Welcome to the 2SER New Music Report – featuring all the new music on your 2SER airwaves this week across your Breakfast, The Daily and Drive programs!

ALBUMS:

Being Jane Lane – We’re doing fine (AU)
Brother Ali – Satisfied Soul (OS)
Close Counters – Lover’s Dance Academy (AU)
Geoffrey O’Connor – I love what we do (AU)
Heartworms – Glutton for Punishment (OS)
Horsegirl – Phonetics on and on (OS)
John Glacier – Like a Ribbon (OS)
Mike – Showbiz! (OS)
Skyscraper Stan and the Commission Flats – Those were days (AU)
The Altons – Heartache in Room 14 (OS)
The Delines – Mr. Luck & Ms. Doom (OS)

SINGLES:

Black Country, New Road – Besties (OS)
Jade Imagine – Hot Bath (AU)
Merpire – Premonition (AU)
Nick Griffith – Caught In A Dream (L)
The Electorate – Peace, Love and Kindness (L)
Σtella – Omorfo Mou (OS)

Finn Rees and Allan McConnell, who combine powers as Close Counters have just released their third studio record Lovers Dance Academy, and it’s one of the most accomplished dance records of the last year. As a duo they had already more than established their chops on the sample-based house workouts with Soulacoasta I and II (the second being a feature album on 2ser). However, their latest takes things into much more live territory, with swinging grooves and a host of excellent vocal collaborations from the likes of Tiana Khasi, Allysha Joy and Jace XL. It’s a unified funk-laden odyssey and essential listening. They’ll also be launching the album in Eora/Sydney on March 8 at The Red Rattler.

Brooklyn-via-Chicago trio Horsegirl (Nora Cheng, Penelope Lowenstein, and Gigi Reece) saddled up for their second studio album this week with Phonetics on and on. The Cate Le Bon produced record contains much of the understated oddness of their debut (2022’s Versions of Modern Performance), but with softer edges and a deeper sense of wistfulness. Recorded at The Loft in Chicago, it’s intricately explores the lines between pop, minimalism and sonic experimentation and is a sleeper Gem, and out now on Remote Control Records.

Staying in the US, there are a pair of releases from the West Coast to keep an ear out for on your 2SER airwaves. Portland, Oregon country-soul veterans The Delines, the group lead by arranger Willy Vlautin and vocalist Amy Boone have just released their fifth studio album on El Cortez Records. Mr. Luck & Ms. Doom is filled with cautionary tales, of hard lives and searching for meaning in difficult places, something which takes on a cinematic/snapshot quality via it’s folk and jazz overtures throughout. With a similar feel yet different sentiment, Maywood California four piece The Altons have just put out their debut, a blissful slice of lowriding Tejano soul via Daptone subsidiary Penrose Records. Heartache in Room 14 is heavy on the vibes as lead singers Adriana Flores and Brian Ponce duet through moody ballads and Byron Lee-esque psychedelics.

There’s always more music than writing time at 2SER (check the list above or tune in throughout the day and night), but one more release to tune your ears to is the new single from local trio of Eliot Fish, Joshua Morris & Nick Kennedy: The Electorate. A self-described naice song of hope, Peace, Love and Kindness was written” in the crushing wake of the failed Voice referendum, and the horrors of Gaza”, it combines a metronomic rhythm and winding earworm guitars with deeper meaning and is a taste of their upcoming album (By Design) which will be out in May. When music sounds like this, it gets our vote!