On 24 March The Natural Lines will release their self-titled debut album via Bella Union. Last month the band shared a video for first single “Monotony” and today they are sharing a beautiful and captivating animated video for new single “A Scene That Will Never Die”, created by JOY + NOELLE. Commenting on the song the band’s frontman Matt Pond says: “True story. The scene starts with me at the end of my rope on the east coast. At this point in late summer, I sent a text message to the love of my life — before she was the love of my life — to see if she’d like to sleep under the stars. She was performing on the opposite coast and stopped mid-show to respond. We did not go camping. But every ensuing message brought us closer and closer until we became an inseparable team. Until recent years, it was out of character for me to be openly grateful. And further, to appreciate the virtues of modern technology. I was better at destroying phones than using them as a proper tool. But I believe people — including me — are capable of change. We are capable of being better people. And we are even capable of love.” This romantic tale is lovingly brought to life in the gorgeous animated video.

Sometimes, a change of view can transform a person’s world. On ‘Don’t Come Down’, the artist formerly known as Matt Pond PA can be found with his “shoulder on the concrete” of a pavement, scoping out the world anew. This granular realignment of perspective serves as an open door to the debut album from The Natural Lines. At once clearly Pond’s work yet a huge leap forward in its measured songcraft, melodic immediacy, collaborative detail and wryly questioning lyrics, the result is a gorgeous album of intimate reflections from a relocated, renamed, revivified talent.

Recorded with close collaborators and friends over a period that saw Pond make vital adjustments to his life, its stealth emergence reflects his desire to set a fresh pace for himself and come from somewhere new, somewhere more open.

Now based in Kingston, New York, with his partner and wild dog Willa, Matt explains the album’s gestation thus. “It was something different from the start. I wanted to write as purely as I could. Instead of getting stuck in the ‘tour, write an album, release an album, tour’ cycle, which is not a natural way of writing or living, I wanted to write an album and when it was done I wanted to make sure it was done. I didn’t want this feeling of, ‘Oh, we didn’t have time’, or, ‘I don’t know whether I believe in the songs but it’s coming out anyway.’ I used to be always racing to the finish line, but I’m not anymore.”

For Matt, the call to ring the changes came with the recognition of “a certain nihilism or narcissism” involved in making music. “In some ways, you have to get in your own head and I think I went too far with that, with drinking and shutting people out. In something that I believe is collaborative, it’s not helpful.”

“I quit lying,” he adds. “I checked my harsher tones. I cut my drinking down. I went to therapy and figured out how to stop shouting at cars.”

Car troubles inspire ‘No More Tragedies’, the album’s standout second track, where he wryly details his desire to dampen his twinned impulses to take pictures of license plates blocking his parking space or take bricks to said car windshields. Warming melodies and harmonies soothe his rage, a balance maintained elsewhere on the album.

A need for connection underpins the lilting ‘Alex Bell’, where Matt’s lyrics playfully reference the inventor of the telephone over a plaintive cello and bubbling keyboards – evidence of the album’s carefully nurtured arrangements. With nimble sequencing, ‘My Answer’ follows with a question: do artists really need to get messed-up to create? Matt may not have the answer, he admits, but he articulates thequestion beautifully, channelling the influence of Blue Öyster Cult’s ‘Don’t Fear The Reaper’ into a song of fleet, melodic electric-folk drive.

Featuring 17-year-old MJ Murphy on misty backing vocals, the softly insistent ‘Don’t Come Down’ is an album centrepiece, detailing a need to see things anew. Like The Flaming Lips writing a classicist piano ballad, the twinkling ‘Artificial Moonlight’ finds Matt writing late at night, illuminated by the lights from streetlamps. Finally, ‘Mahwah’ closes the album on a note of arrival. While Matt Pond PA’s albums emerged from the disconnection of touring and living in vans, Pond is now happily – cruel winters aside – ensconced in Kingston. “I have found a place I love. Mercury Rev lives near here. It is a cool place to be, an artistic, mountainous, wild place to live. So – maybe this is it.”

In the case of The Natural Lines, a sense of arrival suggests itself. For Matt, the album follows two decades’ worth of Matt Pond PA records and soundtrack works. In a career he once described as “a series of benign mistakes,” Matt travelled far, moving from his band’s starting point in Philadelphia to Florida, Oakland and beyond while releasing 14 well-received albums. In 2017, he declared his intent to retire the Matt Pond PA name, though it lived on briefly in the reissue of The State Of Gold and EPs such as Free Fall, a tribute to Philadelphia.

