Adrianne Lenker – cradle
German Error Message – Hopelessness
Jo Schornikow – Incomplete
Grizzly Coast – Half-Light Boy
Taylor Hamilton – Might Say
Porridge Radio – Give / Take
Patio – Scum
Ruthie – Spirit Now Moves
Esther Rose – Don’t Blame It On the Moon
Blood Cultures – Flowers For All Occasions
Puddle-Cuddle – Compost
Mess – Dead Space
Cry Babe – Soft Honk
The Painters – Pieces of Life
Two Meters – Ground
Erin Durant – Take a Load Off
Michelle Blades – Ring
Eric & Magill – Thanks to Sciences
Foundlings – Caught Up on You
Craig Finn – Something To Hope For
JW Ridley – Homesick (Out The Blue)
Pieket – Eternal Recurrence
The Curfews – Rose
Emily Fairlight – Body Below
Raggedy – Brainwash
Barrie – Saturated
Blush – Forever Is a Long Time
Shane Leonard – Empire Builder
Con Davison – Sofa Bed
Gold Light + Snakemusk – The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter
The Chats – Pub Feed
Shutups – Yellowjacket
Izzy Heltai – Stuck In Stone
Adam Ostrar – Take It Back
The Death Of Pop – Last
Toledo – Some Samurai
Yot Club – Japan
Evan Thomas Way & The Phasers – Long Distance
K. Campbell – Heads Up
The Duke of Norfolk – As the Heralds Revere You
Leaky Engine-John Birch Society Blues
naps – treading
Vieo Abiungo – What the Rain Restores
Old Earth – The Friends ∴ The Gods
Good Good Blood & Astral Social Club – Heathen Astronaut

Like what you hear? Catch up with the rest of our Monthly Mixes!

The post April 2019 Roundup Mix appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Not content with her work with Big Thief (who, by the way, have a new record in the works on 4AD), Adrianne Lenker also records solo songs under her own name, a chance for her intimate lyrics to sit at the heart of quieter, more opaque ruminations. Released back in October, latest album abysskiss is further proof that Lenker is right at the forefront of the not insignificant roster of contemporary songwriters.

abysskiss was recorded quickly, intended as a diary-like snapshot of a certain period of Lenker’s life in much the same way that an Impressionist painter fills their canvas before a fleeting feeling is lost. The result is a collection of poetic shards, bruised and tender and fierce despite their hushed nature, steeped in mystery and loss and a sense of esoteric humanity.

It is in the oblique nature of the record that its true majesty lies, the uncertainty fostering a curious sense of mystery and meaning. “See my death become a trail,” Lenker sings on opener ‘terminal paradise’. “And the trail leads to a flower / I will blossom in your sail / Every dreamed and waking hour.” The song is typical of Lenker’s work on abysskiss, not confronting ideas or themes but skirting around their invisible edges, sketching an outline of something too large or important to be grasped directly.

Which sounds far more complicated that it is in practice. Take the beguiling melody in the chorus of ‘cradle’, a song that’s almost ballad-like in its unhurried romance, rising from gently intertwined guitars. The track is a great example of how Lenker uses a basic, traditional set up (i.e. her guitar and her voice) but is able to hit little pockets of rhythm, small explored places that feel fresh and new but never over-complicated or jarring.

baby you’re still too proud to come down
maybe i’m still too loud to hear

Such an effect lies behind the intentions of the album. abysskiss is about “this whole conversation we’re having right now, about death and loss, and the deaths within life that happen,” Lenker describes in a great in-depth Q&A with Gabriela Tully Claymore for Stereogum. “It’s something like this bridge between the infinite and the finite and the mystery and the abyss of complete wonder, and maybe even that spirit of witnessing something, something really powerful and not knowing what it is, and feeling small.”

The idea is perhaps most conspicuous on the title track (“Wilderness / Vast abyss / Will we ever kiss?) but is present in every song, from the rhythmic lullaby ‘​blue and red horses’ to tender closer ’10 miles’—a song which closes the life/death cycle that began in the album’s opening. Even the most cryptic songs are imbued with such concepts. The lyrics on ‘symbol’ tumble together in a breathless poetic rush, a tangle of symbolism knit into a nest of finger-picked guitar that somehow straightens itself out into a clear conclusion.

The symbol of your love is time

For all of its abstraction and arcane symbols, abysskiss is an intuitive, organic record, and it is this which provides the common thread through Lenker’s oeuvre. It is “as though the meaning is summoned from the words themselves, something in the syllabic arrangement dragging stories and emotions into our world from somewhere else entirely,” we wrote of Big Thief’s Capacity, words that could just as easily be describing abysskiss. “Lenker’s gift is her ability to recognise the strange, innate forces within language, surrender to them, and present them back to us with a crystal-clear clarity.”

abysskiss is out now on Saddle Creek Records and you can get it from their website or the Adrianne Lenker Bandcamp page.

