Next up, please. 

Duncan Lloyd releases ‘Unwound,’ a nice collection of songs for a summer day. Unwound would make a great album to walk through a wooded park with headphones on.

Everything about this album is stellar. The mix is spot on, a great use of stereo, recorded & mixed by Duncan Lloyd (except 4 & 5) at The Dagda Rooms

Tracks 4 & 5 recorded & mixed by Julie McLarnon at Analogue Catalogue

I will refrain from giving you a song-by-song overview of this album when it comes to lyrics. Suffice it to say that they are often cryptic, but the more times around the platter, the more they start coming into focus.

Written during a difficult personal period, this 12-track record came into being as a form of sonic therapy – a means of coping and catharsis, forging a sound with greater depth and ambition than past releases. Lloyd earlier shared the singles ‘Laugh So Loud’ and ‘Rituals’, blending a modern sound with a deeply personal message about habits and healing, voiced through a circular, radio-like musical journey.

With cover artwork derived from Lloyd’s own paintings, this record weaves a unique musical maze of free and varied personal expression, profound and transient, spare, intense and urgent with a balance of grit, beauty and melody. Things got moving when Lloyd set to work with Julie McLarnon (The Vaselines, Lankum, King Creosote, Brigid Mae Power) at Analogue Catalogue Studios in Ireland. Gaining impetus from his trip across the Irish sea, Lloyd returned to Newcastle to complete the rest of the album, each song carefully crafted with more anarchical arrangements than previous outings.

“I needed a break from all things online. Stepping away from it and being closer to nature reignites the imagination; it’s kind of obvious, but easy to forget how important it is.  It’s an album about experience, throughout you get the sense that dynamics, speed and space were all careful considerations. I am sort of looking under the soil, trying to shape the sounds I imagine, and if possible, create something relatable that has a heart. I didn’t want it to be one produced sound, I wanted it to feel like different rooms, many spaces,” says Duncan Lloyd.

“I partly had the book “The Poetics of Space” by Gaston Bachelard in mind, every song is its own room with its own signature. This is probably my heaviest album, in sound and mood. There are songs that lean towards post-punk and with hypnotic rhythms that are darker in tone. I wanted it to feel like the listener can climb inside the sound rather than be on the outside looking in. I don’t want them to be in the cinema, I want them to be in the film or in the room, so it’s almost spooky.” 

The album features a host of Lloyd’s musician friends, including Maximo Park keyboardist Jemma Freese and drummer Tom English, Andrew Mills (Purploid Zing) and Joe Boyer (Cloud Nothings, Autopolitan, Nicole Yun).

‘Unwound’ is imbued with a darker mood than Lloyd’s previous works, but with a continuing sense of melancholy at its core. Restrained yet intimate lyrics are housed in inventively evolving structures. The album draws to a close with ‘A World Away Now‘, a song of lost opportunity. 

Sometimes, simply making a connection is enough.

“Sometimes on a song, the bass or percussion talks louder than a voice, so I mixed it like that. Sometimes, nothing else contends if the emotion isn’t clear. When you hear musicians playing together, you are invited into something far more personal or engaging. You can’t always tell the detail, yet you can feel the dynamics — you can sense it is living,” says Duncan Lloyd. “I may let guitars get loud and careen around if that’s where it wants to go. It can then go the other way and be minimal, economical. Although it is a very personal album, it’s also addressed to the stranger and, if the listener can relate and even laugh about what life throws at us, then a connection lives”.  

Sometimes an album just connects with me. Sometimes it is loud and brash. Sometimes it is quiet and personal. Sometimes an album like Unwound rambles about making its own path in the world. I love it. Unwound is a keeper.

‘Unwound’ album  https://duncanlloyd.bandcamp.com/album/unwound-2025

Spotify  https://open.spotify.com/album/78e7ybnIpMuBlETMWQXc3t

YouTube playlist http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nm6_f5m75bsJnUG2G2W2fzCbPjia8q2Ao

‘One Step Closer To The Dam’  https://duncanlloyd.bandcamp.com/track/one-step-closer-to-the-dam

YouTube  https://youtu.be/JknksNxc8SY

Spotify  https://open.spotify.com/track/7wuG2IMLXzpvFmjXBkGh9M

‘Rituals’ video  https://youtu.be/UL5IHUIuJUM

‘Laugh So Loud’ video https://youtu.be/1L1Rk4bIkyE

Get the single  https://tinyurl.com/DuncanLloyd-LaughSoLoud

Apple Music  https://music.apple.com/gb/artist/duncan-lloyd/203305310‘

Publicity by Shameless Promotion PR

http://www.shamelesspromotionpr.com/

_________________________________________________________________________________

I also listened to these fine albums. Albums of note include more ventures into Pink Floyd, the last of Hank Snow and some tainted love.

