With singles ‘Everything’ and ‘Closer’, London duo atmos bloom have indicated the dreamy depths of their new album Everythingness, as well as the push and pull between influence and experimentation which marks their shoegaze-inflected sound. “[‘Closer’] finds Gratton and Paterson looking for contentment in the present and the constant change it represents,” we wrote of the latter single, “something achieved with a woozy, almost ethereal sound that sits on a knife edge between lucidity and dreams, sanding the edges off of reality in order to consider it more fully.” With the release of Everythingness fast approaching via Spirit Goth Records, atmos bloom have shared latest track ‘It’s Enough’, and again the song finds itself caught between competing forces. Namely the difficulty of living up to the expectations of different people, each with their own distinctive image of you in their head.

Chris Acker – Overdrafted

“A country-folk lamentation about the cruel thing banks do when you have less than zero dollars.” That’s how the press release describes ‘Overdrafted’, the new single from New Orleans-based songwriter Chris Acker. His first new music since 2024 album Famous Lunch, the song explores what he calls the “half-rotten romance of the unremarkable and unrefined.” As we wrote back in 2024: “Behind Acker’s trademark absurdity is the essential troubadour tale, where the confused dreamer collides with the banalities of life and comes to feel cursed for his failings.” But what’s remarkable is, despite the self-deprecation and wry humour, there’s some strange beauty here too, a heartwarming sense of camaraderie with everyone who finds themselves “in the red but still trying to tread.” You certainly won’t hear a more affecting account of having to make do with single ply toilet paper this year.

Jacob Brodovsky – Beneath It All

The songs of Jacob Brodovsky have never been afraid to delve into the personal, with new album Tell The Kids We Tried meditating, as we put it, “on themes of community, connection and family within the tumult that is the present moment,” but latest single ‘Beneath It All’ pushes further than most. Brodovsky had been the proud director of a Jewish summer camp, a place where he had spent over two decades of his life, only to recently face backlash from some members of the wider community for liking a social media post about a benefit show Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund. An ugly situation developed, with the pressure tipping over into full-blown harassment, leaving him little choice but to resign and leave the place which had come to feel like a second home. “I wrote ‘Beneath It All’ about trying to hold onto the community that raised me while it shrinks into itself,” Brodovsky explains. “A community of good people, many of whom blinded by trauma, grief, and a refusal to acknowledge harm.” The album track featured the fantastic Charlotte Cornfield, while a new alternate live version sees Keiran Placatka, Dominique Adams and Leith Ross join instead:

Tell The Kids We Tried is out now via Make My Day Records and available from Bandcamp.

Jonathan Something – Country Rose

Recording under the moniker Jonathan Something, singer-songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Searles won acclaim through the late 2010s and early 2020s, writing prolifically across rock, folk and pop styles, though emerged from the period disillusioned with the industry and music more generally. “I was finding it hard to identify with being an artist anymore,” he explains. “It didn’t bring me the same joy or comfort it used to, and I found that the only way for me to really enjoy music again was to stop making it.” Cue several years away from songwriting, a spell only broken when ill health pushed him back towards music, even if at first merely sitting at a piano now caused him anxiety. “Eventually, I realized that I needed to turn it into something useful,” Searles continues. “I needed to use it as a catalyst to start thinking more seriously about spirituality and growth and the changes I needed to make in my life. And that journey became [new album] One More Lonesome Cowboy Song.” The record will be released this autumn via High Shelter, but for now you can listen to single ‘Country Rose’ for a taste of existential, transformative tone which marks the songs. Watch a live performance of the track recorded by Dogstar Films below:

One More Lonesome Cowboy Song will be released on the 16th October via High Shelter.

LAPÊCHE – Phantom Of Cinder

Brooklyn’s LAPÊCHE began life back in 2016 as the solo project of Krista Holly Diem, but has since grown into a full-blown band. Drawing on shoegaze and post-punk, they make indie rock songs that are both shadowy and catchy, centering on a sense of considered patience that the band says is born from “a shared language of healing, honesty and presence.” Back in February, they released a new record Autotelic via Tiny Engines, a collection of emotionally intricate but very much listenable rock songs. One standout was album closer ‘Phantom of Cinder’, a typically restrained track about how we hold on to shards of the past like splinters in our skin. “This song came from feeling haunted by old versions of myself,” Diem describes. “It is about the things we carry, the memories that refuse to disappear, and the moments that shape us long after they have passed. Sometimes healing is not about letting go. Sometimes it is about learning to live with what remains.” Watch the Jacob Halpren-directed video for ‘Phantom of Cinder’ below:

Autotelic is out now via Tiny Engines and available from the LAPÊCHE Bandcamp page.

Mama’s Broke – Build It Up

The recording project of Canadian pair Amy Lou Keeler and Lisa Maria, Mama’s Broke has made a name over the last decade or so with a rootless, ever-searching style of folk music which played like the songs of old. Stories to be shared around campfires and small town bars before packing up and hitting the road once more. Latest album Reunion, coming later this summer via Free Dirt Records and Forward Music Group, continues this style, possessing a timeless quality that suggests these aren’t so much new songs as memories passed down through the ages. As single ‘Build It Up’ attests, the result is at once intimate and urgent, delivered with the earnest conviction of those unwilling to let go of this world we’re slowly destroying. “If you don’t build it up,” as the telling refrain states, “somebody else will tear it down.”

Nick Bellerose – maybe i think

Montreal’s Nick Bellerose spent nearly two decades living a double life. His career as an international diplomat saw him travel the globe, “handling global crises in the foreign service.” But, privately, his true calling was music, something he used as an anchor to himself when thousands of miles from home. A couple of years ago, things changed. A series of tragedies, spearheaded by the death of his mother, led him to pick up a guitar and start to sing, making the decision to swap “the world stage of diplomacy for the visceral truth of the microphone.” Bellerose cites the likes of Elliot Smith, Sparklehorse and Nebraska-era Springsteen as influences, something plainly clear in latest single ‘maybe i think’. Characteristically bittersweet, the track explores heartbreak with a world-weary acceptance, ultimately landing somewhere life-affirming.

Perennial – Modernism

Formed in Connecticut over a decade ago, Perennial are a self-styled “modernist punk” band who have blown away sweaty basement shows across the globe with their punk rock patchwork style that knits together just about every left-field and out-there style you can think of. The press release describes their forthcoming new record (aptly titled Modernism) as “Op art to dance to”, but the better metaphor is the tagline of a “1,200 second action painting”, as Perennial streak and splatter disparate elements of their seemingly endless record collection into hectic patterns that feel at once reverential and totally new. The real triumph is how Perennial keep these eccentric experiments so catchy and immediate (two words you may now immediately associate with sub-2-minute melange of free jazz, ambient electronica, big beat, dub and Musique concrète), as the opener and title track attests. Check it out below:

Sharp Pins – Saturday Sun

The project of Chicago’s Kai Slater (who you may also know from Lifeguard and Dwaal Troupe), Sharp Pins is an outlet for lo-fi garage pop that could have come swaggering straight out of the swinging sixties. Not content with putting out two records last year (which clocked in with a combined total of 35 tracks), Slater is already back at it, announcing plans to re-release the album MOD MAYDAY 23, first released on tape a couple of years ago when he was still a teenager, via K Records and perennial. “[MOD MAYDAY 23 is] The soundtrack to my 18th summer riding a Chinese Taotao 50cc scooter around Taqueria Moran and four tracking my Sta-Prest-Dreams,” Slater describes. “I thought it would be cool to record a bunch of songs that never really got recorded in a semi-more-thought-out-way.” And if that wasn’t enough, there’s also a brand new Sharp Pins single too. Titled ‘Saturday Sun’, it’s another slice of throwback pop music that’s sure to soundtrack the rest of the summer.

‘Saturday Sun’ is out now via the Sharp Pins Bandcamp page. MOD MAYDAY 23 will be released on 4^th September via K Records and perennial.

Siavash Amini & Eugene Thacker – Sigils of Decay (for João da Cruz e Sousa)

Next month, American Dreams will release the third edition of Songs for Sad Poets, a collaborative project between Tehran-based composer Siavash Amini and Brooklyn writer/philosopher Eugene Thacker, inspired by the tradition of poètes maudits or ‘cursed poets’. As Thacker describes, “[the term] referred to obscure or unknown poets who had endured some form of suffering and who felt compelled to write about it.” In the duo’s hands, this inspiration becomes something haunting, soundscapes that mould ideas from poetry, philosophy and music into new forms.  The first two volumes were entirely instrumental, but this new one is a little different. Amini fed Thacker’s poems into voice synthesis software and then processed and layered the output until any notion of “voice” is dissolved in noise. Lead single introduces how this sounds, a tribute to late nineteenth-century Brazilian symbolist poet João da Cruz e Sousa.

Wishy – All The Rage

“An unapologetically romantic track which creates the slightly intoxicated state of the title in all of its headspinning glory, refusing to dial down the lyrics in order to fully embrace the headspace. As though to be in love is to experience everything saturated and bright.” So we wrote of ‘Lovesick’, the lead single from Wishy‘s new full-length Nature’s Pill back in June, the Indianapolis outfit’s first full-length since the celebrated Triple 7 back in 2024. With the album slated for release via Winspear this autumn, Wishy have put out ‘All the Rage’ to keep the anticipation high. Thematically, the track is diametrically opposed to its predecessor, existing in the aftermath of a break-up and seeking solace amid the gloom. However, take a casual listen and you’d never know it. Because, for all of the bummed out frustration and wistful longing of the lyrics, the sound itself is buoyant and bright, a twee spirit which leans into the rhythm of the sound as though to cleanse itself via momentum alone.

Nature’s Pill will be released on the 2nd October via Winspear and you can pre-order it from the Wishy Bandcamp page.

The post Weekly Listening: July 2026 #2 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

It could be tempting to view such efforts with pessimism. This prolific artist, releasing record after record, still covering new ground in search of a solution to the problem. Only to assume such a position would be to a) underestimate the achievements of Calhoun’s work to date, and b) misunderstand the reason the search is perpetual in the first place. It is not that there is no answer out there, more the answer needs to be continual. Rarely are we so lucky as to get a blinding light along the road to Damascus. The path to comfort and contentment is more like a thirst to be sated. We must constantly go to the well.

With this in mind, Jason Calhoun’s latest album, revelations of divine love, could be read as both a continuation of his ongoing project and a metacommentary on its purpose. Coming next month via Dear Life Records, the album takes its title from the collected works of Julian of Norwich, using the wisdom of the fourteenth-century anchoress as the catalyst for a meditation on what it means to find contentment. “Julian of Norwich says ‘All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well’,” Calhoun explains. “These days, I’ve been having my doubts that this is true. As no solution to the issue at hand, I look for the revelations of divine love in my life, and I find them—in my partner asleep on the floor in our studio, my survival of a social interaction with a stranger, being bad at chess.” None of these things can flip a switch and change a life, few will necessarily count for much a week or month away, but this steady accumulation of ephemeral moments is what sustains a life. Gives it colour and warmth and, ultimately, meaning.

The result is unsurprisingly intimate, if still shot through with the very sense of restlessness that drives its creation, meaning Calhoun’s picture is far more complex than a simple catalogue of sentimental charms. Consider the latest single ‘what we deserve’. An embodiment of the concision and curiosity which marks the record, the song clocks in barely over a minute yet is pulled in every direction by colourful lines of synths and below that a pounding drum which persists undistracted, ensuring the force of these flourishes is limited. As though for all the small delights we find before ourselves, the beat of something larger will always sound behind us. “‘what we deserve’ is perhaps the most simultaneously playful and relentless I get on this record, Calhoun explains. “The title comes from existential thoughts about daily joys against the backdrop of global politics […] Something I’ve been thinking about a lot is whether we deserve the mess we’re in and whether we’re in it due to our own callow joys.”

Watch the track’s accompanying video, courtesy of Calhoun’s dog and a Go Pro camera:

revelations of divine love will be released on the 7th August via Dear Life Records and you can pre-order it now from the Jason Calhoun Bandcamp page.

The post Jason Calhoun – what we deserve appeared first on Various Small Flames.

First single ‘cowboy bebop & eric’s trip’ gave a glimpse of this strange phoenix’s initial lift from the flames. What we labelled “a characteristically off-the-wall and hyperactive slice of electronic (anti-)pop that comes with all the playfulness and intensity of its predecessors,” the track found Wood attempting (and, according to him, failing) to write a jangly, guitar-centred pop song and instead end up with “a glitchy mess” of which he was nevertheless proud. applied communications made its name charting its own unique path, and this has not changed in the intervening years. Decades have passed, life has gone on, yet still this irrepressible creativity has persisted.

With the album on the horizon, applied communications has returned with new single ‘return of jafar’. Crafted from the trademark synths, the song sits in the sweet spot between unapologetic nostalgia and contemporary neurosis, its tone unafraid of self-deprecation yet so bright and bouncy that it seems to simultaneously conquer it. Comparisons for something so idiosyncratic are more or less a non-starter, but if you imagine the centre of a Venn diagram consisting of early Casiotone For the Painfully Alone, Emperor X and Dan Deacon, you might be getting halfway close to the vibe.

applied communications bites the big one will be released on the 25th September via Rare Noodles and Bar/None Records and you can pre-order it via the applied communications Bandcamp page.

The post applied communications – return of jafar appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Now David James Allen has returned with brand new single ‘Dukes Up (Since You’ve Been Gone)’. Taking some inspiration from Frederick Knight’s ‘I’ve Been Lonely (For So Long)’, the track adopts a sunny tone for what is essentially a statement of defiance. A vow to confront life’s struggles head on, standing on your own two feet, fists raised and ready for anything. The sound is suitably rich and assured, with layers of guitars, bass, drums and electric piano, alongside organ from Andrew Ivens, building into something of a buoyant momentum. “On the surface, ‘Dukes Up (Since You’ve Been Gone)’ sounds like a breakup song, but I think of it more as a departure song,” Allen explains. “It’s not about any one person. It’s about those moments in life when someone you’ve relied on is suddenly gone, and you’re forced to learn how to navigate the world on your own.”

The post David James Allen – Dukes Up (Since You’ve Been Gone) appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Make no mistake, WATERBODIES is far from a solo endeavour. Charlotte Greve enlisted Shahzad Ismaily to produce the record, as well as a vast ensemble of collaborators (including KHORIKOS and the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra) to bring the sound to life. This diversity matches the record’s spirit as outlined above, allowing Greve the space and plasticity to eschew the usual expectations around stylistic consistency in order to accomplish her vision. “With WATERBODIES, I hope to invite the audience to experience the music as if walking through a film,” says Charlotte Greve. “Contrasting scenes unfold one after another, yet remain connected by a common thread.”

With the release set for early this autumn, Greve has shared new single ‘Membranes’. The song considers the multitudes which exist within any one person, and how this array of dimensions is shaped and grown by our immediate surroundings. The bright and curious sound, based around syncopated vocals and drum machine beats, flickers like a disco ball in uneven light, as though with every twist and turn, Greve shows a slightly different face to herself, each just as vivid and shining as the last. “‘Membranes’ is a song about the challenge of carrying several hearts in one breast and wanting to feed them all,” as she continues. “As a kid, I lived like a chameleon, changing my clothing, language and behavior, depending on who I was spending time with and where. The older I grew, the bigger the wish to combine all the different shapes and forms, both in my character as well as in my music. Let them all live alongside each other—the picture of the semi permeable membrane captured this desirable way of living for me.”

Photo by Annika Nagel

The post Charlotte Greve – Membranes appeared first on Various Small Flames.

red birds on a branch furthers this style. Each track is a snapshot, or rather a specific scene suspended. A moment or memory frozen in time yet still possessing all its dimensions. The listener is invited to step inside these tableaus, not only to explore the fine details therein, but also imagine the narratives which have led to that picture, as well as that which is yet to unfold.

The entire effect is captured within the very first moments of opening track ‘Spiral Kitchen Linoleum’. “Unopened mail by the microwave,” Rogers sings over a warm and wistful arrangement. “She sensed there’s something you wanted to say / All the words just looking for the right ones / spiral kitchen linoleum.” The precision of the imagery does more than conjure a scene. It evokes memory, yearning, fears and dreams, as though life itself is distilled in the smallest of things. Unopened mail, the hum of a refrigerator (it is fitting the next track on the record, ‘Nighthawks’, evokes Hopper). These details point to the past, yes, but also the future, its characters heading towards a difficult confrontation, the kitchen seemingly laying in wait.

The result is something of a new era for Tremolo Fields. John Ross of Wild Pink produced the release and his fingerprints are noticeable. Where still as can be had a certain off-kilter charm, red birds on a branch is richer, deeper, more complete. The rough edges of its predecessor not so much smoothed over but layered into a more cohesive whole. Be it the nocturnal glow of the aforementioned ‘Nighthawks’, where a loneliness seems to bloom into shimmering possibility, or the altogether sleeker ‘Rooftops’ and its brooding allure. Ross helps breathe an effortless complexity through the arrangements which matches the project’s overall spirit. The beguiling attraction of an image. The surface and its implicit depth.

The post Tremolo Fields – red birds on a branch appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“Recorded in his own home on a 1920s Martin guitar using a Nagra tape recorder, the song evokes Jimmie Rodgers or the earliest Dylan. Ostensibly little more than a minimalist instrumental sketch, the song nevertheless carries its own narrative weight, proceeding with the reflective, slightly mournful tone of a humble life lived by routine.” So we wrote of Cameron Knowler‘s ‘Placer Camp Blues (Nagra Demo)’ back in May, a track which built upon previous album CRK with real lo-fi charm. Continuing this series of demos, Knowler has now shared ‘El Centro’, another song recorded to Tascam which swaps his familiar acoustic sound for an electric guitar, painting a sparse yet evocative picture of Californian desert life in all its rugged, sun-bleached and almost esoteric personality.

‘El Centro (Cassette Demo) is out now via Castle Dome Records and available from Bandcamp.

JP Harris – Say Darling Say

JP Harris might have been embedded within country music for a decade and a half, releasing records and touring across the states and beyond, but he still feels he sits a slight angle compared to the rest of the scene. An outsider artist in the classic sense, pursuing his own singular, idiosyncratic sound which draws upon everything from old school blue collar musicians to punk rock attitude and the daring of the avant garde. New album Shaving a Dead Man, forthcoming this autumn via Bloodshot Records, collects a series of traditional songs shone through this prism, resting on the classic cornerstones of banjo and fiddle yet emerging sounding fresh and new. Listen to opener and lead single ‘Say Darling Say’ now:

Shaving A Dead Man will be released on the 23rd October via Bloodshot Records and you can pre-order it now.

Kate Prascher – Thousand A Million

“Embodies both the atmosphere and emotional clarity of the release,” we wrote of ‘Jubilee’, the lead single from Kate Prascher‘s upcoming full-length Sunday Afternoon, back in June. “The sound with one foot in the past but always looking forward, allowing memories and hopes for the future to sit side by side.” This collision of the vintage and contemporary is typical of the Memphis-born, Hudson Valley-based songwriter’s work, Prascher finding fertile ground in the ambiguous space between things, be it mystery and clarity or the old and the new. Something again evident on new track ‘Thousand A Million’. A richly warm number rooted in the landscape of the present, the song nevertheless casts an eye back towards those who lived and worked in that very same space back through the generations. “I wrote it with my ancestors in mind and with a feeling of wide, open plains,” as Prascher explains to Glide Magazine.

Sunday Afternoon will be released on the 28th August via First City Artists.

Leilani Patao – what

If you’ve been following the work of Hawaiian-American musician and songwriter Leilani Patao in recent months, you’ll know their music can pack an emotional punch, though often chooses to eschew the usual bombast or melodrama for something more joyful. Released in anticipation of a new deluxe edition of their EP daisy, recent single ‘kiddy scissors‘ typified the style with its celebration of queer love, and though latest track ‘what’ concerns very different subject matter, that sense of heart and control again shines through. “I wrote this song a few years ago when I felt my most frozen,” Patao explains of a track about the helplessness so many of us feel in the face of the contemporary political moment. “I felt really powerless and I felt terrified of what could happen if I started putting these stances into my songs.” But, in true Patao fashion, courage eventually wins out, not least because it becomes clear selfish concern can no longer be enough. “I can’t just protect what I’ve got anymore because it’s being taken away from me anyways. I can’t lay low; I can’t be quiet.”

lonalih – Have You Heard

Selected Short Stories, the new EP from Hamburg folk artist lonalih on new basement, is a release which lives up to its name. Built upon a bed of guitar, piano and strings, and resting on Lina Lohmann’s light yet emotive vocal style, each of the five tracks present their own narrative snapshot of a specific moment. The pieces favour texture and sensation over explicit detail, yet transport the listener all the same. “The songs remind of clear early morning light or an after-hour private choir practice,” as the label puts it. “Words inspired by human bond, girlhood and the motif of true name.” The result is five vignettes painted in the same soft tones as the album’s artwork. Airy, evocative and bright.

Melissa Weikart – Crash

Existing beween the poles of experimental improvisation and crowd-pleasing pop, the work of French-American songwriter Melissa Weikart has long known how to enchant an audience. A sound that welcomes the listener in with an expert sense of control, yet nevertheless constantly surprises, finding a line between craft and spontaneity which proves a fitting vehicle for exploring emotions in all their strange peculiarities and universal pull. Latest single ‘Crash’ is the ideal starting point for the uninitiated, what Weikart herself has described on social media as “a love song to friends near and far, the people with whom we traverse the mundane, the extraordinary, and all the messiness in between.” Lush, immersive and slightly warped at the edges, a world to step inside which always seems ready to shift beneath your feet. Watch the video directed by Pierre Petit, with the help of Filip Rzedzicki, below:

‘Crash’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Scout Gillett – Gonna Change

Scout Gillett was born in Missouri, cut her teeth in Brooklyn and now finds herself in LA, a fact which seems to inform her second full-length Tough Touch. Released back in March via Slouch Records, the album presents a sense of unfolding momentum, pitching the listener into the ongoing journey of its creator and the heady of mix of experiences which result, making for a sound that’s not afraid to show uncertainy or fragility but always holds an assured confidence too. As though in keeping in motion, Gillett intentionally confronts difficulty and thus enables a sense of constant growth. The fittingly titled single ‘Gonna Change’ is a good place to start, possessing both the vulnerability and soulful swagger that is present across the record, as well as a hard won wisdom that quits fighting against the current of change and instead goes with the flow.

Its always gonna change
Nothing stays the same

Tough Touch is out now via Slouch Records and available from Bandcamp.

Sweetbreads – Ben

Following on from January single ‘Punisher of Love’, which we described as “an exploration of [the] contemporary rat race, delving into the weight of expectations and self-sabotage which results,” Melody Stolpp’s Sweetbreads is back with a brand new track ‘Ben’. Displaying both the storytelling and sincerity which has become a staple of the project, the song is decidedly bittersweet, yearning for the titular character with equal parts bright fondness and melancholic longing. “It’s my one and only unrequited love song,” as Stolpp explains. “Looking back, it feels like a sweet little time capsule for a very rough year. Now I see it as a tribute to my younger self and to all the naive hearts who find themselves in complicated situationships.”

