Sunset Wasp

More new music, the third new releases post this week. I was talking to another blogger recently and we agreed that continuing to find new ways to describe and write about new music can be difficult. There's only so many ways to describe a combination of drums, synths, guitars, bass, vocals, production and FX and there's always the risk that you just end up repeating yourself, writing the same lines over and over. Writing about older music is easier- there's often a story or memory attached or the song has a history to be traced. But there's so much new music out there and so much of it is good and worth sharing- that's the trick I guess, sharing the enthusiasm for new music that might otherwise go unnoticed. 

Here goes with some more, two new tracks by unrelated artists but which have something in common, a similar tone maybe. A feel. 

SUSS are an ambient- Americana trio who I have written about before. Their blend of synths, guitars and pedal steel creates a sound which is very much North American and often conjures up imagery of open roads, desert landscapes, tarmac unspooling in front a windscreen, the white line disappearing into the horizon, roadside truckstops, cactus and vending machines, and arriving somewhere in the middle of the night and there not being a soul around. The new album is called Counting Sunsets and there are ten pieces of music, all called Sunset and given a number. 

Sunset II is slow and melancholic, a synth backdrop punctuated by acoustic guitar notes and keening pedal steel and according to SUSS is preoccupied with 'memory and the slow erosion of time'. 

This side of the Atlantic Halifax/ Manchester trio The Orielles are gearing up for what could be one of 2026's most affecting albums, a record called Only You Left. On Tuesday they released the fourth song from it ahead of its full release at the end of this week. Wasp follows Tears Are, You Are Eating Part Of Yourself and Three Halves...

Wasp is more direct than those three, with foregrounded drums and bass and a staccato guitar riff that becomes full, fuzzy chords in the chorus. The three previous releases from the album all hinted at something, showed rather than told, improvisation but with song structure behind it, an ambient guitar crossed with noise feel. Singer Esme's words on all four songs released so far seem fairly free form, poetic and profound, lamenting something perhaps. Wasp maybe less so- the song was written in Islington Mill in Salford in a studio with a wasp infestation.