The Friday Dispatch

Sub*T take on girlhood in the digital age

As music‑obsessed teenagers wading through the digital abyss, Sub*T’s Grace Bennett and Jade Alcantara fomented a cross-country friendship on Twitter, respectively obsessed with One Direction and The 1975. Eventually migrating to Instagram, they started catching glimpses of each other’s lives and decided to take their friendship offline, meeting for the first time in the pit at a show. “It was a big moment,” Alcantara gushes. “We took a selfie. Our anniversary is at the beginning of June.” Bennett eagerly adds, “We became really best friends right away.”

Neither of them knew how to play instruments, but that didn’t deter them. Much like the fluid, democratic mechanisms that brought them together, they relied on online tutorials to teach them guitar. Their first LP, How My Own Voice Sounds, self-released this past May, weaves shared traumas with reflections on girlhood in the digital age, grounding those stories in their love of classic alt-rock and 90s grunge, à la Juliana Hatfield and Liz Phair.

“A huge part of why we started our band was because we were, like, really turned off by the whole post-punk scene that was popping up, and how male-centred it was,” explains Bennett. “We were like, we gotta fix this. We gotta do something about this. That’s a huge reason why we wanted to make music.”

To remake the alt-rock landscape in their image, they collaborated with the artists they admired. Bully’s Alicia Bognanno, who worked with them on their 2021 EP, So Green, taught them their way around the studio. Most importantly, she advised them on announcing themselves to the world on their first LP, refining their intentions and narrative direction more than the sound itself.

“I don’t know if she so much influenced the sound we were going for, but she definitely gave us advice that we’ve never forgotten when it comes to our relationship as musicians and how to control your band,” says Bennett. “Not in a dictator way, but just, this is what the band is. It’s me and Jade. We write the music. We have people that play in our band.” She advised them to “protect your relationship – make sure everybody knows that it’s you two.”

Momma’s Aron Kobayashi Ritch helped them define and polish the timeless guitar rock sound they had in mind. According to Bennett, “everybody that we've worked with has definitely left their fingerprints on how we write music and how we want to be as a band and how we wanna sound. It was nice doing an album where we felt like we had the time to make it our own, in the studio especially.” - Giliann Karon

Five fascinating returns lead this week’s new albums with Chanel Beads’ ]Your Day Will Come - yes, same title as the last one], Fazer member and Squama co-founder Martin Brugger [The Shell], Gold Panda [Ton Up], Beth Orton [The Ground Above] and Ryan Beatty [Sweet Fortune - more on that below]. Girlpool’s Harmony Tividad releases her solo debut Lifetime; Austin-based indie-twang band proun has Maybe Luck; London DJ sim0ne taps into 90s rave on her EP zer0, and Montreal-via-Alberta punks Truck Violence drop the highly disconcerting and very brilliant The weathervane is my body.

RAYE on Nine Simone

I have a good friend called Sam, who works for a charity called DROP4DROP, and we spent quite a lot of time together doing some charity projects back in the day. We met for the first time in India - so random - we were doing some charity work out there and he was a proper music head, always putting me onto amazing songs.

About four years ago we met up by this really nice river for a picnic. I hadn’t seen him in years, it was such a beautiful day, sun’s shining, and he was like ‘Let me play you this song. Do you know Nina Simone’s “Baltimore”?’ I was the biggest Nina fan and the second he played it for me I was hooked. I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, I love this song.’ And it became an instant classic for me.

Nina is one of my all-time favourite artists, period. She is the ultimate artist, everything she represents and did for music and for politics was game-changing. I have a poster of her in my room with the quote ‘It’s an artist’s duty to reflect the times.’ I woke up one day and I read that quote and... it was one of the reasons that I just broke down, went on Twitter and that whole moment happened. Because I was sat there, thinking, ‘I’m not doing that [reflecting the times] at all’, you know?

She’s one of my biggest inspirations for being an artist. I want to be an artist that is as honest as I feel like I am in my everyday life, with my friends, with my family and with what I believe. I’m a super passionate person, full of conviction and I relate to her bravery; I want to be as brave as Nina was.

