At the heart of Minor Moon’s open-ended and knotty country rock songs is an undeniably inviting lightness. While the Chicago-based songwriter and bandleader Sam Cantor writes impressionistic songs about the end of the world, they’re wrapped in such a warm blanket of lush guitars and pastoral twang that they always leave a hopeful spark. On their latest LP, The Light Up Waltz, Cantor sings of the fantastical in magical traveling bands, swaying bridges, and aquamarine metamorphoses. Still, he’s concerned with fundamentally human questions about who we are and how we reinvent ourselves when everything crumbles around us.
Website: https://www.minormoon.com/
Dead Gowns is the project of Portland-Maine singer-songwriter Geneviève Beaudoin. In her latest collection, the HOW EP, she pushes “expressive arrangements and raw melodies into a glowing spectacle” (Foxy Digitalis). Both urgent and sincere, it’s “the sound of a songwriter coming good on all her promises and then some” (For the Rabbits). Vinyl Me, Please named Dead Gowns a VMP Rising Artist in 2023 and the band released an expanded version of HOW to vinyl and all streaming platforms.
Linktree:
Ezra Cohen & The Big City Band is a rock band from Dover, NH that channels the influences of bands like The Replacements, The Lemonheads and The Gin Blossoms.
Bandcamp: https://ezracohen.bandcamp.com/album/big-sky