New Music – Cage Park | Sprout – Breaking Glass Magazine

Cage Park – Hand Me Downs

While previous singles MUD and BUS made exciting breaths into the experience of the No. 50 bus and festival madness, Cage Park’s newest Hand Me Downs brings a slice of melancholy to the band’s repertoire, still brimming with their power of both lyrical and aural storytelling.

Suiting the track’s title, Hand Me Downs is fuelled by a stoked yet drowsy handful of chords, the bass and drums creating a slow heartbeat with which vocalists Mist and Belben paint portraits of the past and impending future – “holding onto hand-me-downs” and that irritating urge to actually complete those monkey bars, crashing with the presence of adolescence and the urge to ‘Move On’ (wherever that leads).

As the imminence of becoming the hand-me-downer arrives, guitarist Leo White and drummer Reuben Saunders shine, both in the dances of their instruments in verses, but especially in bringing the burn of emotion – shown effortlessly through the drift into the chorus, bringing an atmospheric passion into the constant question asked within this beautifully waning tune.

Released just days before their headline at the Hare and Hounds, Cage Park are once again keeping our eyes and ears open, handing us down only the best they can bring in musical expertise – the type of hand-me-down you’d be proud to pass along.

Cage Park

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Sprout – I’m Just Getting By

If you ever needed the perfect fit from album art to song, look no further than the bright, unhappy clown of Sprout’s I’m Just Getting By – perfectly representing a track that weaves between sorrow and a strange optimism.

Akin to the likes of other 7476 artists like Lizzie Reid, the track’s main shine rings in the intimacy that Meg Grooter brings to their conversation of depression. As figured in the title, the track draws an image of quaint existence in perceptions, compared with the personal, sung delicately and beautifully throughout, softly bursting into harmony as these images expand.

Instrumentally, through a muted electric piano that dances in similarly delightful yet sombre ways, the song’s strange amalgam of tones fits together, pulling the heart in just the right ways.

Described by Grooter as a “genderless, genreless blob of emotion”, Sprout is a project with a great potential to create virtue and a dash of pain, with this debut acting as a phenomenally intriguing start.