Tracklisting:

Hop Along – How Simple
Remember Sports – Pull Through
Fresh Kill – San Diego
Badlands – Slow it Down
Foundlings – Misery
Squirrel Flower – Conditions
Valley Queen – Chasing the Muse
Nap Eyes – Every Time the Feeling
wished bone – reasons
Pearl Crush – True Blue
Samia – 21
plant food – baked beans
Gillian Frances – Blue Shit
Luton – Ice Museum
naps – ninth
Allison’s Gate – Traces
Mess – Cave
runner – awash
I’m Kingfisher – Sarajevo
Sam Moss – Snap
The Duke of Norfolk – Dylan Thomas / Bitter Bitter
Michael Nau & The Mighty Thread – Less Than Positive
lung cycles – dcs

You can check out all of our past monthly roundup mixes here, and be sure to follow us on Spotify and Playmoss for all our future playlists.

The post May 2018 Roundup appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Like most Memorials of Distinction releases, Allison’s Gate makes music built on a sense of loneliness, dissociation and pain. But that doesn’t mean it’s not beautiful. It’s art that feels weary and bruised but somehow defiant, creativity as both an outlet and a remedy. As the title suggests, Waves / Bona Fide can be split into two parts. Comprising of the first five tracks, Waves has the ethereal, submerged vibe of Grouper, what Memorials of Distinction describe as “the lulls and flows of abstracted noises, delays and flutters, tender vocals flitting in and out of audibility.” The eerily affecting opener ‘Glass Bed’ sets the tone, an instrumental that plunges us into a strange and shadowy world that’s not quite our own.

When they do appear on ‘I Should Go’, the vocals are run through effects so as to be made strange, as if emanating from the shifting walls of a dream. There’s a similar effect on ‘Infatuation (up and down)’, its layered vocals ringing out like the indistinct cries of yearning ghosts, while ‘January’ is all electronic bubbles and glitches beneath the billowing curtain of McPhail’s wordless voice.

The final three songs are Bona Fide, tracks that are more conventional in structure, the murky nature of Waves seared away by uncontainable feeling. It begins with the title track which simmers with sardonic rage, the repetitive guitar line woozy and hypnotic as McPhail calls out a “bona fide piece of shit.”

There’s a slower start to ‘Leave the Lights on’, which recalls Yowler in its stark and spacious sound, but things soon become shot through with feeling as the vocals rise in waves that crash around the thin thread of guitar at the song’s centre. Finale ‘Traces’ closes out the album with urgent lo-fi guitar and a breathless and desperate stream of lyrics. Think emotional pop smash hit but at the bottom of a pond at midnight. It might be the strongest song on the release, and means next year’s proper full-length can’t come soon enough.

You can get Waves / Bona Fide on a name-your-price basis via the Memorials of Distinction Bandcamp page.

The post Allison’s Gate – Waves / Bona Fide appeared first on Various Small Flames.