Seven Shades of Nothing’s new single, “When The Lights Go Down,” offers an incredibly peculiar form of comfort—it’s a soundtrack for deciding, over your third cup of lukewarm coffee, that perhaps global, society-dissolving collapse might actually be a blessed relief. James Cole, the project’s architect, doesn't sound panicked about the approaching end; he sounds incredibly, beautifully bored by everything that led up to it. https://open.spotify.com/album/0Z5K652TNvuB9fpt9Amdut?si=_mevo7tcSGunNpswpfCSsQ This...

Sam Ostler’s new single, “Lights,” then. It unfolds less like a sudden, intrusive glare and more like the slow, determined burn of a really good stage light finally finding its mark after a prolonged blackout. It’s pop, yes, vibrant and undeniably contemporary as advertised – clean lines, clear intentions. Yet, there’s a certain satisfying heft beneath the melodic uplift, a feeling that these notes...