Shoreditch. Like a whole host of Australian musicians before her, Morris had headed to London to realise her musical ambitions, a young woman with the small instrument in the big city with even bigger ideas.  Once there happenstance, chance encounters and a Bruce Springsteen cover for a compilation would all conspire to create the crack squad that has endured, Morris being joined by fellow Brisbanite Bill Botting and the British duo of Michael Collins and Paul Rains.

From its first line (“Will you go out with me tonight, lose it on a disco floor?”), their self-titled debut released in 2010 fizzed with the effervescent, intoxicating energy and excitement of the opportunities and experiences it offered. From frosty night buses through to fiscal inadequacy and everything in between, it was an album which presented the city as a blank canvas where everything was fair game for romanticising and celebrating, and a world where most of life's tribulations could be solved with the warm embrace of a loved one. Fresh, bright and unashamedly hopeful and idealistic, blissful exuberance ran through it like the sound of a band in love with being in a band.

Writing in his 1200 word essay on the album for Australia's The Monthly (later featuring in his writing compilation Ten Rules Of Rock And Roll), former Go-between Robert Forster suggested that the band “now have doors open before them”. Thus follow-up Europe could be viewed as the album The Go-Betweens dared them to make, culminating in the sparkling pop perfection (and throwback to Morris' native Queensland) of lead single 'Capricornia'. Their sophomore effort simultaneously looked at the Europe of her present alongside the Australia of her past, offering a stunning reflection on belonging and sense of place and a band at their most dazzlingly technicolour that built on the eagerness and immediacy of the debut with contemplation, sophistication and ambition.

Successor, 2014’s ‘We Come From The Same Place’ dwelt on belonging in terms of new beginnings and documented Morris' journey into a new chapter in her life, resulting in an album that saw her flit between the uncertainty of starting anew and post-resettlement confidence.

Allo Darlin's songs work because, to borrow from Don Draper's Kodak Carousel pitch in Mad Men, they take us to a place where we feel loved. Emotional trust falls, they often take us to parts of ourselves we've either suppressed or have yet to discover and then are always there to catch us if and when we get there.

Sekunderna - Se dig inte om [Digital]

Artist: Sekunderna
Title: Se dig inte om
Format: Digital single
Cat#: Fika108SG1
Release date: 30th April 2025
li.sten.to/sekunderna-se-dig-inte-om

Swedish powerpop punx Sekunderna are back with their new single “Se dig inte om”.
Se dig inte om is classic Sekunderna: a razor-sharp burst of melodic energy for fans of The Replacements, Martha and Husker Du. 

The track title, a nod to Swedish Nobel laureate Eyvind Johnson’s novel (the follow up book to 1935’s “Här har du ditt liv” from which Sekunderna’s debut album borrows its title), blends literary references with raw emotion. This is an anthem about betrayal and self-deception, condensed down to two feelings, love and disappointment. It’s a big song, with bigger feelings.

Sekunderna are a four-piece from Umeå in Sweden, who combine the melodic instincts of Guided by Voices with the ferocity of Radioactivity and Ebba Grön. Their sound? Think glittering power pop riffs delivered with punk rock urgency—all sung in Swedish.

They formed in 2018, originally under the name Persona, to play punk rock inspired by the darkness of Ingmar Bergman films. Sekunderna (translation: The Seconds) refers back to short punk songs, counting down the seconds before you have to pause your dreams to go to work, counting the seconds until you fall asleep. They sing about the everyday issues in a late stage capitalist society.

Catchy, heartbroken, and totally alive—Se dig inte om is the sound of Sekunderna moving forward without looking back. Turn it up. Let it hit.

Sekunderna are:
Lars Sekund - Lead vocals, guitars
Johan Omen - Lead guitars, back up vocals
Tåme - Bass, back up vocals
Johan Fjellström - Drums

Discography: 

2018 - Persona EP (Luftslott Records, digital)
2020 - Paradiset EP (Luftslott Records, 7”)
2021 - Hjärtat EP (Luftslott Records, 7”)
2022 - Här har du ditt liv (Bloated Kat Records, Rockstar Records, Luftslott Records, LP)
2023 - Tiden är en dröm (Rockstar Records, 12”)

Allo Darlin' - Tricky Questions [Digital]

Artist: Allo Darlin’
Title: Tricky Questions
Format: Digital single
Cat#: Fika107SG1
Release date: 2nd April 2025
Bandcamp | Spotify

Allo Darlin' return with new single "Tricky Questions" - their first new music since 2016
Out now via Fika Recordings (UK) & Slumberland Records (USA)
October UK tour, with shows in Nottingham, London, Glasgow and Manchester.

