The RGM Inbox June 2020
Welcome to the latest instalment of the RGM inbox feature where we shine a light on a range of artists and recent releases you might have missed. With so much music being released daily it’s tough to keep up and there are many, many artists releasing quality music that could get lost in the shuffle. As usual, the RGM Inbox is an international affair with contributions from the USA, North Wales and an Australian based in the UK.
First up with have Chris Pellnat a singer/songwriter from Hudson, New York and a track called ‘Hold Me Now’ taken from his ‘Rain’ album. You might know Chris as he’s the guitarist with psychedelic rock band The Warp/The Weft but ‘Hold Me Now’ finds him firmly in singer-songwriter territory. The video he’s put together featuring vintage footage of dancer Sheree North does a nice job of capturing the old-time charm and feel of a song that due to the clever use of instrumentation sounds expansively intimate. The album (stream/ download / CD or even recycled Minidisc) is available via Bandcamp and is well worth checking out.
The Bandcamp listing claims “Recommended if you like to listen to The Left Banke and The High Llamas at the same time on two different machines while binge-watching The Muppet Show”. which sounds like a cool thing to do. To be honest Chris had me at Minidisc…
J.E. Sunde pic by Graham Gardner
Minneapolis based singer-songwriter J.E.Sunde has released the second single from his upcoming ‘9 Songs About Love’ album which isn’t due until 20th November on Vietnam Records. That seems like a long way off but luckily ‘I Don’t Care To Dance’ proves to be an intimate and real look at a situation that’ll be familiar to many of us.
“It is a tune indebted to the poetic approach of early Leonard Cohen with the same ‘future-past’ aesthetic of Adrienne Lenker or Andy Shauf. It’s about a man finding hope that love might be possible for him after having resigned himself that it wasn’t. It also speaks to the broken expectations and models that are given to men in how they should pursue relationships. Models and expectations that so often turn toxic”
This is the second release from the album following ‘Sunset Strip’ which had a really nice 60s/70s California groove. J.E. Sunde has been mentioned in the same breath as Leonard Cohen and Paul Simon so he’s in good company and ‘9 Songs About Love’ will be high on my list of upcoming release to check out when November rolls around.
New music from Emily Barker is always to be welcomed so the recent news that the UK based singer-songwriter had signed to Thirty Tigers was very good news indeed. The first fruits of this new liaison are available now via her poignant new single ‘Return Me’ which was inspired by recent news coverage of the climate crisis. The Australian born singer entered the general public consciousness when her track ‘Nostalgia’ became the theme song for the TV series Wallander and she has a string of albums and collaborations on her resume. Hopefully ‘Return Me’ will be followed by more new music in the not too distant future.
“I started to ask myself whether or not the path I am on is still the right one in light of the sombre and overwhelming revelation that our earth is very sick. Whether the journey is leading me where I want to go...whether it is time at last to return to my first home –a question that seems to have no answer, despite the number of songs I have dedicated to it.”
Last but by no means least we have a little gem that proves the creative juices have been flowing in North Wales despite the need to adhere to the rules on social distancing etc. Stacey McNeill and Jonathan Smith had originally been working on tracks for Stacey’s album but discovered that they worked so well as a duo recording a few tracks together was a good idea despite the fifty miles between them. The result is a rather lovely 6 track EP ‘Leaving Autumn Town’ which is available now via the usual streaming services that features bags of delicate, folky loveliness that crosses over into country territory on occasion. I was especially taken with the call and response vocal on ‘Between The Lines’.
And so we conclude the latest inbox feature here at RGM. We’ll be back very soon with more great music for you to check out.
Fans of Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys have been well served in recent years with a host of releases, including a string of box sets. This run continues with ‘On Tour 1999-2007’, an Exclusive release for Record Store Day 2026 that would make an ideal companion piece to the recently released ‘Live At The Roxy Theatre’ set. This vinyl-only release will be available worldwide for RSD and includes performances from Carnegie Hall (New York), Royal Festival Hall (London), UCLA Royce Hall (Los Angeles), CenterStaging (Burbank, CA), the Wiltern Theatre (Los Angeles), and Chicago. Musically, the LP takes a deep dive into both Brian’s solo catalogue and The Beach Boys, with the likes of ‘Desert Drive’ rubbing shoulders with mini-suite ‘Our Prayer / Gee / Heroes & Villains’ which could only have come from the mind of Brian Wilson. The press release, complete with full track details and Brian Wilson, Oglio Entertainment and Record Store Day 2026 links, follows: