Kind of Blah is America, the U S of A in eleven songs – quirky, joyous, breathless, exhausting, addictive, heartbreaking and downright weird, accelerating towards a distant horizon while keeping its eyes firmly on a halcyon past that sure seems like it should have been more fun

Little did I know that Frog released a self-titled mini-album back in 2013 on the now defunct label Monkfish Records and, luckily for those of us late to the party, Audio Antihero have stepped up to the plate and re-released the record.

Frog might sound a little different from Kind of Blah, but anyone expecting the rough début of a band getting to grips with their sound and style is going to be very surprised. Each track is just as detailed and clever as anything on the follow-up, setting down Frog’s exciting modus operandi. Take opener ‘Ichabod Crane’, a perfect example of their frantic lo-fi folk rock packed to bursting with odd and strangely affecting lyrics. “Head chopped off like Ichabod Crane,” he sings, “oh the things I’d do again. Tongue hacked out like Helen Keller, oh if I could only tell her”.  It’s the weird blend of violent suffering and nostalgia that constitutes many a history, and here its delivered which such veracity you can’t help but get swept up in the flow. The striking similarities to country are unmissable yet somehow you get the impression these songs come from another lineage entirely, as if shaped by similar forces and pressures to good old cowboy music yet no more related than a dolphin to a fish.

‘Arkansas’ features a First World War of dead entertainers and punk kids on stretchers, a sad song of the desperate kind, while ‘Jesus Song’ rises from the ashes like a half-drunk phoenix, or rather like a Jesus Christ if he fronted beach bar country band and sounded like Stephen Malkmus. ‘Nancy Kerrigan’ slows the tempo, the narrator facing a present trauma while trying to seek refuge in the past, trying to wrap himself in the nostalgia-drenched memories and Honest-To-God American images which promise to save us. It’s the saddest song you’re likely to hear for a good while.

“If I could afford it
I would record this
on your mother’s organ
you left back in Oregon
and I put your face
coming through the drapes
stick you in between the lines and the bass
and all the houses we pass will have American flags
and all the sullen sons inside will hug their dads

God bless the state of Texas
and the Dallas Cowboys’ blue
I know darling he’ll protect us

Can I venture an educated guess
have I had some part of your loneliness?
And we put our prayers in Nanny Kerrigan
we put our prayers in Nancy’s care”

‘Space Jam’ is an unexpected Christmas bummer ballad, lost love and heartbreak dangling like decorations, ghosts of past and present swirling in cold night (“Its Christmas time I think so and the air feels just like home”), while ‘Rubbernecking’ is a grotesque drive down into the darkest parts of contemporary psyche. “Last night I fucking killed a man” he sings like some forgotten face from Less Than Zero, “and you know it didn’t change shit”, although the primary emotion is hardly one of detachment. Instead, the narrator seems to revel in misery, in imagery, in death. There’s no obvious meaning, no message or denouement, just a wacko cranking his gears through a vast landscape of boredom illuminated with sparks of terror and dread.

You can buy Frog now from the Frog Bandcamp page, including a rather nice cassette. For those of with with an eye for a bargain, you can also pick up a digital download bundled with the vinyl edition of Kind of Blah for £12. 

The post Frog – S/T appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Kind of Blah is a product of this place, an album imbued with the spirits of a sparkling past. Skipping between styles and themes and pop culture references at will, the record is a multifaceted wormhole leading to the various Americas that have existed in the last 50-60 years. There is no prevailing emotion or tone, instead everything is present, a musically-original-yet-strangely-televisual mishmash of eye-opening, heart-lifting, soul-destroying possibilities. Hopeful, fearful and melancholic, joyful, delusional and apathetic, the album takes on the appearance of a bustling city – or rather several versions of the same city superimposed over one another – overwhelming in its detail, home to everything and more. These scenes share a common thread, the American demand for fun and heartbreak and the constant battle to ignore just how empty these sources of entertainment prove to be. Apologies for the long quote but opener ‘All Dogs Go to Heaven’ captures this perfectly:

“The city is a womb of brown brick beds of clay
outside of the bars the lakers are on in the alleyway
but it shines from a time when the waitresses were fine and their
great big bosoms bulged through their hi, I’m jamie signs and
Jesus’s eyes glides across the storefronts as he longs for a city’s
past that drips into the present like honey from a heated glass
and
all dogs go to heaven
all songs end in quiet refrains
smart moms buy generic say it tastes the same”

What’s more impressive is that the entire album is equally quotable. ‘Fucking’ comes across as The Hold Steady meets Modest Mouse meets Ride, a weird aggressive teenage dream in which everything is hugely stimulating yet shot through with an unnamed emptiness that threatens to catch those that slow down (“out of sight out of mind, racing towards a decline”). ‘Wish Upon a Bar’ is a restrained, cross-generational bar crawl through New York with a Christmassy blend of nostalgia and regret, littered with killer lines like “bar moans with calzones and verses from the Rolling Stones.” Interestingly, in another very American-feeling twist, the two band members can be heard laughing in the background of the track, so that heart-on-the-sleeve sincerity and nudge-nudge-wink-wink irony are so intertwined it’s impossible to untangle them. The time-hopping continues on ‘Photograph’, a selection of memories lined up sentimentally like pictures on a mantel, while ”Everything 2002′ paints the innocent uninnocence of adolescents:

“I poured kerosene on my old dirty magazines
mom and dad don’t be mad at me
in a hole in a tree in the woods by the Mattingly’s
there’s a bag full of dvds
I run where no one can see and they’ll console me”

‘Knocking On The Door’ is sloppy classic country, complete with banjos and foot-stamping percussion, but the old-timey American sound masks the contemporary lyrics (McDonalds drive thrus where I kissed you and lied to you and the garbages sighed food as I told you you were mine”). ‘King Kong’ is frantic, the banjo racing as if played by an albino Dickey character and the lyrics spewing forth like those of some demented preacher, again giving the sensation of breakneck forward propulsion, a fevered conviction which ignores consequences (much like those on display in the titular movie). With ambient sound clips and gentle, emotive vocals, ‘Catchyalater’ brings to mind The Antlers in their In The Attic of The Universe stage. Again the song contains some irresistibly quotable lines:

“In comes the doctor in comes the nurse
in comes the lady with the alligator purse
and you turn on ‘lanis Morrisette and learn all the curses
but your aunt turns it off after one or two verses
and the punks say how ya doin’ motherfucker
and the punks say how ya doin’ motherfucker
and you root for Patrick Ewing
and you cant stop doin it you cant stop chewin’ it you tell her
catchyalater”

Another American phenomenon is captured on ‘Irish Goodbye’, the melodramatic spilt followed by automotive escape to new locales and psychic health, while ‘Judy Garland’ is what Hank Williams would have sounded like had he fronted a lo-fi garage rock band. Without wishing to repeat what is now clear, the writing here is superb, somehow managing to capture in words and cadence the bizarre essence of America:

“Jesus couldn’t quell the pains
of Americas in trucks and trains
and tractor trailers on the range
barmen counting their change
and Goldwin Mayer Fred Astaire
slicking back his oily hair
snort benzedrine off of a mirror,
slaps her ass how are you dear
and all the preachers whistle nervous stare
down devils in the back of churches,
meet their luscious daughter in
the smalls beneath the boughs of birches”

Judy Garland is America. Lusty teenagers are America. Jesus Christ is America. So is Dr Pibb and dusty valleys and shut-down bowling alleys and all the communal memories shared by millions just like you. Kind of Blah is America, the U S of A in eleven songs—quirky, joyous, breathless, exhausting, addictive, heartbreaking and downright weird, accelerating towards a distant horizon while keeping its eyes firmly on a halcyon past that sure seems like it should have been more fun.

The album is out now on Audio Antihero and you can buy it from the Frog Bandcamp page. Also, be sure to read our interview with Frog, and check out our review of their debut self-titled release.

Album artwork by Benjamin Shaw

The post Frog – Kind of Blah appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“I don’t write protest songs in the traditional sense, but I’m always listening to the voices of people around me. These stories are told from the perspective of the underdog, the 99% of us that are working people. They might not be literal protest songs, but the lives of the people within these songs speak at the same volume if you listen.”

Check out the track in the player below:

The album, Under Branch & Thorn & Tree, will be released on the 17th July and you can pre-order it now from Full Time Hobby.

The post Samantha Crain – Outside the Pale appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The album opens with Tomorrow’s Tulips, who provide a slice of effortless Californian uber-cool, a catchy rock song with a loveable slacker vibe and lines like “check me out as I walk down the street / Life’s a drag so I drag my feet / I just stay here, I just drink beer / And check me out the door”. The second track, from Ohio’s Eternally Dizzy, sets a trend of frantic indie rock instrumentation paired with (semi) nonchalant vocals, before Ringo Deathstarr (who’s ‘Big Bopper’ sounds like shoegaze fed through a crunchy alt-rock filter), Dan the Human (who covers sad lyrcis with a veneer of bright and breezy indie rock) and Harley Alexander (no not Rizzle Kicks – who apparently shares the name – but a much cooler guy from Canada who has this smooth soulful swagger and sounds like he keeps his shades on when serenading his audience inside dark and smokey clubs) take to the stage.

Oh there’s also oddball pop from Blessin’, yelpy goodtime rock n’ roll from Joe Bordenaro and a DIY (unrequited) love song from Boy Spit. There’s Kachi Ebiringah with his Eddie Argos-esque (Argosian?) sing-shout, Jake Rollins’ erratic guitar and the ominous deadbeat disinterest of Furnsss. There’s a windows-down summer gem from Dude York, sundrenched surf-rock from Hot Flash Heat Wave, hilarious energy-drink-fuelled teenage rebellion from White Fang and, finally, a restrained, wistful bedroom pop strum-along with DRGN King.

Phew. Deep breaths, that’s it! I’m sure you get the idea. This is compilation jam-packed with goodness (as long as you class DIY indie rock music as goodness – which you should). It’s a testament to the hordes of talented people who are making music any way they can, a celebration of those writing and singing and smashing drums because they feel like it and it’s fun and perhaps makes them and their listeners just that little bit happier. All-American Edition is what music is all about.

You can get it right on a nice-looking casette via the 80N7 bandcamp page.

The post 80N7 – All-American Edition appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The band utilize an odd brew of instruments, including the standard fare of guitar, piano bass and percussion, as well as cello, flute, harmonica, mandolin and even circus organ. Opener ‘Redbird’ is an instrumental track which reminded me of JBM but then ‘Big Chief,’ another instrumental, uses flutes to invoke mystical-desert images, and while I’m no expert on Native American music (so this might be a pop culture-induced error), we get the most explicit shamanistic vibes of spirits inhabiting bright star-filled skies and hard flat plains filled with scrub and birds and visions.

Other standouts include ‘Infestation’, a dark and rollicking number supported by stuttering cello and wild harmonica, ‘Blood in Common,’ another finger-snapping rock track and ‘Sevens’, which a far more gentle, pastoral folk song.

There’s a strange something that runs through these tracks, and to ignore this something is to miss what makes the album so distinctive. This something is not entirely earthly but neither is it extraterrestrial. It’s more about that feeling of profound mystery we feel when looking into space or considering existence beyond our own experience of it. It’s to do with our relationship with the moon and the stars before we started measuring them and visiting them and giving them numerical codes as names. It’s an album about unanswerable questions. This is captured perfectly on the final track, ‘All You Celestials’, with its lyrics of :

“Didn’t you see how the moon split the sky
and poured out it’s cold light on hollow dark nights?
And all you celestials in orbit display
a circular pattern of waxing and wane.”

You can buy the album now on CD, Vinyl or digital download via Bandcamp.

The post Bear Medicine – The Moon Has Been All My Life appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The album’s greatest success is it’s potential to appeal to a wide range of music fans. Not only is its fresh-but-familiar sound going to catch ears, but there is also something for everyone in terms of the listener’s needs. I’ve enjoyed listening to it through my headphones, but I can equally imagine this proving a hit on popular radio when driving with the windows down, or in a muddy field with the last of the summer light illuminating thousands of half-cut revellers.

This duality seems present throughout the album. ‘Violent Shiver’ is at the punky end of the spectrum, with Booker pushes his vocals to the edge of comprehension before the festival-friendly singalong refrain “we found a way!”; ‘Have You Seen My Son’ starts off as a galloping rock ‘n roll song, complete with evangelical growls and yelps, before morphing into a moody bluesy rock effort that will please fans of The Black Keys;

It’s clever stuff, straddling the raw intensity of something personal and the fast-paced, why-don’t-you-join-in chorus that means that Booker could well be the next rock artist to get some love from the wider world.

Violent Shiver is out today in the UK (18/8) on Rough Trade, and tomorrow in the US on ATO Records. You can stream the album in full over at NPR if you need more convincing. Finally, if you’ve ever wondered what a singalong with the binmen of Paris might be like, La Blogothèque have you covered:

The post Benjamin Booker – S/T appeared first on Various Small Flames.

A lot of what I want to say about Asheville’s Wes Tirey and his latest EP, I Stand Among Trees, has already been said this year about Small Houses and John Moreland, and I find myself trying to avoid painting them as slight variations of the same thing, some identikit brand of man with guitar. This would be extraordinarily unfair, sort of like criticising Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy because they both use a pen and paper to share their stories.

The literary comparison is no coincidence – I Stand Among Trees is a literate EP, a collection of atmospheric and evocative songs that owe as much to the American masters of writing as they do to Dylan and Van Zandt.

This fantastic interview with Hearth Music gives an insight into the writing process for a few of the songs. It not only confirms my original thoughts but also giving a new point of view, especially on ‘Wild Beasts’ where Tirey’s citation of McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (one of my favourite books, like, ever) takes the track on to a whole new level of bare desolation, conjuring a hostile and empty landscape of insects and dust.

I Stood Among Trees by Wes Tirey

Indeed the whole EP can be viewed through this bloodly lens. Consider ‘Final Resting Place’:

“The concrete is a-crumbling
The blind man is a-mumbling
Everyone is running for their life”

…and:

“The drummer’s are a-drumming
Even Lucifer’s a-running
I saw him from the corner of my eye

Maybe Jesus is a-coming
Wouldn’t that be something
But who could live by such a lie”

You can almost hear the hooves of Glanton’s men, the terrible breathing of Judge Holden. This really is stirring stuff.

Obviously the EP isn’t about cowboys, but hopefully those who have read the book know what I mean (I told you I was struggling to sound original). Anyway, With I Stood Among Trees, Tirey claims his rightful place among my favourite folk artists this year, and I will certainly be keeping an eye on what he does next.

You can get the EP on Bandcamp for whatever price you think is appropriate. or you can get a lovely physical copy for $5 (also check out Tirey’s Home Demos while you are there). If you are a fan, there is also a very interesting Indiegogo called ‘Wesley in Italy‘ where you can get nice things in return for your coin that will hopefully send Tirey on tour next January around various Italian towns and cities.

The post Wes Tirey – I Stood Among Trees appeared first on Various Small Flames.

I am paraphrasing here but the sentences above capture exactly what makes the record so great. In The Throes is a collection of songs that play like perfect short stories, writing that has been mercilessly editted and revised so that each and every word has been forced to justify its existence. Each song feels distilled, reduced to its purest and most brilliant form.

The real masterstroke is putting together all of these killer lines and making them fit together into something that sounds like a stream of conciousness, as if they are the words of a man spilling his inner self for the first and only time. The songs are simultaneously highly polished and roughed up, carefully crafted and organic.

As for comparisons, I guess you can take your pick from your favourite songwriters. The slower finger picked songs such as ‘3:59AM’ bring to mind Joe Pug, and Nine Bullets suggested Townes Van Zandt (with which I concur), but there are plenty of others you could name too. Nebraska-era Springsteen, Jason Isbell, Steve Earle, Tom Petty…  Moreland is in no way out of place among any of the gravely poets that make up the big names of songwriting.

The whole gamut of emotions are covered on In The Throes, from sadness and desperation (I swore the days were over, courting empty dreams / I worshiped at the altar of losing everything) to earnest joy (I got the guiltiest conscience / Listening for a savior on a Saturday night / I got my ear to the ground / You got Easter Sunday in your eyes) and even humour (I guess by now, I’m supposed to be a man // But my grandmother still gives me ten bucks on my birthday). Some artists make songs that are made memorable by just one masterful line, John Moreland produces songs with masterful lines as his only ingredient.

You can buy the album from Last Chance Records.

The post John Moreland – In The Throes appeared first on Various Small Flames.

First of all, how did Old Earth come into being? Was it something personal that developed into something bigger? Or did you always plan to have collaborators?

It started out personal by necessity… I’ve always been a collaborator for other people’s projects, but didn’t write full songs until I was about 26 (I’ve been playing guitar since I was 15, and I turn 34 tomorrow). In ‘05, I didn’t have a band, so I bought an acoustic guitar and started from the ground up.

I met most of my collaborators in ’06 doing open mics around Milwaukee. They focus on Field Report now, but back then, we regularly shared members and shows. I drummed for Conrad Plymouth, which became Field Report, and it was the most fun I’ve ever had as a collaborator. I think of Berg, Porterfield, and Whitty as my core team. They’re my go-to guys when I start recording, and my network grew through them. We’re friends first, though, because I’m hard to work with. I’m untrained. I use my own tuning, my own structures, and I don’t know a thing about theory. When people ask what key I’m in, they might as well be speaking another language.

The pool I’m able to draw from right now is incredible, and there’ll probably be about a dozen people on the next record.

What inspires your song writing process? Are you mostly influenced by other musical acts? Or do things like literature play a part too?

Rap has inspired me since I was 11. That genre is propelled by innovation, competition, and a sense of hustle that isn’t present in the indie rock scene. I’m equally motivated by acts that disgust me by their lack of ideas, energy, and hard work… Small Hours was very driven by things I don’t like. It’s what I’m NOT doing on that record that’s important to me.

Yes, other mediums play a huge part, and finding ways for it all to interweave makes for a rich experience. I have my hands in a lot of disciplines and my mind in even more. I like poetry (esp. the Beat poets) and short stories, visual art, and always have movies on (mainly for atmosphere).

For me, many Old Earth songs are cinematic, not in way that the word is often used (you know, big orchestral sounds and over-production) but in that they conjure imagery. This is very difficult to properly describe but the sounds have an underlying sense of action or violence that produces pictures or events without the need for words. Maybe it is because the music is so psychological, with abstract sounds and phrases rather than a traditional narrative.  Does film have any impact on your work? Or is this just a consequence of releasing your mind through your music?

Film has a huge impact on my work- movies are about pacing and dynamics, creating and changing a mood in an instant, and marrying words and images to sound. I’d say that has more to do with my work than any other medium. I even think of certain riffs or words as characters, because they recur and represent a time, place, or person to me. When I do recordings, I put myself in the role of director, composer, and most often, curator. I’m also doing more scoring for other people’s film work, and it feels very natural.

The process of writing music such as this is really interesting to me. I find the idea of sitting down with the intention of putting together a song that will eventually sound organic and fully intended overwhelming in the extreme. I can see how people sit and write traditional folk songs, with maybe a poem or a story set to guitar strumming, but when the instrumentation plays such an important, visceral role I find it hard to imagine someone sitting down and working it out. How do you assemble something so convincing from the basic units of notes and words? Do you focus equally on the lyrics and the music? Or are the words governed by the music (or vice versa)?

Well, you have to bear in mind that I’m never starting from scratch. I have riffs and words and half-formed songs that I’ve been playing on for years, and I don’t have rules about one element governing another. For me, the song is the basic unit, and the riffs and words arrange themselves around it. Patiently living with the songs will tease out what they want to be… Writing never happens the same way twice, and it’s best for me to think of it as magic and leave it at that.

I’ve found that working on a few songs at once is really useful because they innately speak to each other, and the motifs become inherent. And, sometimes, you have to write three (or more) to get the one you want. Sometimes a song will spring from practicing an older one, or trying to play someone else’s.

Writing is constant, though. Singing with a guitar is only part of the process… As I’m doing a chore, running errands, or riding the bus, I’m working in my mind or on paper. I don’t think I can completely isolate the process from myself and describe it, it’s just what I do.

I once heard Damien Jurado speak on his writing process, something I’ve mentioned before on the blog, where he stated that songs always exist in some unknowable place within an artist, and that there is a spontaneous moment where each song is realised and takes form. Is this the case for you? Do songs tumble from your mind in something like a cohesive manner? Or is it more of an arduous process of trial and error, experimenting with different things?

Some seem to pop out fully-formed, but again, that’s only because I’ve played guitar basically every day for over half my life. You could argue that every song I make now has taken my entire life to write, rendering any spontenaity an illusion.

Trial and error plays a role, and it can be challenging at times, but I’m lucky if music is the most arduous part of my life. Cohesive moments are rare and can’t be counted on, so I just keep working. As for what Mr. Jurado is saying, I instead think of my songs as existing somewhere outside of myself, and I’m just witnessing and interpreting them.

For me there is a duality in your music, two aspects which combine to form a very convincing whole. The instrumentation represents the atavistic emotions and sensations, the instinctive things like fear and joy and unease, and the words are the complex thought, the reasoning that tries to bind the first category together into something that can be understood or shared. The music and lyrics together form something that is very human. Is this something you ever consider? Or is it a by-product of writing your mind?