After almost a decade away, Anglo-Australian indiepop quartet Allo Darlin’ are back with their first new music since 2016’s farewell 7” single ‘Hymn On The 45’, and announce a UK tour this October (details below).

New single ‘Tricky Questions’ exhibits Elizabeth's adept skill at taking specific experiences and creating something timeless and universally resonant, and recalls living in Florence having left London:

“There’s a piazza, Piazza della Signoria, not far from where I used to live, where the Palazzo Vecchio is. You used to be able to go and walk right up to the sculptures in the Loggia, but I think now they are roped off and a guard watches over them. The city was full of tourists during the day, but after 9pm, they would all go back to their hotels. That’s when the city came alive to me, and it felt like it was just for us.

"I was really thinking about that place when I wrote this song. I wanted to go back there and soak it all up again. Writing about it helped me feel like I was back there, in a place that is timeless. But of course, more than being about a specific place, this song is really about a relationship and how it makes me feel.”

‘Tricky Questions’ was the first song Elizabeth wrote for a reformed Allo Darlin’, in the early months of the corona pandemic. Indeed, it was the corona pandemic that brought the band back together, while stuck in their isolation in Norway, England and Australia. Missing each other and the music they made together, Allo Darlin’ started having group Zoom calls, and decided that when the pandemic was over, they would become a band again. In early 2023, the band announced that they would play a couple of shows in October of that year in the UK, and the fan response was truly overwhelming.

Tickets sold out in minutes, with fans travelling from all over the world, and the band had to upgrade their London show to a venue twice the size of the original. It seemed like their fans had missed Allo Darlin’ as much as they had missed each other. 

Live Dates

5th April - Cologne PopFest, Germany
7th October - Nottingham, Old Cold Store
9th October - London, EartH Hall
10th October - Glasgow, Stereo
11th October - Manchester, Yes Pink Room

Tickets on sale Wednesday 9th April 10am
Pre-sale for all dates via the Allo Darlin’ mailing list from Monday 7th April 10am - sign up via allodarlin.com

Allo Darlin' were formed in 2008 after Australian Elizabeth Morris arrived in London and bought a ukulele from the Duke of Uke shop in Shoreditch. Like a whole host of Australian musicians before her, Morris had headed to London to realise her musical ambitions, a young woman with the small instrument in the big city with even bigger ideas.  Once there happenstance, chance encounters and a Bruce Springsteen cover for a compilation would all conspire to create the crack squad that has endured, Morris being joined by fellow Brisbanite Bill Botting and the British duo of Michael Collins and Paul Rains.

From its first line (“Will you go out with me tonight, lose it on a disco floor?”), their self-titled debut released in 2010 fizzed with the effervescent, intoxicating energy and excitement of the opportunities and experiences it offered. From frosty night buses through to fiscal inadequacy and everything in between, it was an album which presented the city as a blank canvas where everything was fair game for romanticising and celebrating, and a world where most of life's tribulations could be solved with the warm embrace of a loved one. Fresh, bright and unashamedly hopeful and idealistic, blissful exuberance ran through it like the sound of a band in love with being in a band.

Writing in his 1200 word essay on the album for Australia's The Monthly (later featuring in his writing compilation Ten Rules Of Rock And Roll), former Go-between Robert Forster suggested that the band “now have doors open before them”. Thus follow-up Europe could be viewed as the album The Go-Betweens dared them to make, culminating in the sparkling pop perfection (and throwback to Morris' native Queensland) of lead single 'Capricornia'. Their sophomore effort simultaneously looked at the Europe of her present alongside the Australia of her past, offering a stunning reflection on belonging and sense of place and a band at their most dazzlingly technicolour that built on the eagerness and immediacy of the debut with contemplation, sophistication and ambition.

Successor, 2014’s ‘We Come From The Same Place’ dwelt on belonging in terms of new beginnings and documented Morris' journey into a new chapter in her life, resulting in an album that saw her flit between the uncertainty of starting anew and post-resettlement confidence.