Now, the name change honours his collaborators. Among a revolving cast, one constant presence in his work has been Chris Hansen, who plays guitar, bass, keys, saxophone and vocals on The Natural Lines’ debut. Matt’s partner, Anya Marina, contributes vocals. Other band members number Hilary James (cello/vocals), Kyle Kelly-Yahner (drums), Louie Lino (keys), Sarah Hansen (horns), Sean Hansen (drums/bass), Kat Murphy (vocals) and, also on vocals, MJ Murphy, for whom Matt brims with praise: “She can do anything she wants to musically.”

A heartening rebirth for Pond and his friends, the result also pays warming, witty, reflective and infectious testimony to the value of reconfiguring one’s outlook. “Once I took control of my mind, I could see what I wanted to say more clearly,” says Matt. “Instead of random floods of mania and panic, I felt like I was composed and composing. It has become as simple as reading the words of a sentence in the right order. As small as the pause before I hit ‘send’.” A development, you might say, conducted along the most natural of lines.

Silver Moth, a new collective involving Stuart Braithwaite of Mogwai and other acclaimedmusicians, today announce their debut album, Black Bay, out 21st April via Bella Union and available to preorder here. To celebrate the announcement Silver Moth have shared a first track titled “Mother Tongue”.

A leap of faith reaps extraordinary rewards on Black Bay, an album of depth, atmosphere and daring from the collective known as Silver Moth. Recorded under unusual circumstances, Black Bay is the sound of seven storied musicians yielding to shared goals; a policy of trust in action. Between hushed incantations and molten guitars, 15-minute noise-rock epics and healing psalms, the record is a testament to connectivity and receptivity: to a union of disparate minds committing to something greater than the sum of its parts.

Stuart Braithwaite of Mogwai, Elisabeth Elektra, Evi Vine, Steven Hill, members of Abrasive Trees, Burning House and Prosthetic Head convened to improvise the album in early 2021, following a Twitter exchange between Abrasive Trees guitarist/songwriter Matthew Rochfordand musician Elisabeth Elektra about the Isle of Lewis. A couple of Zoom meetings would subsequently lead to Rochford, Elektra, Vine, Braithwaite, Hill, drummer Ash Babb and cellist Ben Roberts visiting the dramatic location of Great Bernera’s Black Bay Studios on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, where they tracked the songs in just four days: a testament to the musicians’ focused openness to their shared mission and environment.

“Because we didn’t know each other before we went to Black Bay,” says Elisabeth, “we went into a really intense creative mode as soon as we got there. We were in a bubble and there was a lot of collective grief going on, so it was like a pressure cooker, but I think some real beauty came out of it.” As opener ‘Henry’ takes heady shape, that intensity makes its presence felt. Over a stealthy guitar chug, Evi Vine’s crystalline vocal seems to gather the arrangement around her, the players locked together as the song reaches its tempestuous climax: whether you attribute it to the purgative power of loud music, the location or a longed-for sense of communion, something beautiful duly emerges.

A tribute from Elektra to her late friend Alanna, ‘The Eternal’ unfurls with hymnal serenity. The chorus ascends from the plangent verses like a prayer, the players attentive and empathetic. Written by Evi and Elisabeth, the Talk Talk-ish madrigal ‘Mother Tongue’ extends an invitation to “listen” as its paean to female equality unfolds, fuelled by – explains Evi – the “need to reclaim and remember and give voice to those who are silenced”.

Based on a poem by the late Scottish writer Gerard Rochford, ‘Gaelic Psalms’ is a hypnotic spoken-word piece delivered by his son Matthew in fully-felt fashion; samples of lapping water complement the Kelpies and cairns of Gerard’s verse. ‘Hello Doom’ follows, the seven-piece flexing their full reserves of power over 15 minutes of incantatory song and imposing sound-scaping. Finally, ‘Sedna’ extends another tribute to the Outer Hebrides over ambient keys, poised guitar arpeggios and shuddering synths: a song for the sea.

Described by Elisabeth as “the magician who brought it all together,” Pete Fletcher’s production shows great sensitivity to space and mood. The cumulative effect is an album of elemental force and evocative poise, its controlled power focused around the ego-free chemistry between the players. “I knew with everything in me that we could make something powerful, beautiful, celestial and driven,” says Evi, “even though we had never met. We spend our lives in repetition, surrounded by certainty. It’s important to push aside the things we think we understand, because when we least expect it, change comes and we are lost.” By abandoning all certainties, Silver Moth have found something truly special on Black Bay. Matthew Rochford of Silver Moth has written a personal bio with more info about how the project came together which can be read HERE.