The post Adrianne Lenker – abysskiss appeared first on Various Small Flames.

2nd Grade – Favorite Song
Adeline Hotel – Lightning
Adrianne Lenker – Cradle
Allison’s Gate – Traces
Anna McClellan – Heart of Hearts
Advance Base – Christmas in Nightmare City
Badlands – Slow it Down
Bambara – José Tries to Leave
The Beths – Whatever
Bodega – Jack in Titanic
boygenius – Me & My Dog
Camp Cope – UFO Lighter
Campdogzzz – Sorceress
Cave People – I Shall Believe
Damien Jurado – Percy Faith
Dead Painters – Fool on Fire
Dear Nora – Simulation Feels
Dehd – Dying For
Devon Welsh – Vampires
Diva Sweetly – Detox Island
Doe – Heated
Dusted – Outline of a Wolf
Field Report – Every Time
Frankie Valet – Something to do with a mouth
Gia Margaret – Birthday
Goodbye Max – Old Photos
Good Good Blood – Cannot Be Yours Forever
Gorgeous Bully – Patience
Great Health – Lazarus
Hop Along – How Simple
Hour – At the bar where you literally saved me from fatal heartbreak 
Houses – Fast Talk
Hovvdy – Brave
Hypoluxo – Kentucky Smooth
IAN SWEET – Hiding
Kal Marks – Today I Walked Down To The Tree, Read A Book, And When I Was Done, I Went Back Inside
Katy Kirby – Juniper
Kevin Morby & Waxahatchee – Dark Don’t Hide It
Kississippi – Easier to Love
Kraków Loves Adana – The Day the Internet Died
Lala Lala – Destroyer
Lisa/Liza – Tea Kettle
lowly loverboi – Graveyards in Space
Lucy Dacus – Yours & Mine
Mike Pace & the Child Actors – Escape the Noise
Miranda Winters – The Futuristic District
Mitski – Nobody
Moonface – Minotaur Forgiving Pasiphae
Moon Racer – Friendly Ghost
Nap Eyes – Every Time the Feeling
Nice Try – Micah
Nicole Dollanganger – Uncle
No Age – Drippy
Oceanator – Mistakes
Of The Valley – Ride Alone
Pale Kids – St. Theresa
Pat Moon – I Belong
Pema – Depend
Petal – I’m Sorry
Pink Navel – born-100.dev
Pizza Girl – Body Part
Protomartyr – Wheel of Fortune
Remember Sports – Dripping
Restorations – Nonbeliever
Rivulets – Everything Goes
Ryan Von Gonten – Fabrique
Sabriel’s Orb – Holding
Saccharine – Pumpkin Guts
Sam Moss – Snap
Sara Renberg – Take the Summer Off
Sobs – Sundae
Spartan Jet-Plex – Sweet
Strange Ranger – The Wires
Sun June – Slow Rise II
Swearin’ – Dogpile
Talk, Tired Thanatoid – Everything’s Cool
Tomberlin – Any Other Way
Trace Mountains – Salty Sweet
Trust Fall – Wild Fire/Flowers
TVU – All For Nothing
Weakened Friends – Blue Again
Whitney Baleen – Rainer
Why Bonnie – Stereo
Wild Pink – The Seance on St. Augustine Street
wished bone – reasons
Yellowfront – Cool Breeze
Young Jesus – For Nana
Young Statues – Somebody Else
Yowler – Where Is My Light?

If you missed it, we have also posted our favourite albums list, so check that out too.

The post Favourite Songs of 2018 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Various Swell Sounds is a new collaborative playlist series from Shana Hartzel of Swell Tone, Jon Chin of Cereal and Sounds, and myself. Instead of constantly exchanging tracks amongst each other, we have decided to work together to bring them to more ears. Every month, we will match a selection of our old and brand new favourites to a specific theme, as decided on a revolving basis month by month.

After the brutal summer, the leaves are finally turning, which can only mean one thing. Yep, it’s the time of year to slip on pavements, make tired jokes about pumpkin spice coffee and hide behind closed curtains to ignore the calls for candy from ghouling children. We’ve made a playlist of songs to see you through the cool and crispy season.

There’s a Playmoss and Spotify version below, so choose what suits you best, though due to incomplete catalogues the are slight discrepancies between the two.

Check out our other Various Swell Sounds entries here and here, and head over to Swell Tone and Cereal + Sounds for the edition over there.

The post Various Swell Sounds #9: Cool & Crispy appeared first on Various Small Flames.

