Ismay Shares When I Was Younger
I don’t often gravitate towards live performance recordings, but it seems fitting considering the aims of Avery Hellman’s project, Ismay. The debut LP is filled with various field recordings and the trickling of nature, perhaps an homage to Hellman’s rural California upbringing, or perhaps just the lifeblood of humanity. For me, I was drawn to two things in this track: the vocals and the fingerpicking. The vocal delivery and storytelling reminds me of early Joanna Newsom; it’s distinctive and sort of takes on its own soul as notes land emphatically here and there, sort of rising and falling with each breath…not to mention the crystalline rise in pitch. In regards to the fingerpicking style, it helps the vocal delivery, sort of giving it a natural rhythm, or perhaps its the other way around; the accent from the fiddle/violin is an added bonus. This tune appears on Songs of Sonoma Mountain, out in February of 2020.
I’m way into this single from 
Margaux is a songwriter living in Brooklyn, but I hear a little bit of the softened vibes of maybe a Stella Donnelly in the way she’s crafted this track. Sure, there’s the intimacy of the strummed notes, but the song’s opening first few minutes have this playfulness that really makes po fans swoon, or at least this particular listener. But, what really drew me to the song was the shift midway through things; it takes on this ethereal dream quality that sort of takes the song into this floating meander that I didn’t see coming. It’s nice to be surprised by things. Expect a debut EP from the artists in November.
I’ve been covering the Finnish music scene for the last several years, and generally, I feel as if I’ve got a fair understanding of the musical landscape. That said, 
I first caught wind of