Allo Darlin's songs work because, to borrow from Don Draper's Kodak Carousel pitch in Mad Men, they take us to a place where we feel loved. Emotional trust falls, they often take us to parts of ourselves we've either suppressed or have yet to discover and then are always there to catch us if and when we get there.

Mirrored Daughters - Mirrored Daughters [12"]

Artist: Mirrored Daughters
Title: Mirrored Daughters
Format: 12” black vinyl
Cat#: Fika106LP
Release date: 21st February 2025
Bandcamp | Spotify

Fika presents Mirrored Daughters - an album of lo-fi folk-pop and explorative woodland meditations from members of Firestations, The Leaf Library and Marlody. Bright-eyed, melodic music inspired by travels in Epping Forest as much as it was by spontaneous collaboration, these 11 tracks deliver an intriguing journey through (and beyond) the forest - crystal clear melancholy interspersed with benign drone rituals. 

The music on their self-titled debut takes a step away from the widescreen production of the artists’ other groups and instead revels in the instinctive, warm tones of acoustic instruments; guitars, cellos, clarinet, a harmonium and bells providing the earthy sonic environment for these spacious songs. 

Starting out as quickly-recorded acoustic guitar and bass pieces by Lewis Young (Leaf Library drummer) they were then taken up by Mike Cranny (guitarist and singer in fellow Walthamstow travellers Firestations), cellist Hannah Reeves and additional Leaf Library member Matt Ashton. Each added parts remotely, engineered in their home studios, before singer Marlody brought her crystalline voice to the music; layered harmonies and twisting, looping phrases that tie the story together.  

Alongside these sketches were Lewis’s trips to the forest with a train of bells and a battered old violin, all dragged through mud, fallen leaves and brambles to create otherworldly yet natural sounds - music that sounds like it’s sprung from the forest floor. Lewis likens this ritual to “uncovering music that’s always been… a summoning of spirit folk, used to appearing in autumn, taking a pilgrimage through forests with joy and frivolity. A Miyazaki-meets-Chaucer kinda vibe.” 

While the music is inhabited by these eerie and historic landscapes - camps, iron age forts, the folklore and the golden atmosphere of autumn - the lyrics speak to more personal (if occasionally abstract) concerns, both revelling in the escape enabled by the forest and worrying about the encroaching city at the edge of it. There are dreams of leaving (“Leave the sound and your heavy head behind” from first single City Song, “Silently running at the moment of waking” from Waiting At The Water) and fear of stasis (“I fell over in my sleep again, a head all cloudy with fine rain, depthless in the breaking day, tiredness is waiting, serpentine” from Unreturning Sun). 

The band name, taken from lyrics posited by Mike during the lyric writing process, perfectly encapsulates the atmosphere conjured here, neither sinister nor wholly comforting, unknown yet alluring. As author Will Ashon says in the sleeve notes to the album (an excerpt from his book Strange Labyrinth published by Granta Books), “Everything is always changing in Epping Forest. There’s the yearly cycle of growth and death, of course, and the daily iteration of this in new buds, new blossom, new leaves, dead blossom, dead leaves and so on, the tiny, inconsequential shifts which gradually add up to something more”.

From the album opener, the gently sinister Mirror Descend, to the skyward-looking, hopeful closing track of Mirror Ascend, this collection of songs and rituals leaves space for the listener to take their own journey through a half-real, half-imagined landscape, before emerging changed, re-entering the borderlands at the boundary of the suburban sprawl.

Biographies:

Mirrored Daughters are Marlody, Mike (Firestations), Matt and Lewis (The Leaf Library), and Hannah.

Marlody (Skep Wax) is a singer/songwriter based in Kent. Dominated by her extraordinary keyboard playing, Marlody’s songs are illuminated - and sometimes made sinister - by occasional bursts of programmed percussion, submarine bass and distant, chiming digital bells. 

Firestations (Lost Map Records) span genres from shoegaze to alt-pop and harmony-driven psychedelia. Their second album, The Year Dot, released in 2018, was followed by sonic collage album Dream Home in 2020 and the Automatic Tendencies EP project in 2020-21. The latter took the form of three EPs over a six-month period, each including alternative “sunken” versions by the band as well as covers and remixes of the band’s tracks by other artists. Thick Terrain, released in 2023, saw Firestations return to album format with ten tracks ranging from hypnotic sci-fi landscapes to addictive dream-pop jangles, exploring ideas around identity, conflict, progress and sanity.

