Ever since Peter Buck picked one up and turned me on to R.E.M. mandolins have had a special allure, but that only partly explains why Stitches made me sit up and pay attention. Taken as a whole, the hand-drawn animated video, the mandolin sound (of course), the vocals and particularly the female vocal that gradually imposes itself in two quite different ways on the track as it progresses…it’s altogether an intriguing mixture that you will find hard to resist.

Mother Mountain is the second album from South Korea’s Language of Shapes. It’s available from bandcamp at the link below.