Hank Snow	Souvenirs
Hank Snow	The Best of Hank Snow
Hank Snow	Railroad Man
Hank Snow	Country & Western Jamboree
Hank Snow & Jimmy Snow With The Evangel Temple Choir	Live From Evangel Temple
The Platters	The Platters Greatest Hits
Hank Snow	Gloryland March
Soft Cell	Tainted Love Dub 12” extended
Soft Cell	Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret
Sons of the Pioneers	Cool Water
Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes	The Jukes
Various	Zabriski Point
Pink Floyd	Masters of Rock
Hank Snow	Four/Square Album
Pink Floyd	Atom Heart Mother
Pink Floyd	Meddle
Duncan Lloyd	Unwound
McCabe	Sunset Boulevard

I also listened to Sunset Boulevard by McCabe several times; it’s a worthy album. The wait is finally over for fans of London’s experimental soul artist McCabe as he drops his debut album, Sunset Boulevard, on July 11th.
Blending vintage Motown sounds and emotive string-based pop with darker, experimental excursions into dub and trip-hop, McCabe’s debut LP navigates themes of love, loss, stardom, madness, and paranoia across ten meticulously crafted tracks. The album stands as a truly genre-bending odyssey, refusing categorization as it weaves between pop, soul, R&B, indie, electronic, and avant-garde sensibilities with fearless originality.
“Throughout the process, the intent was to marry my love of pop music and experimental music,” McCabe explains. “I threw the idea of traditional songwriting structures out of the window and chose a free-flowing, stream of consciousness approach instead, improvising many of the lyrics in the early stages and letting the song direct me rather than me directing the song.”
From the sun-drenched melancholy of ‘Vicious’ to the west coast-inspired title track, ‘Sunset Boulevard’ showcases McCabe’s artistic depth and versatility. However, it’s the focus track ‘Borderline’ that reveals McCabe at his most cinematic – a lush soundscape featuring warm, velvety strings and infectious guitars beneath his hypnotic vocals. “Borderline is about being betrayed by friends in a time of need and the feeling of not fitting into the musical and social landscape but continuing on anyway with the belief that one day it will all be understood,” McCabe shares. Masterfully fusing soul elements with indie influences like The Smiths or The Strokes, McCabe creates a compelling centrepiece that encapsulates the album’s emotional core.
Brought to life in collaboration with acclaimed producer Patrick James Fitzroy (known for his work with Sorry, Katy J Pearson, and PVA), this ambitious hi-fi production features contributions from 17 musicians, including David Zbirka (Drum Store Romeos) on drums and Nat Phillipps (Crack Cloud) on saxophone. “It was a great experience working with Patrick,” McCabe reflects. “We both have very different qualities. He is very technical and detail-focused, while I am more stream of consciousness and untrained in my approach.” The creative journey wasn’t without challenges – at one point, a studio blackout led to lost files that Fitzroy had to meticulously reconstruct. “One expects the making of an album to have these incidents,” he adds, “and it adds a character unto the world in which it exists.”
Sunset Boulevard emerged over an extended creative period, with songs evolving organically throughout the process. McCabe drew inspiration from seminal works like Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On? and Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black, while also channeling the innovative spirit of artists including Dean Blunt, Yves Tumor, Public Image Ltd, and The Fall. His distinctive musical identity was shaped by formative years in South London’s vibrant scene around venues like Brixton Windmill, where he deliberately charted a different path from the area’s dominant post-punk sound. Early exposure to Prince through his father laid the foundation for his musical sensibilities, while embracing his natural falsetto at age 24 marked a pivotal moment in developing his current artistic voice. The result is what McCabe himself terms “Experimental Soul” – a captivating fusion that acknowledges its influences while refusing to be constrained by them. This genre-defying approach creates something entirely his own, establishing McCabe as one of London’s most innovative emerging artists who bridges retro and contemporary elements with remarkable originality.
Sunset Boulevard will be available across all streaming platforms from July 11th.

DISCOVER MCCABE

Instagram| TikTok | Youtube | Spotify | Facebook

For all press enquiries, please contact charlotte@barkpr.co.uk