By It’s our Bandcamp Picks of the Week, featuring the bridgebuilding alt-country of Marty Blick’s NEIGHBORHOOD CAT, and the timely hipster runoff throwback sound of Little Miss Echo’s HOVER!
Marty Blick – NEIGHBORHOOD CAT
Genre: Country, Alt-Country
Favorite Tracks: “Neighborhood Cat,” “Blue Jeans On,” “Farwell House”
Marty Blick threads a needle between contemporary Nashville songwriting and a modern AAA alt-country sound. The Chicago singer-songwriter’s debut, NEIGHBORHOOD CAT, is reminiscent in two ways of a different, perhaps not immediately obvious artist: Orville Peck. While offering a different, less theatrically dazzling sound, Blick’s voice comfortingly captures an old school, soothing low end—different from the cavernous, booming, beautiful baritone of Peck’s Orbison-esque delivery, but rooted in a similar widespread appeal. But the comparison feels more rooted in the way both blur a line between mainstream and indie conventions; there is a kind of bridgebuilding appeal to NEIGHBORHOOD CAT. Our current fascination with country music has centered on musicians who are, endearing, losers—I don’t know Blick, maybe he is one. But on record he’s an average joe, and his debut is, above all else, an album about a regular guy navigating the stupidly banal end times. He doesn’t feel like a loser. He also doesn’t feel like a rock star. He allegedly recorded the vocals to the album in his pickup truck at a local park: what could be more salt of the earth than that.
Big, noodley southern rock guitar passages define the albums best songs (“Neighborhood Cat,” “Blue Jeans,” “Walking on Clouds”). But some of the core comfort to NEIGHBORHOOD CAT comes from the warm pedal steel playing; instrumental closer “Farewell House,” in particular, is a beautiful jam to close out the record, a layered, beautiful, ascending note for the record to end on. As mentioned in the album’s bio, brushes with death (specifically a tornado incident) became the ultimate impetus to record the album, but he captures a sound in which the true triumph is just leaving your house every day—a danger in and of itself. Give NEIGHBORHOOD CAT a listen over on Bandcamp!
Little Miss Echo – HOVER EP
Genre: Indie Rock, Dream Pop
Favorite Songs: “Freezerburn,” “Drown With Us”
At the time of writing, the week has been dominated by discourse regarding the hipster era of the mid-2000s—the optics, which bands were and weren’t a part of it, the selling out, etc. At one time, I thought not understanding the co-opted Urban Outfitter’ification of the sound and style meant you were losing chess to a dog. But, history smooths all things it seems. You’ve clicked into an honest-to-god pop culture blog in the year 2026, so we don’t need to tell you, dear reader, that Mumford & Sons were not a part of the same wave as Animal Collective, that Deerhunter were offering credible art pop where Capitol Cities weren’t, that there was an ocean sized gap between the MEET ME IN THE BATHROOM era and the stomp clap folk takeover that would come roughly a decade later.
I digress, but only briefly, since the type of fuzzy, whirring, macro indie rock Boston’s Little Miss Echo make could be ripped from the headlines of 2011; there’s a little bit of latter day Grizzly Bear, traces of post-chillwave Washed Out, a whiff of the chaotic explosion of the Flaming Lips’ EMBRYONIC… the band call their latest EP, HOVER, “six tracks of chilly + loud beach boys worship,” which accidentally sums up so much of that era of music. If you’re going to have hipster runoff discussion in the year of our lord, you could start (complimentary) here, where Little Miss Echo are threading a needle between what modern shoegaze’y rock sounded like both then and now. See: “Freezerburn,” the EP’s best track which captures highs and lows of the sound, which has traces of everything from Tapes ‘n Tapes to Spirutalized to Here We Go Magic. There is a preciseness to the playing across both their 2024 debut and this followup EP—honing in on a crisp but vibey guitar tone that amplifies a surprisingly intimate but big production. The ecstasy-laden drive to “Drown With Us” is a rewind to 15 years ago, which is refreshing above all else. On this week of all weeks, give HOVER a listen over on Bandcamp.
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