I don’t think reason enters into it, especially with the lyrics. They’re intentionally vague, contradictory, and sometimes irrational. I like homonyms and multiple interpretations- sometimes the lines are a conversation, sometimes narration, and sometimes simply a human voice needed to be present and it felt good to sing there.

Music is inhuman if it isn’t saying “I love everything and it all makes sense” one moment and then “I’m confused and hateful” the next. The duality is more honest about the experience of being alive.

In our review of your album we included a quote where you essentially say that you take risks in order to make your art, and that pleasing people is not at the forefront of your thinking when trying to create something true to yourself. I read an interview with the Steinberg Principle where you go on to say that it is easy to pad yourself against criticism by being ironic. This remark brought to mind an essay by David Foster Wallace on TV and literature where he basically says that whole generations have grown up into superficial/empty people because they have been continually pumped full of ironic and clever TV characters who make fun of everything to appear ‘cool’. He pointed out that cynicism and irony can only ever be destructive, and truly brave art will stop poking fun at things and be itself, however hideously revealing that may be. Do you think this applies to music too, where it’s maybe not as clear as Family Guy or The Simpsons or a Mark Leyner novel? I’m thinking of artists such as yourself versus the current trend of ‘folk’ bands.

Overall, much of what’s popular is very sad and shallow to me, and I don’t need that kind of trash in my life. I’m not worried about any current trend because I’ve seen so many of them come and go. The joke’s on those bands, really. They’ll look back and feel foolish for dressing up and behaving that way. Fuck irony. I’m trying to make something to uplift myself, and it’s reassuring to me that other people can relate to it.

Finally, could you name 4-5 artists that you are currently listening too? They could be brand new or decades old, whatever you are enjoying at the moment.

My lady plays a lot of 60’s country and punk, I love Golden Oldies, I always have Gucci Mane in my headphones, and I couldn’t fairly list all my friends who are doing music that excites me. Milwaukee is an amazing place to be right now. The stuff that I’ve bought on bandcamp and shows up in the “collection” tab has a lot of good suggestions.

To better answer your question, though, the last month has been a lot of Drake’s Take Care, Fabolous’s The Soul Tape 2, J. Cole’s Truly Yours 2, and as for rock stuff, Ladyhawk’s No Can Do is ruling my world.

Jon: If you want to get some Old Earth music then head on over to his Bandcamp page. Mini50 Records have put out Small Hours, and a low place at The Old Place is now available on vinyl.

Also, in some strange twist of fate, Old Earth is playing with Small Sur and Peals, bands we featured just last Friday, this Tuesday (11th June ’13). If you are in the Milwaukee area then you would be silly to miss it. More information can be found here.

The post Interview: Old Earth appeared first on Various Small Flames.

If You Wait Long Enough, released on the 11th June, contains covers from a range of artists including Sam Moss, Thibault Rivrain and Wilder Maker, not to mention Beat Radio, Kid In The Attic and Stratton himself.

Full Tracklisting:

1. Matthew Carefully & the Memorial Concern – Who Will
2. Wilder Maker – The War is Over
3. Beat Radio – You Divers
4. Kid in the Attic – Do You Remember the Morning
5. NY Lights – If You Wait Long Enough
6. Sam Moss & The Ineligible Bachelors – The Relatively Fair
7. Zachary Cale – Bluebells
8. David Garland – Vile Bodies
9. Alexandra Drewchin and Aaron Roche – Post Empire
10. Trevor Wilson – Colt New Marine
11. Jesse Rifkin – Katydid
12. Thibault Rivrain – Honey Diamond
13. Will Stratton – For Franny Glass (live on WNYC’s Spinning on Air)

Not only is this a great idea to help Will get back on his feet but it is also an effective way to raise awareness of the disease. It seems that cancer is affecting us all in one way or another but if we can increase the dialogue about it, especially in “cool” circles such as independent music, then we can remove the taboo nature of the disease and save as many lives as possible. You can pre-order the album right now on Bandcamp.

Also, if you’re not familiar with Stratton’s music, then I suggest you check out his Bandcamp page, starting with  last year’s Post-Empire.

The post If You Wait Long Enough – Will Stratton Benefit Album appeared first on Various Small Flames.