Still House Plants - Still House Plants

It’s been 10 years since Still House Plants released their self-titled debut cassette, 8 years before achieving underground fame with their 2024 album If I Don’t Make It, I Love U, which earned them five stars and 10/10s across practically every music publication. In 2026, Bison Records is giving the songs that started it all a proper vinyl release, and wow... it is purely and simply phenomenal. Like most people, I was light-years away from these songs when they were first released on an anonymous-looking tape: four slabs of dry, deconstructed, acoustic post-rock from a time when practically no one was exploring this territory (like many, I plead guilty to having completely dismissed rock as a genre back then to focus on...um... Japanese ambient/1980s New Age/Music From Memory–related stuff...). The vocal delivery by Jessica Hickie-Kallenbach is just as bold and impressive as the trio’s weirdly arhythmic signature groove: straightforward, warm, melodic, and yet, sounding as though she's on the verge of screaming. Though highly anachronistic in 2016 (the year of Stranger Things Season 1, remember?), Still House Plants exhale the zeitgeist of 2026 like very few pre-pandemic releases do.

This gives me a good opportunity to shed light on the London-based label Bison Records, which has been quietly building one of the strongest and most uncompromising catalogs in recent years. More on the label soon!