The Leaf Library – The Reader’s Lamp (Fika Recordings)
With their fourth studio album due out in March London’s The Leaf Library has shared a string-laden single in The Reader’s Lamp.
Artist: The Leaf Library
Track: The Reader’s Lamp
Label: Fika Recordings
Release date: 14 January 2026
Find it: YouTube
Aren’t we all the ‘golden moth against the window’ really? Seeking to know ourselves and the world as the moth seeks out the light, embracing our inner voice as the moth embraces the darkness. Something to think about as you listen to the new single from The Leaf Library, The Reader’s Lamp.
The London band shared the single as the first offering from their forthcoming fourth studio album, After The Rain, Strange Seeds, which will be with us on 20 March and is being hailed as a ‘luminous collection of pastoral indiepop’. Easy to believe based on this first track.
Sharing the track record label Fika Recordings say The Reader’s Lamp is, “Like much of the record, the song is about the wonder of the natural world and the changes in the weather, looking into the back garden at nighttime and seeing a blanket of snow on the ground. The song alludes to the uncanny feeling of dusk and nighttime creatures and the completely alien nature of moths.”
And The Reader’s Lamp gentle bumps against you all motorik pulse and swooning layers of instrumentation, the crystalline vocal of Kate Gibson fluttering above it all. This is a song which draws you in, holds you close, and then melts you with swells of strings. Citing Stereolab and Yo La Tengo we say yes to all that, and based on both the band’s brilliant back catalogue and this latest single we wait with great anticipation for the album.
The Reader’s Lamp from The Leaf Library is out digitally now. Album After The Rain, Strange Seeds is due out on 20 March 2026 via Fika Recordings.
Find The Leaf Library: Website | Bandcamp | Instagram | Facebook
Live dates:
- 28 March – Just Dropped In, Coventry
- 30 March – The Holloway, Norwich
- 31 March – The Ivy House, London
- 1 April – Common Ground, Oxford
- 4 April – Where Else?, Margate
- 11 April – Firebug, Leicester
- 17 April – JT Soar, Nottingham
Image: Michael Wood
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Sarah Lay
A long-standing music journalist she's also co-founder of independent record label Reckless Yes, an author of novels, and when not messing around with words and music, a digital strategist.
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