Hello, long time no newsletter.

I am making a 20 song album. If my label sees this, don’t worry, it won’t actually be a 2LP record, it’ll all fit neatly onto a single LP. A double album in spirit. But will return to that in a bit…

I struggle with what’s worth emailing about beyond “hey, I have a new album.” I don’t have anything to show you right now. I also am bad at any sort of journalling or personal essay type writing. I considered a Substack for a while, but I’m worried it would just come across as self indulgent. It feels one-sided (lots of self indulgent rambling) and not very community building. So I don’t write too many newsletters. I’m also not a very good writer.

Anyway, while I love songwriting more than ever, I struggle a lot with everything else about being a musician, I don’t really have the right instincts to push aggressively into social media or touring or music industry hustle. All the stuff needed to be properly successful. I am so so bad at it all! And I am getting worse at it!

It feels maybe a bit too cliche to talk about, but the landscape has changed so much and feels a lot more alien to me. If I was just starting out as a musician now in 2026, I would have no clue how to get any momentum. The way I found my footing is simply not very repeatable today. In 2017 when I released my first EP, I released it only on Bandcamp (I only put it on Spotify like 3 months later), on a small but beloved Slovakian tape label called Z Tapes. I sent it to a few blogs (Tiny Mix Tapes, Goldflakepaint, Bandcamp Daily, etc), and a bunch of student radio stations, and also sent it to some of my other favourite bedroom pop artists on Twitter (Bedbug, Laptop Funeral, Moving In, In Love With A Ghost, etc). People retweeted it cause we were internet friends, blogs wrote about it, student radio played it, and I got a very real audience from that. I got asked to play a festival in NZ and I said no because I didn’t realise festivals pay you and I told them I couldn’t afford it. I sold out something like 300 cassettes; I kind of rode the bedroom pop wave with Z Tapes. And I could see the purchases from fans on Bandcamp. You would see their names, they would leave messages of support, you would see what country they were from. Wow! Very organic, real momentum, and an actual community! There were ‘bandcamp artists’ like Frankie Cosmos, Alex G, Car Seat Headrest, and I feel like one of the last people to kind of reap the rewards from that world as it was dying. I got the last remaining crumbs.

Now it feels like you’re building a relationship with platforms first (Spotify, TikTok, etc), and hoping they show your music to people. If they do, it’s pretty faceless. A song might get on a cool indie playlist and streaming numbers will go up, but you have no clue who is listening, whether or not it’s passive listening or real engaged fans. Feels less like connecting with an audience and more like feeding a machine.

I am just completely clueless! Living in Christchurch, it’s expensive to reach the rest of the world, so I don’t tour much. I’ll play the occasional show elsewhere, but mostly I’m here. I have a loose idea to play the UK or Asia in the next couple years but who knows if that will happen. I don’t have a manager! I don’t know how to do anything!

Is it still possible to quietly focus on your craft, shut out the world, ignore trends, and build something small but sustainable? I used to think yes. Used to. I don’t know anymore. After my next album I may slow down. Focus on other things. Maybe writing songs but not recording them. Writing for other people. Film scoring. Another craft entirely. Something less tied to validation or industry. After 5 albums I think it is a good time to stop and reevaluate. Though I have started a new band and am partway through a record with this new project, but I won’t talk about that here.

Anyway, to return back to the new Pickle Darling album, I’m still writing songs every day; as confused as I feel about my place in the music industry, writing songs is kind of the only thing I feel certain about. I am working on album number 5 and it’s about 60/70% done. A double album’s worth of song titles (20 tracks), but a single album in length (it’s about 30 mins long). The songs are all around one minute except for one 10 minute song.

I’m trying to expand my songbook. It feels like a “here’s everything” kind of record. It’s intentionally a little overwhelming. It’s inspired by Jon Brion, Jeffrey Lewis, Tony Molina, Bladee, Carole King, Lucinda Williams, Paul McCartney, The La’s, The Reds Pinks and Purples, John K Samson, Dear Nora, Frank O’Hara, Lydia Davis, Raymond Carver, Anne Tyler, many others I’ve forgotten about. I could try be secretive about the process but maybe it’s more interesting to spill everything I can about the album. Here’s a working tracklist (likely will change):

I don’t really get writer’s block. I have the opposite problem. For me, writer’s block is an important but misleading feeling; it means your work is resisting you in some way and telling it needs to go in a different direction. And if you listen to those instincts carefully, your writer’s block will tell you what you need to do. It’s telling you the work is bored of itself and you need to shake it up, or go in the opposite direction.

I also have a lot more faith in the listener than I used to. I’m happy to let the listener complete the song. If you show them something perfect and complete, it doesn’t spark the imagination. I like listening to a song and hearing other possibilities.

I’m a bad songwriter with the occasional good idea.

That’s enough from me. I’ll try write more often. Maybe twice a year?

Thanks for your support.

Lukas