Ben / Satisfy is out now and available from the usual places.

wAHb – Still

wAHb is the self-described “Post Americana” project of Laramie, Wyoming-based songwriter and musician Caleb Bristol and various collaborators. Originally intended as a vehicle for an exploratory, noise-based style of music which drew on sounds from everyday life, wAHb has gradually evolved towards a more considered brand of folk, though the spirit of the earlier era remains in the atmospheric layering of samples fleshing out the arrangements. As latest album Whiteman shows, the result might be born in the country western tradition, but is quick to separate itself from its forebears, losing all the nostalgia and kitsch romance of the genre in favour of something altogether more raw. Take opener ‘Still’, playing as if it has been dug up from someplace deep out on the Wyoming plateau, or else picked up on a lonely radio, its wavelength unknown. A transmission of which Molina himself would be proud, restrained in tone yet weighed by the ache of a lifetime of small heartbreaks.

Whitmer Thomas – Candy Corn

If you’ve spent some time in front of a screen large or small in recent years, chances are you’ve come across Whitmer Thomas, be it in hit films such as Weapons and Friendship, shows like Big Mouth or his own HBO comedy special. But aside from being an actor and comedian, Thomas is also a musician. He has put out a couple of joyously tongue-in-cheek releases which possesses his comic spirit while preserving a sense of earnestness, never descending into parody. Nowhere is this clearer than on ‘Candy Corn’, Thomas’s brand new single and first with the good folks at Fire Talk. A playful but sincere depiction of youth in all its chaos and vulnerability, wrapped in the latent wistfulness present within any act of retrospection. The song comes complete with a suitably zany video, including guest appearances from Joe Pera and Cameron Christopher:

‘Candy Corn’ is out now via Fire Talk and available from Bandcamp.

Winter – hollow (mixtape version)

We last wrote about Brazil-born, New York-based songwriter Samira Winter, AKA Winter, last summer with the release of full-length Adult Romantix via Winspear. “A record concerned with all the pain and potential within a major move in life,” as we described, “evolving the shoegaze/dream pop styles introduced on 2022 debut Some Kind Of Blue with everything from Elliott Smith-esque acoustic emotion to the concision and texture of Rather Ripped-era Sonic Youth.” With a new project on the horizon, Winter has returned with ‘hollow (mixtape version)’, a reimagining of the closing track from Adult Romantix which hints at the future direction of the outfit. Because while the original offered a cloudy, ethereal four minutes, enveloping the listener in its hazy shimmer, the mixtape version is charged with an entirely different energy. A song succinct and bound by forward motion, clocking in at almost half the length of its twin sister yet no less atmospheric for it.

Watch the video directed by Sophie Hur below:

‘hollow (mixtape version)’ is out now via Winspear and available from Bandcamp.

The post Weekly Listening: July 2026 #1 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

So far singles ‘River of Love’ and the title track have introduced The End of the Road, both songs highlighting Sawrey’s ability to conjure narrative depth within relatively short spaces of time. Take the latter, a reflective track which drew on a pair of real world memories (a camping trip to Vermont back in 1976 and the loss of an old friend) to “paint a picture of a man at the dead of night,” as we put it. “A person lost in the wilderness or else the dark twists of his own head and confessing as much as plainly as he knows how.”

With the record now out, Hadnot Creek has shared ‘Thirty One’ as a final single, and the track serves as the embodiment of everything achieved across the record. An entire life distilled into nine short verses. A life ended prematurely, granted, but an entire life nonetheless. The concision of Sawrey’s lyricism typical of the deceptive depth which runs through his work. A style that’s mirrored in the sound itself, with what at first appears a relatively stripped back folk arrangement blooming into something which rich and intricate.

The post Hadnot Creek – The End of the Road appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“Good luck getting back to me / I’ll go with the dead / Way down where the water’s deep / Way over your head.” The opening to ‘Mountain Stream’, the lead single from Angela Autumn‘s new LP Believer forthcoming via Gar Hole Records, signals the spirit of an album about a retreat to nature and the potential both personal and creative therein. Appalachian native Autumn left her adopted home for a variety of wild spots in order to write the record, bouncing between the Tennessee woodland, an Asheville treehouse and Chattanooga warehouse to centre the wild in the songs. “I like to put myself in extreme situations in order to write,” Autumn explains. “That’s how I wrote songs like ‘Jesus Heist’ and ‘In the South’: by leaving everything behind and going into nature. Without the earth, I probably wouldn’t have any music.” As ‘Mountain Stream’ shows, the result is both richly crafted and emotionally affirming, drawing the audience into Autumn’s natural world so that they might find peace too.

Watch the video by Ives Albert and Ash Wright below:

Believer will be released on the 11th September via Gar Hole Records and you can pre-order it now.

aument – Sam I Am

Ever been so pissed off about something you’ve written a song? ‘Sam I Am’, the title track of aument‘s new EP, originated from exactly that scenario. With the uniquely maddening experience of neighbour trouble escalating when one of the juvenile characters urinated in aument’s garden (while they were sitting mere feet away, no less), they decided to channel their anger into music. With help from Micah Prussack of Youbet (bass) and Zeb Stern of Psymon Spine (drums), the resulting track is raw, immediate and ultimately cathartic. Not a solution to the hostility of the outside world, but a declaration of opposition nonetheless. A non-binary person raising their voice against masculine cruelty and general disregard of others and somehow still finding room to spin something fun from the fury.

