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Fiona Amaka – Sometimes forever
When Forever Reaches Its Natural End
On “Sometimes forever”, Fiona Amaka considers the end of an intense romance without making it a catastrophe. The London singer, songwriter and guitarist takes a philosophical, lighthearted approach, allowing the relationship to have mattered without insisting that it must last.
Recorded in London with producer and session guitarist Andy Zanini, the folk-rock song gives his slide guitar a storytelling role alongside Amaka’s voice, extending the conversation beyond the sung narrative. Producer and vocalist Kate Proudlove handled the vocal recording. Those contributions sit within Amaka’s broader vocabulary of blues-influenced singing, rock guitar and folk textures. Where earlier songs such as “No Daylight” examined betrayal, this one makes room for a less combative kind of ending: affection acknowledged, expectations adjusted, and life continuing beyond the promise in the title.
Queen Aster – Medication
A Smile Held Through the Frustration
Queen Aster’s “Medication” borrows the cheerful promise of pharmaceutical advertising and lets the strain show through. Elizabeth Maines wrote the song as a teenager living with an undiagnosed chronic illness; its humour begins with the image of someone pretending to feel fine while waiting for relief.
Maines and multi-instrumentalist Justin Miller bring country swing and punk impatience to that contradiction, drawing on Dwight Yoakam and The Rolling Stones’ Let It Bleed. Recorded, mixed and mastered by Jason Groves at Sneak Attack Records in Lexington, the song gives frustration a compact, deliberately jaunty form. The Kentucky duo’s film backgrounds, including Maines’ work in Hollywood art departments and Miller’s work as a film composer, inform the character at its centre: a person trying to maintain the smile while the experience underneath tells another story.
Photo: Shay McCleavy.
Mogipbob – Anything but Me
Dry Humour and Tall Tales Across a Country-Soul Landscape
Vampires and bell bottoms share space with ageing and memory on Mogipbob’s Anything but Me. The northern Alberta songwriter’s third album stretches across 16 originals, folding country-soul, folk-rock, blues, funk and retro-soul into character-driven songs. Human-written lyrics and concepts sit at the centre, while AI helps develop the arrangements and performances through repeated revisions, instrument choices and careful selection of the final renders that carry each song’s story.
That balance between the playful and personal gives the album its charge. Mogipbob writes with dry humour and an eye for everyday absurdity, letting each story suggest its own sound. The title track turns towards identity and reflection, part of a collection that stays rooted in ordinary life while leaving room for something strange to wander through the door.
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