— Big Thief, ‘Mary’

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few months (or even years), chances are you’ve come across someone swooning over Big Thief. The band, led by Adrianne Lenker, released their sophomore album, Capacity, earlier this year, and it is an utterly breathtaking. It’s music that sits at a crossroads between a whole variety of genres. Part Angel Olsen left-field folk, part honest-to-goodness country, part good ol’ indie rock, Big Thief manage to create something with grit, feeling, and above all a beguiling sense of narrative.

Opener ‘Pretty Things’ is both seductive and sad, the vocals curling around the acoustic guitar like smoke from a burning ember. It’s our first taste of Lenker’s ability to paint vivid pictures with careful and often beautiful phrases, spare lines that are loaded with tension and allusion, an intense sexuality, a sense of danger or trauma, and the crushing weight of one’s past. The track is concerned with communicating pain and violence, or else transferring it blindly, casting each person as donor and receiver, capable both of offloading their pent up emotions and swallowing them. And, despite being told through the gender-reinforcing imagery of sex, the narrator works to muddy the traditional narrative of masculine and feminine, allowing both characters to be rough and animal, vulnerable and alive. In doing so the track transcends the moment, becoming something more complex and long lasting. Indeed, the entire record could be described along similar terms, refusing to be cast as feminine delicacy or masculine intensity, instead weaving these two strands into a tightly wound double helix—the Big Thief DNA.

“Don’t take me for a fool.
There’s a woman inside of me
there’s one inside of you, too.
And she don’t always do
pretty things”

Like a great short story, ‘Shark Smile’ seems to be over too soon, despite the fact it’s almost four minutes long. Emerging from a tangle of guitar and scattered drums, the steady beat of the song proper arrives with an unassuming sense of confidence. The tale it tells is not a happy one, beginning with the thrill of two lovers’ escape in the night, “howling through the edge of south Des Moines”, and ending in a brutal collision with the guard rail. The kicker lies in the chorus, what initially seems like a vow of devotion, turns out to be final words and the survivor pleading to follow into the afterlife. “And she said woo, baby, take me,” Lenker sings. “And I said woo, baby, take me too.”

The track is deceptively simple, but holds a rare mix of catchiness and rich emotion that marks the second triumph of Big Thief’s sound. These are stories propelled by the energy within their flow, as though its characters and the very world they inhabit are born of language and not vice versa, scenes conjured through cadence as though through spell or incantation. The title track  follows such an idea, pitching Lenker as a conduit for these flows rather than a conscious writer.

The push and pull of love is again the main theme on ‘Watering’, with aggression and tenderness tangled into one messy knot, while ‘Coma’, sounds like it’s been beamed straight from For Emma era Bon Iver, glistening with a so-far unseen gentleness. Something of this delicacy follows onto ‘Great White Shark’, though beneath the hushed vocals and skittish percussion lies a dark figure that threatens to descend into frenzy.

This is followed by the wonderfully syrupy and sad, ‘Mythological Beauty’, spinning stories of Lenker’s young mother struggling to raise her children. It’s one of those songs that captures you with its melody, that works its way into your brain and lies dormant, only revealing its texture and richness after repeated listens. For this reason it’s the perfect illustration of what Big Thief do so well, and why Capacity is one of the most striking albums of the year. Again the lyrics seem to flow through rather than from Lenker, the songwriter channelling voices beyond herself to tell the story that shapes her own. At once instance, her composure threatens to break, the desperation palpable as she recounts a scene from her childhood, as though the remnants of her mother’s now possess her own body. “You held me in the backseat with a dishrag,” Lenker sings, referencing an accident with a railroad spike she suffered as a child. “Soaking up blood with your eye / I was just five and you were twenty-seven / praying, ‘Don’t let my baby die.'”

If ‘Objects’ and ‘Haley’ are more meandering, likewise closer ‘Black Diamonds’ with it’s classic folk imagery of eyes and tears and whippoorwills, then it’s only a sign of the calm circumscribing the majestic ‘Mary’. Ringing out in a cathedral-like near silence, gentle piano acts to tether the fluid cadences of Lenker’s vocals, which unfurl like a magician’s silk scarves, a perpetual unravelling shaped by a poetic, negentropic logic. Once more, it is as though the meaning is summoned from the words themselves, something in the syllabic arrangement dragging stories and emotions into our world from somewhere else entirely. Lenker’s gift is her ability to recognise the strange, innate forces within language, surrender to them, and present them back to us with a crystal-clear clarity.  “Do what you want with me,” as she sings on the title track. “Lost in your captivity. / Learning capacity.”

Capacity is out now via Saddle Creek and you can buy it from the Big Thief Bandcamp page.

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“[How Strange It Is To See] exists within that small and fleeting pocket in time and space that opens just before you take off from a familiar location, everyday objects taking on new importance as the seconds tick away and your surroundings can be seen outside of the context of your own unimportant worries and wishes”

It was a release that left me with questions, and Knishkowy very kindly agreed to answer a few of them.