Black Duck – Connects By Water

“After touring across Spain with acclaimed Basque musician Elena Setién, the trio felt they had discovered someone else clearly attuned to the Black Duck spirit, and have taken this forward to not only invigorate the project, but to reimagine its very boundaries.” So we wrote of Black Duck with Elena Setién, the new album from the Chicago supergroup (Douglas McCombs on bass/guitar, Bill MacKay on guitar and Charles Rumback on drums) which looks to commit the magic of live performance to tape. After lead single ‘Land of the Many Eyes’, Black Duck and Elena Setién have returned with new track ‘Connects By Water’ to further hint at the depth of the record. McCombs’s fingerprints are clear on the sound, with the composition sharing DNA with those of projects like Tortoise, yet the others breath more space into the sound so that it becomes something altogether more ventilated and welcoming. “Somehow for me, this track is a great respite,” Setién explains. “Like finally coming to a beautiful quiet beach, knowing you can relax.”

Darren Hayman – Little Arrow, Little Sparrow (feat. The Wave Pictures & Rotifer)

Following on from the release of the expanded edition of majestic 2012 full-length The Violence, Darren Hayman‘s present project to make the full breadth of his back catalogue available online continues apace. The Violence was a “complex and emotionally resonant concept album centring on the English Civil War and the contemporaneous witch trials across East Anglia,” as we wrote in our review, but latest single ‘Little Arrow, Little Sparrow’ couldn’t be any further from those themes. Released as part of Vostok 5, an exhibition of music and art “about people and animals in space,” the track moves from base superstition to the far edges of human endeavour, at least ostensibly. Because the title is in fact the translation of Belka and Strelka, the two dogs who became the first to orbit earth and return alive after the Soviets sent them into space, hinting at the prayers and violence behind even the most futuristic of missions.

Hawk & Steel – Caroline

Melding the warm twang of Americana with the rugged drama of the Pacific Northwest, Victoria, BC-based folk rock outfit Hawk & Steel adept at both sweeping weight and emotional depth. More than a decade passed between their previous LP and recent release Ain’t Never Moving On, though the outfit return from their hiatus recharged and ready for a new chapter. Single ‘Caroline’ gives a flavour of what to expect, the song still possessing some of the fitful energy which has long marked the Hawk & Steel sound, while displaying a newfound sense of reflection which suggests the band have been evolving in the intervening years. “I tried to, forget who you were / Forget what your hair smells like,” the opening lines play, immediately introducing the yearning which permeates the track. “Still your voice, rings in my ear / Louder than it was when you were here.” Love might pass but the past is not so easy to shake.

Josaleigh Pollett – Like a River

There was a sense of conviction apparent on ‘The Witness‘, the previous single from Josaleigh Pollett‘s upcoming album If I Let It Quiet, a song about learning to look beyond the usual categories and borders of existence in order to find peace. Latest single ‘Like a River’ concerns itself with similar ideas, indeed is the track which gives the record its title, but comes from a far more uncertain place. A dispatch delivered not with the clarity of distance but the rush and chaos of the present. “’Like a River’ is about an attempt at quieting the noise of my own thoughts and of a chaotic world around me in order to try to be more resilient,” Pollett explains. “A too-late-coffee-fueled yellow-light-lit silent moment—having arrived at myself just in time to feel my pulse speed up and the news of the day sweep me away into frothing rapids. Hoping for the peace of a quiet river bank, only to remember that a river is swift, chaotic, and ever-changing the earth beneath it. Inspired by Paul Simon’s Peace Like a River—a song I’ve always held in my heart as a beautiful protest song.”

Jules Reidy – Shadow Symmetric for JACK Quartet (excerpt)

Jules Reidy‘s Thrill Jockey debut Ghost/Spirit was a deep and often dense exploration of mysticism, the Berlin-based polymath offering a narrative arc which bent through the dark of contemplation towards eventual transcendence. Therefore, while it might be tempting to view the altogether lighter tone their new record Clerestory, coming again via Thrill Jockey later this year, as something of a pivot away from its predecessor, in actuality it feels like the perfect continuation. The clue is in the title itself, a clerestory being a high wall set with windows, often in a church, which serves to imbue a space with light and fresh air. This image which embodies the sound of the release, as though the path Reidy established on Ghost/Spirit has merely continued onto a new canvas, angling upwards towards the light. Of course, with light comes shadow, and no-one familiar with Reidy’s work would expect anything other than a sound full of the weight of contradiction. But the overarching sense is a record on the edge of transcendence, one foot on earth, the other stepping towards something altogether more spiritual. Listen to ‘Shadow Symmetric’ now for a taste, recording with the renowned JACK Quartet:

Marika Che – Edge of the Storm

You might recognise Marika Justad as the frontwoman of indie rock outfit Tangerine, but she has recently returned as a solo artist, under the moniker Marika Che. Debut album Bright Flame introduces the style of this new era, displaying a warm yet confessional style of folk rock which sits somewhere between Waxahatchee’s country-inflected rock and something closer to dream pop. As single ‘Edge of the Storm’ attests, the result packs an emotional punch yet delivers it within a breezy warmth, drawing the audience in with an easy-going rhythm and assured vocal style. A debut this might be, but there’s clear experience within its craft, and you’d be hard pushed to find a more pleasant soundtrack as summer blooms.

Pale Ramon – The Mirror

Founded by Kevin Plessner and Emanuel Ayvas, Brooklyn‘s Pale Ramon have made a name with an amalgamated style of indie rock, taking the usual energy and emotional heft and adding in post-punk angles and layers of sax and strings. This autumn, they are set to release their brand new full-length The Yawn, and have recently put out the album’s lead single ‘The Mirror’ to give an indication of what to expect. Building with admirable patience, the track is indicative of the band’s craft, with a lush atmosphere gradually tipping towards something more urgent, a style followed by the vocals too. What emerges is a picture of something like desperation, told with both the immediacy of the moment and the fondness of personal history. Watch the video produced by Andrew Marfoli and Brian James below:

The Yawn will be released on the 6th November and you can pre-save it now.

Tough Old Bird – Wednesday’s Child

Founded by brothers Matthew and Nathan Corrigan and now expanded to include Ricky Bechard (drums) and Brendan O’Shea (bass), Tough Old Bird is a Buffalo-based folk rock band who offer both rich narrative lyricism and atmospheric arrangements. Latest single ‘Wednesday’s Child’, the first of what promises to be a steady stream of releases throughout the coming summer months, marks something of a new era for the project. Their first as a four-piece, and thus newly detailed and rich, the kind of sound that every prior release from the Corrigans seems to have been building towards. Another stellar entry in this year’s bumper crop of electrically charged country rock, standing shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Thomas Dollbaum, Sluice and Brown Horse.

Zoon – You Can’t See Me (This Low)

“There might not be an easy answer at the end of the Happy Thought School, indeed the fact that things remain unresolved might be a central facet of the project as a whole. But if Zoon has communicated anything with their releases to date, it is that the only way to reckon with difficult histories is to delve into them regardless of whether answers might be salvaged from the wreck.” So we wrote of the new album from Zoongide’ewin’s Zoon back in May, with singles ‘One Too Many Nights‘ and ‘I Was Younger’ picking through the ruins of a relationship. With the album not out via Paper Bag Records, Zoon has shared final track ‘You Can’t See Me (This Low)’, a fittingly confessional number which confronts heartbreak, relapse and recovery which characteristic candour.

Happy Thought School is out now via Paper Bag Records and available from the Zoon Bandcamp page.

The post Weekly Listening: June 2026 #4 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The album’s title is therefore both misleading and perfectly specific. The songs centre on the oilfield town of Houma. Categorically somewhere, yet, at least as far as the rest of the country is concerned, the proverbial middle of nowhere. But there’s another dimension lurking in the title too, one which lends the album its tension and urgency. For Houma and towns like it are on the bleeding edge of the unfolding climate catastrophe, not only battered by ever more violent hurricanes but literally sinking into the sea. One of many places across the world that will soon be nowhere in more than a figurative sense. This record is Convinced Friend’s attempt to commit it to memory.

But no make no mistake, Nowhere Songs is not a lesson in gloating, voyeurism or pity. Wilson might have made it out, but his focus remains firmly on the ground in Houma, shoulder to shoulder with those who walk its streets. An intimacy underlined by a certain sense of disbelief, as though Wilson can’t quite fathom he now lives in Rhode Island, and some part of him never will (which perhaps is not surprising, considering he is one of only two people from his graduating class to leave Louisiana, the other moving to play football for Florida State). “In some ways, I feel like I somehow got… I don’t want to say spared, that feels too strong, but–I got out and other people didn’t, and I don’t exactly know why,” he explains.

But any relief is complicated by competing emotions, something like survivor’s guilt, or else the strange yearning of a writer in exile. Home can be overbearing, claustrophobic, almost inhospitable, but there’s no replacement for it. Those separated from the place they were born are on some level people destined for forever mourn.

Nowhere Songs will be released on the 28th August and you can pre-order it now from the Convinced Friend Bandcamp page.

Photo by Jessina Leonard

The post Convinced Friend – Robitussin appeared first on Various Small Flames.