The Leaf Library (WIAIWYA) are a north London band playing melodic dream-like music built on layers of chiming guitars, pulsing electronics, noise and looping drones. They have released three studio albums (Daylight Versions, About Minerals, The World Is A Bell) and a double LP of rarities and compilation tracks (Library Music: Volume One) on Where It’s At Is Where You Are, a collaborative LP with Japanese artist Teruyuki Kurihara (Melody Tomb) on electronic label Mille Plateaux, and a recent EP of electronic pop songs on the Castles In Space label.

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“a moment of unabashed beauty that feels like clouds parting after a storm. By the end of this evocatively autumnal album, Mirrored Daughters have wandered deep into the forest, but are finally out of the woods.” The Quietus

“a deeply atmospheric self-titled album that never really left the forest, a blend of ambient folk and mystical lo-fi that’s halfway between Modern Nature and The Left Outsides” Shindig ⭐⭐⭐⭐

“shades of The Staves, The Incredible Strong Band and Pentangle, Mirrored Daughters’ debut has real charm and freshness” Songlines ⭐⭐⭐

“Oh what an unadulterated joy this self-titled album from Mirrored Daughters is. A combination of various weird folk artists, conjoined in an Electric Eden of collaborative noise. Almost borne of those pages of that fantastic book, an exultation of the rural against the urban. In the absence of our beloved The Left Outsides, this is surely the tonic for a bucolic spring.” Echoes and Dust

“Harmonium heavy instrumentals such as ‘The Ambresbury Daughter’ are incredibly atmospheric while singer Marlody effortlessly floats throughout songs such as ‘Unreturning Sun’ and ‘The New Design’. Very nice.” Americana UK

“A diaphanous as much as lamenting wisp of veiled pastoral folk rich tapestry, Mirrored Daughters haven’t just evoked the landscape but blended right in with it, becoming part of the stories, the myth and dream realism of an iconic English woodland. The ensemble manages to inhabit many different ages of existence as they stage an intervention against urbanisation and the loss of wildling areas.
Many fans of the folk idiom, of the English school of folk-rock and bards and troubadours will feel very much at ease with this album, whilst presently surprised by the touches of the unearthly, of visitations and the near cosmic. A case of the familiar and yet, not so familiar. A good start to a new project.” Monolith Cocktail

“Bright acoustic guitars and Marlody’s voice ensure that it isn’t wrong to call Mirrored Daughters a pop album, but neither do Mirrored Daughters shortchange the more experimental side of their music; the instrumental, ambient, nature-sound pieces are integrated smoothly alongside the folk songs.” Rosy Overdrive

“From the voice-led cohort of compositions, there are some truly captivating passages to be found. This entails transporting us through the Meg Baird-meets-Tindersticks beauty of “City Song”; the skittering harmony-loaded uplift of “The New Design”; the overlapping vocal swirl of “Unreturning Sun”; the cello-steered hypnotics of “Waiting At The Water”; and the wistful Vashti Bunyan-tinged psych-pop reverie of “An Open Door”.” Freq

“The creaking of electronics and field recordings on “Something Hollow”, the bold foray into folktronica on “Decrowned” and the evanescent, almost goth liturgy on “The Lanthorn Daughter” further shift the axis towards an indefinite temporal dimension, in many ways similar to Low’s first albums, a key to understanding the many merits and very few defects of an excellent debut.” Ondarock [IT]

“it's a truly beautiful creation, subdued, sensitive, and in many ways full of magic and peace. It's hard to resist this call of the wild.” Sunburnsout [FR]

Mirrored Daughters - Unreturning Sun [Digital]

Artist: Mirrored Daughters
Title: Unreturning Sun
Format: Digital single
Cat#: Fika106SG3
Release date: 4th February 2025
Bandcamp | Spotify

Taken from the forthcoming self-titled debut album (Feb 2025).
Mirrored Daughters play The Harrison, Kings Cross, London to launch the album on the 26th of February.

Fika Recordings present Mirrored Daughters - an album of lo-fi folk-pop and explorative woodland meditations from members of Firestations, The Leaf Library and Marlody. Bright-eyed, melodic music inspired by travels in Epping Forest as much as it was by spontaneous collaboration, these 11 tracks deliver an intriguing journey through (and beyond) the forest - crystal clear melancholy interspersed with benign drone rituals. 