Hi Dan, thanks for speaking to us! Congratulations on the release of How Strange It Is To See. I saw you played a release show in a winery?

Thanks! Yeah, a solo show in Pittsburgh, where I recorded these songs. Then we’re doing a full band thing in Brooklyn this week (with Wake the Deaf fav, Ben Seretan).

As I mentioned in my review, the EP was created in the midst of a move, written in one city and recorded in another. Did you intend to write the songs as a direct reaction to the relocation? Or did you just find your life coloured your writing?

There wasn’t much intention at first. I’d been writing songs for a new record, and like most people I know, had developed a love/hate thing with New York. It felt like a good time to try somewhere new for a bit. I was messing around with ‘Everything Is Going To Be Fine’ and the other 3 came out very stream of consciousness. That’s rare for me and I wanted to capture them on record the same way. Quickly and immediately. They’re all in the same key and feel more like one song written from four narrators’ perspectives, so it felt right to put them together in a concise format. To be honest, it’s a bit weird listening now, especially being back in NY, because they are of a very specific moment.

What would you list as the main influences on your writing? Would you say other musicians have had the biggest impact? Have novels/poetry played a role too?

Writing, definitely Jeff Tweedy….people like Neil Young, Elliott Smith, Jason Molina who have this duality of solo acoustic and blown out rock band. On guitar, British folkies like Bert Jansch and John Martyn. Lyrically, Chris Porterfield [of Field Report] is in another world; he completely changed the game for me in terms of what I thought I wanted out of songs.

Honestly, I struggle to break out of familiar points of view, so literature hasn’t found it’s way into the songs yet, but it helps my approach to writing – stuff like Flannery O’Connor, Borges, Murakami, where the seriousness is propped up by an absurdist element. The more fucked up the funnier it is. With music, I just always take shit too seriously. Something to work on.Coming from a background strictly in the written word, I’m always fascinated by songwriting. Having to marry the two strands of music and lyrics from scratch seems like such a difficult task from the outside. How do you go about it? Do you fit the music around the lyrics or vice versa? Or is it some middle ground that only a musician could understand?

Hah, well I’m fascinated by your writing — I feel like we get to cheat because a good melody can pull the weight when the words don’t and vice versa, but every line you write has to stand on it’s own.

Most things start for me on the guitar, but I keep notebooks and iPhone notes to draw from for when that happens. I trade lyrics from song to song a lot, though not always on purpose.

Some of your songs seem pared down to the bare minimum (I’m think of ‘Left on Jewel’ in particular), with a pretty clear narrative condensed into a few short, poetic verses. Do the extended versions of these stories exist in your head, and you distil them to fit into a song? Or do you choose words and imagery more instinctively, allowing the stories to emerge, for you as well as the listener?

I’ve been making a conscious effort to write more concisely. Restraint is such a beautiful thing, but not one of my strengths at all. I usually overwrite (like seven verses for a three verse song) and then edit down. Sometimes the best lyrics aren’t really part of the story and need to be left out, which is a bummer.

I see you are releasing a run of cassettes with Lily Tapes & Discs, who we have covered a few times in various guises. How did this come about? I’m almost completely ignorant when it comes to this sort of thing – did you approach the label? Did they come to you?

Ben Lovell, who runs Lily, is actually an old childhood friend. He taught me about Elephant 6 when we were 12 and I probably returned the favor with something like Through Being Cool. We’d been out of touch for years but started seeing each other at shows in NY and the timing worked out. His own music as Lung Cycles is so great too.

Why did you decide on tapes rather than CD or vinyl? It’s something I’ve thought about a lot recently – if physical releases aren’t the primary method of listening anymore, have they become strictly aesthetic things, nice things to put on a shelf?

I do most of my listening digitally (no streaming, just the old iPod classic), but I buy vinyl at shows. There’s still a level of independent music that’s healthy enough to sell records and make a sustainable income, but for everyone below that level (musicians and labels) it’s become about just connecting with people. There’s been a shift towards limited edition releases, tapes, lathe cuts, etc. which I think is fantastic. With digital music beginning to feel valueless, giving someone a lovingly handmade artefact puts personal value back into that relationship, even if they only play the songs via the download. I love collaboration, so with Ben and Lily that means tapes. He did the art and I think it’s beautiful.

Finally, could you name 4-5 acts you are currently enjoying? Old or new, popular or obscure, whatever you find yourself returning to.

Adrianne Lenker’s a-sides is an everyday listen; The Weather Station, especially last year’s EP; so much Mitski; Will Stratton’s ‘The Relatively Fair‘; Evan Dando’s Baby I’m Bored. I’m biased because I play in her band sometimes, but Johanna Samuels is truly one of the best songwriters around.

You can buy How Strange It Is To See now from the Adeline Hotel/Lily Tapes & Discs Bandcamp Pages.

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