On This Track: Weekend Listening #11
- Raven
- 3 hours ago
- 4 min read
Five new releases moving through love, heartbreak, experimentation, anger and complicated attachment.
This week’s On This Track Weekend Listening 11 selection moves between indie rock, country, experimental pop, goth-leaning psych-rock and indie pop. The five songs all deal with emotions that are difficult to put into simple terms - from the distance between existing and feeling to the messier sides of love, self-doubt and anger.
Armlock - “Half Time”
“Half Time” is about the gap between existing and actually feeling something. That idea comes through in the song’s restrained sound. Simon Lam’s vocals stay quiet while guitars, bass and percussion slowly build around them. The line “Tell me how to hear it” became central to the song, describing emotion almost like a frequency that is there but difficult to tune into. I like how the music doesn’t try to make that frustration bigger than it is. Armlock recorded the track in their own studios, cutting together pieces recorded at different tempos and sometimes in different keys. Demo recordings and final takes ended up living together in the finished master. It gives “Half Time” a slightly unsettled quality, even when the song itself feels calm.
🎧 Stream “Half Time” by Armlock on Apple Music
Tommy Arch - “Lovehearts”
Tommy Arch’s “Lovehearts” is a warm country song about the ups and downs of casual love. It also features backing vocals from Newcastle singer-songwriter Hels Pattison, with the two recording their vocals together in the live room. Arch wanted the song to have the feeling of an old Ray Charles country duet. That reference makes sense once you hear the warmth of the arrangement, but the recording itself is very much his own. The track was recorded straight to tape at Polestar Studios in Newcastle, with computers kept to a minimum. I especially like that “Lovehearts” doesn’t try to make complicated feelings sound complicated. It stays simple, letting the voices and the song itself do most of the work.
🎧 Stream “Lovehearts” by Tommy Arch on Apple Music
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otta - “MEZZANINE”
“MEZZANINE” runs for eight and a half minutes, which already tells you that otta isn’t particularly interested in making a conventional pop single. There are layers of sounds constantly appearing and disappearing, with words recorded directly into her laptop microphone. otta describes the instrumentation as a story in itself, and that feels like a useful way into the track. You don’t necessarily need to follow one clear narrative. You can just listen to what is happening around the voice. The single is the first taste of "ASTRA", her upcoming album, which was entirely performed by otta herself. The record also grew out of a period when chronic illness left her largely confined to her home, where she recorded sounds from the world outside - birds, planes and a passing school parade. “MEZZANINE” feels like a particularly good introduction to that world. Strange, detailed and deliberately difficult to pin down.
🎧 Stream “MEZZANINE” by otta on Apple Music
Federale - “A Strange Vice”
There is something immediately dark about “A Strange Vice”. Collin Hegna’s baritone sits over garage-rock grit and an ’80s new wave pulse, before the track opens up into a much larger, atmospheric ending. The song also draws on Federale’s long-standing interest in cinema, with inspiration coming from 1970s Giallo films. That gives the track an eerie quality, but the real tension comes from what Hegna is writing about. He describes “A Strange Vice” as an expression of his own anger and frustration - about inequality, the political climate in the US, technology and the feeling that there isn’t much he can do except express that anger. That makes the song’s central image particularly effective: something burning inside that needs somewhere to go.
🎧 Stream “A Strange Vice” by Federale on Apple Music
LEEDY - “Canon”
“Canon” caught my attention because the music and the subject matter don’t quite seem to belong together at first. LEEDY’s indie pop single has seductive guitars, breathy vocals and R&B rhythms. It’s upbeat and inviting, while the lyrics deal with a toxic push-and-pull relationship and destructive attachment. That contrast is intentional. LEEDY wrote the instrumental as something fun and upbeat, even though the song came from a painful chapter of her twenties. She didn’t want to make a traditionally “sad” song about a sad experience. Instead, she wanted the music itself to reflect the complicated emotions surrounding it. And that makes “Canon” more interesting than if everything pointed in the same emotional direction. The song sounds good before you start thinking about what it’s actually saying.
🎧 Stream “Canon” by LEEDY on Apple Music
These five releases take very different approaches to complicated feelings. Armlock leave space for uncertainty, Tommy Arch finds warmth in casual love, otta turns a single into something much larger, Federale give anger a dark and cinematic shape, and LEEDY puts painful memories inside an upbeat song. That variety is exactly what makes this week’s selection worth spending some time with.
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Keep discovering independent music with our other On This Track selections, Three Track Week and Artist Features.
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