Sifting through the swathes of submissions and singles can be a strange and sometimes ear-blinding thing. Everything, well most things, get fair listen and shake and the ‘yes’, no’ and ‘maybe’ tabs mount. I’d love to say there’s method, something close to chronological, but sometimes a song snags a mood pure and simple and the process of selection’s made easy.

Enter Tess Parks and ‘Koalas’… a song as sweet and soft as its namesake. Only unlike those small and furries with their penchant for eucalyptus, there’s a sugared hit of universal angst. But who knows what those critters are capable of, for all we know they’re all koala Dostoevskys ruminating on the stars between meals.

And the stars are where Tess Parks wants to take us. To a place made of lush sound and song that wraps reverb around every lingering piano note and separated, slowly strummed chord. It’s an ethereal shoegaze made of clarity and wash with a pulse that drifts lazy and aimless. The clarity is the voice, with that open ended question of a place in the world and wondering what the hell you’d do if you found it. And beneath it, around it, supporting it, is that warm open ease of the structure-free sonics made of patchworks of synth and acoustics. Mazzy Star in a bath of milk and honey. Josefin Öhrn on the sweetest parts of Nick Cave’s ‘Ghosteen’. Holly Golightly takes a guest spot with Slowdive. All with the subtlest of touches of southern gothika.

In good tradition let chronology be damned. ‘Koalas’ isn’t even Tess’s newest. ‘Crown Shy’ has come since with a shift in delivery that embraces the pathos of sad sun-drenched pop. All the high notes and tones of the previous, they’re there, she’s still subtle, still drifting, still easy. But now there’s a structure and a template to follow as we meander through a haze neatly made. Strings roll through choruses in a tight-held psychedelia  and repetition lets imagination roam. Both these tracks match impressionist intent. And marsupials never sounded this impressive.   

‘Koalas’ and ‘Crown Shy’ are singles lifted from ‘Pomegranate’, the new album due October 25^th. Out on the always impressive Fuzz Club label and with fine support from Hand Drawn Dracula.