New music review with singles from the clumps and Painted Bird
Our weekly fix of the best new music as Julia Mason (aka The Decibel Decoder) brings us her new music review with singles from the clumps easy and Painted Bird Purgatory Man
Artist: the clumps
Track: easy
the clumps release new single easy marking their first release with AWAL and the first taste of an EP due in early 2027. Built around a collision of grunge, post-rock and noise, easy looks at the psychological toll that can sit behind pursuing something you care about, the pressure, exhaustion and uncertainty that are often flattened into the idea that following your passion should somehow feel effortless.
“Nothing left, Hold your breath, While they tell you everything, They never said it was easy” - the clumps
Behind the scenes, the momentum at home for the Norwegian band is being matched by an expanding international team. The Clumps work with Made Management, whose roster includes Aurora and Sigrid, alongside ACT Booking / Live Nation, as they begin building towards a wider European presence through 2027. Musically, the band draw from the weight and abrasion of ’90s alternative rock without leaning too heavily on nostalgia. Their sound pairs heavy, immediate guitars with atmosphere, tension and an increasingly strong sense of emotional restraint.
easy is the first indication of where that next phase is heading, with further new music to follow ahead of the EP next year.
* * *
Artist: Painted Bird
Track: Purgatory Man
Painted Bird is the moniker of Angus Rogers, London-based poet and frontman of cult jazz-punks Opus Kink. His solo outfit repurposes familiar morbid tendencies in a litany of old-world folk, classic country, hymnals and wonky chanson. Painted Bird has long haunted London’s underground scene and brought his particular brand of melancholy to Lisboan boxing clubs, grand Parisian halls, Spanish lighthouses and a thousand hazy bars and top floor apartments. Often accompanied by a revolving cast of crooners and players, his output until now has remained fluid and evasive.
With long-time collaborator and co-producer/engineer Jake Smallwood at Farm Road Studios, Brighton, Rogers has been busy building a folk-centred but pop-sensible DIY sound from the middle of a heap of wind organs, metal pipes, vintage mellotrons and broken guitars.
Luminaries from the Brighton and London underground scenes came and went leaving their sonic evidence, including members of Opus Kink and songwriter and saxophonist Freddie J Watts who can be heard on Purgatory Man.
With a growing body of recordings, completed between frantic Opus Kink tours and studio sessions, Painted Bird begins with Purgatory Man to unveil an expansive songcraft honed over years in the trenches, with much to come in the near future and no sign of becoming predictable in sight…
Painted Bird says of the track: “Purgatory Man represents a landmark in my quest to write THE existentialist pop song and draws on themes of meaninglessness, love, fear, rebirth and condemnation. Recorded by the ‘vast indifferent sea’ in my hometown of Brighton with the stars wheeling above, Purgatory Man brings together my penchants for folk, garage rock, chintzy pop and Euro-romanticism in what must surely be one of THE existentialist pop songs of our time, released on our (Opus Kink’s) home-grown label Hideous Mink Records.”
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