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Julia Thomsen Releases “Sweet Magnolia”

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Julia Thomsen

I put this on while I was trying to finish some work last Tuesday and somewhere around the two minute mark I stopped typing and just sat there listening. That doesn’t happen often.

Julia has always been good at getting out of her own way, and “Sweet Magnolia” might be the clearest example of that yet. There’s nothing here fighting for your attention. No moment where the composition suddenly reminds you that someone clever made it. It just moves, quietly and without fuss, through something that feels less like a song and more like a change in the air.

Piano records live or die by whether they have patience, and this one has plenty of it. The phrasing breathes. Notes are given room to settle before the next ones arrive, which sounds simple but is actually quite hard to pull off without the whole thing feeling slow or unfinished. It doesn’t. It feel deliberate in the best possible way, like someone who actually thought about what you’d need from it.

I’ve come back to it several times since, usually at the end of the day when the noise hasn’t quite left yet. It’s become something I reach for the way you reach for a certain cup or a familiar chair. Comfortable without being dull. Warm without being saccharine.

If you’ve been looking for something that earns the word “calming” without demanding anything from you in return, this is worth your time. Julia has made a genuinely lovely piece.

You can listen here.

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Murray & The Movers get ‘Squeaky Clean’ with new rockabilly jam

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Murray & The Movers follow up the release of their late-night blues-rock cut ‘Dirty Laundry’ with ‘Squeaky Clean’, a frisky, electrified reworking that pushes the song into sharp-edged rockabilly territory.

‘Squeaky Clean’ is the sunny-side-up flip of ‘Dirty Laundry’ — swapping late-night smoke and tension for bright rockabilly swagger, clean cowboy boots and good-time rhythm. Built around crisp stick sounds, woody percussion, twanging guitars and scooting grooves, the track rolls through Americana country-blues territory with a grin on its face. If ‘Dirty Laundry’ was after dark, ‘Squeaky Clean’ is the sound of throwing open the blinds and skipping down the street in freshly polished cowboy boots.

Fronted by Lizzie Mack, whose voice moves between raw intimacy and controlled power, and anchored by Murray Cook’s instinctive guitar work, the two tracks reveal both sides of Murray & The Movers: one slow-burning and shadowed, the other sharper, louder and built for speed.

Drawing on blues, country, garage rock and classic soul, the band’s sound is never revivalist. Instead, it lives in a distinctly cinematic space — music with dust on its boots, neon in its reflection, and a sense of backstory running through every musical choice. With the high-energy release of ‘Squeaky Clean’ juxtaposing the restrained, cinematic, tension-building moods of ‘Dirty Laundry’, Murray & The Movers showcase their great versatility across the same song.

Following the release, Lizzie Mack and Murray Cook will head to Spain in summer 2026 for a run of intimate duo shows, bringing their raw chemistry and stripped-back sound to a series of close, atmospheric rooms from Madrid to Barcelona. For tickets and information on the shows, visit- https://www.murrayandthemovers.com/

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