Unreturning Sun is the third single taken from the self-titled debut album, more pensive than the previous two singles. It’s a worried wander through misty rain at the edges of the forest/city during the onset of winter, when the summer is at its furthest distance, drenched in looped vocals.

The music on their self-titled debut takes a step away from the widescreen production of the artists’ other groups and instead revels in the instinctive, warm tones of acoustic instruments; guitars, cellos, clarinet, a harmonium and bells providing the earthy sonic environment for these spacious songs. 

Starting out as quickly-recorded acoustic guitar and bass pieces by Lewis Young (Leaf Library drummer) they were then taken up by Mike Cranny (guitarist and singer in fellow Walthamstow travellers Firestations), cellist Hannah Reeves and additional Leaf Library member Matt Ashton. Each added parts remotely, engineered in their home studios, before singer Marlody brought her crystalline voice to the music; layered harmonies and twisting, looping phrases that tie the story together.  

Alongside these sketches were Lewis’s trips to the forest with a train of bells and a battered old violin, all dragged through mud, fallen leaves and brambles to create otherworldly yet natural sounds - music that sounds like it’s sprung from the forest floor. Lewis likens this ritual to “uncovering music that’s always been… a summoning of spirit folk, used to appearing in autumn, taking a pilgrimage through forests with joy and frivolity. A Miyazaki-meets-Chaucer kinda vibe.” 

While the music is inhabited by these eerie and historic landscapes - camps, iron age forts, the folklore and the golden atmosphere of autumn - the lyrics speak to more personal (if occasionally abstract) concerns, both revelling in the escape enabled by the forest and worrying about the encroaching city at the edge of it. There are dreams of leaving (“Leave the sound and your heavy head behind” from first single City Song, “Silently running at the moment of waking” from Waiting At The Water) and fear of stasis (“I fell over in my sleep again, a head all cloudy with fine rain, depthless in the breaking day, tiredness is waiting, serpentine” from Unreturning Sun). 

The band name, taken from lyrics posited by Mike during the lyric writing process, perfectly encapsulates the atmosphere conjured here, neither sinister nor wholly comforting, unknown yet alluring. As author Will Ashon says in the sleeve notes to the album (an excerpt from his book Strange Labyrinth published by Granta Books), “Everything is always changing in Epping Forest. There’s the yearly cycle of growth and death, of course, and the daily iteration of this in new buds, new blossom, new leaves, dead blossom, dead leaves and so on, the tiny, inconsequential shifts which gradually add up to something more”.

From the album opener, the gently sinister Mirror Descend, to the skyward-looking, hopeful closing track of Mirror Ascend, this collection of songs and rituals leaves space for the listener to take their own journey through a half-real, half-imagined landscape, before emerging changed, re-entering the borderlands at the boundary of the suburban sprawl.

View fullsize

Biographies:

Mirrored Daughters are Marlody, Mike (Firestations), Matt and Lewis (The Leaf Library), and Hannah.

Marlody (Skep Wax) is a singer/songwriter based in Kent. Dominated by her extraordinary keyboard playing, Marlody’s songs are illuminated - and sometimes made sinister - by occasional bursts of programmed percussion, submarine bass and distant, chiming digital bells. 

Firestations (Lost Map Records) span genres from shoegaze to alt-pop and harmony-driven psychedelia. Their second album, The Year Dot, released in 2018, was followed by sonic collage album Dream Home in 2020 and the Automatic Tendencies EP project in 2020-21. The latter took the form of three EPs over a six-month period, each including alternative “sunken” versions by the band as well as covers and remixes of the band’s tracks by other artists. Thick Terrain, released in 2023, saw Firestations return to album format with ten tracks ranging from hypnotic sci-fi landscapes to addictive dream-pop jangles, exploring ideas around identity, conflict, progress and sanity.

The Leaf Library (WIAIWYA) are a north London band playing melodic dream-like music built on layers of chiming guitars, pulsing electronics, noise and looping drones. They have released three studio albums (Daylight Versions, About Minerals, The World Is A Bell) and a double LP of rarities and compilation tracks (Library Music: Volume One) on Where It’s At Is Where You Are, a collaborative LP with Japanese artist Teruyuki Kurihara (Melody Tomb) on electronic label Mille Plateaux, and a recent EP of electronic pop songs on the Castles In Space label.