Pickle Darling curates a playlist of album openers

Welcome back to Selections, a series of artist-curated playlists from those in the know.

Pickle Darling’s music captures and inspires an intricate sense of wonder. The alias of New Zealand-based artist Lukas Mayo, with each new release Pickle Darling expands their charming sonic cosmos filled with vibrant, intimate bedroom-pop vignettes.

On their latest album Laundromat, released last week via Father/Daughter Records, Mayo draws inspiration from Lydia Davis’ 2009 short story collection. Whilst Mayo’s songwriting has always held an immersive, intricate world-building capacity, here they take a more granular approach – honing in on the potential for art everywhere, even in the most seemingly mundane detail. In doing so, they capture an artistic enchantment within the tracks which offer fleeting moments of serene and reflective respite that also act as a reminder to hold onto the creative capacity in the everyday.

For their Selections playlist, Pickle Darling takes a look at the album opener, with tracks from Katie Dey, Tiny Ruins, Maxine Funke and fellow Z Tapes affiliate bedbug – who also features on Mayo’s latest album. “These are all opening tracks that I think are special in their own way,” they say, “I’m obsessed with a great opening track, and different approaches to opening an album, and when putting together my own albums, the opener is always the song I tinker away at the most.”