Ironically, “Baltimore” is one of the few songs she didn’t write, and I know that she personally didn’t really like the song or enjoy the process of writing it. But it’s one of those songs that resonated with me. I think the lyricism is so beautiful - and the strings and the instrumentation and the way that it feels, it’s just gorgeous. It starts “Beat-up little seagull / On a marble stair / Tryin’ to find the ocean / Lookin’ everywhere” It’s like, ‘What the hell is this imagery? “Hooker on the corner / Waiting for a train / Drunk lying on the sidewalk / Sleeping in the rain.” You get this picture of this broken place, but unfortunately it seems that the most broken things translate into the most beautiful art.

Nina being the prolific songwriter that she is, there are so many songs that I could have chosen, like “Mississippi Goddam” and “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”. And, oh, “Strange Fruit” by Billie Holiday, which she covered and carried on for a very important reason. But I chose “Baltimore”; I play it almost once every three days, it is medicine to me in its purest form.

Something Old, Something New

Every week, we share recommendations from the Best Fit community — one from the past, another from the present. This week, senior editor Laura David on Jim Croce’s You Don’t Mess Around With Jim (1972) and Ryan Beatty’s Sweet Fortune (2026).

In this heat, there’s not much you can do but lie back and bake. I, for one, have been very lucky to find some beautiful places to do this around my university campus. I live in an old, creaky shared house, but the benefit of that creakiness at this time of the year is that I get to fling the windows open and listen to the wood creak in time with the rustling of the trees as the warm breeze floats in. It’s quite splendid, and, frankly, the only thing that makes it more splendid is some good folk music. My drink (album) of choice for this lately has been Jim Croce’s You Don’t Mess Around With Jim, what I sort of believe to be an under-appreciated 70s classic. It may have a healthy number of streams, but you don’t hear about Jim Croce in the zeitgeist the way you do some of his contemporaries, and I’d like to somewhat remedy that. The derpy longing of “Operator” is enough to get you feeling indulgently lovesick, while the restlessness of “New York’s Not My Home” could make anyone crave farmland and an open road. There’s something so nostalgic and bittersweet about this record, a happy and sad combination that seems to fit waning, lazy summer days so perfectly. Sure, this record has plenty of upbeat honky tonk, like on “You Don’t Mess Around with Jim” and “Hard Time Losin’ Man,” but I never love Croce more than when he’s crooning at his softest and sweetest, as on “Walkin’ Back to Georgia.” A Philly boy, Jim seemed to have a restless relationship to success. His exposure was cut short by an untimely death, and so sometimes listening to his records, I can’t help but project a feeling of “what could have been” on the songs. Thus, the album has become, for me, almost haunting in its quaintness and beauty. Most of all, it reminds me of summer nights spent outdoors at home in Canada in my childhood, days I miss quite fondly now that I’m living abroad. Sorry to say, but good ol’ singer songwriter folk was made for the wide open spaces of North America. And hell, I miss it bad on days like these. Jim Croce is my antidote to that. And also Gordon Lightfoot. But that’s for another week…

In keeping with the lethargic summer album theme, today we’ve just been delivered an amazing addition to that category. Ryan Beatty, perhaps one of my favourite contemporary songwriters full stop, is back with Sweet Fortune. With each album, Beatty comes more into his own, offering songs somehow more emotionally moving and addictive and true than the last. Beatty brings back that signature airiness, breathiness, and emotional poignancy on tracks like lead single “Secret Language,” a sweeping Americana opus about a long distance relationship. “Sweet Fortune,” the record’s title track is a softly moving portrait of deep love, the kind of thing that might soundtrack a late night spent on a porch talking about nothing and everything all at the same time. Beatty goes a little bluesier on Sweet Fortune than on his last record, Calico, showcasing even more of his vocal range. Like with Croce’s record, this is another album that I suspect will accompany many of my long summer days. It’s already become one of my favourites of the year, and it’s only been out for a day. So few can do it like Beatty.

Listen to the week in new music by following our Discovery playlist

Dropping at midnight every Thursday, follow our playlist for a taste of the best new music from the most exciting breaking artists. Leading the selection this week are new tracks from miaw, Siichaq, effe, Maripool, Pol, and coverstar Portraits of Tracy.

“I was able to see people I admired but cherished in a way that had a musical connection to me that was uplifting and healing… and I think I flourished as a musician because I was out of the male gaze and music where it's just, you know, 'Show me what you got.' And it was more like, 'What can you make me feel?'"

– Sarah McLachlan on Lilith Fair