With album Mirror, Reflect coming in May via Winspear, Amy O has shared single ‘Dribble Dribble’ by way of introduction. The record charts the experience of new motherhood during the pandemic, where twin forces of uncertainty and isolation ran a deep seam of precariousness through everything. But as ‘Dribble Dribble’ shows, Amy O documents this time with compassion and playful curiosity, the lo-fi pop sound lifting rhyming schemes from the books she read to her daughter to offer a mood at once fun and incisive, and Glenn Myers’s backing vocals further the conversational closeness.

Please don’t let the tide rush in
Held unburdened by the wind
A roomful of familiar
No catastrophes within

Bloomsday – Dollar Slice

The recording project of Brooklyn’s Iris James Garrison, Bloomsday introduced itself back in 2020 with debut Place to Land, an album which charted the fear, loss and joyous freedom inherent within the quest to find one’s true identity. But despite the personal subject matter, collaboration has always been an inherent part of the Bloomsday DNA, and new album Heart of the Artichoke is certainly no exception. Coming this summer on Bayonet Records, the release see Iris joined by Andrew Stevens (Lomelda, Hovvdy), Alex Harwood, Richard Orofino, Maya Bon (Babehoven), Hannah Pruzinsky (h.pruz, Sister.) and Chris Daley, and proves to be not only a celebration of togetherness and community but a testament to the enduring presence of friendship itself. Lead single ‘Dollar Slice’ is a great place to jump in, the cornerstone of the album which hints at the sound’s devotional quality. “I’m not religious,” Garrison says, “But I am into the idea of mystical, higher power—whatever that means – and that power seeing me, and my bullshit, and calling it out. That’s kind of godly to me.”

Cereus Bright – Boys

We introduced Boys, the new EP from Knoxville‘s Cereus Bright, back in February with single ‘Drifting’. “An ode to every tired soul and person without direction,” as we put it, “which offers comfort not through the promise of agency but rather the unforeseen benefits of letting oneself relax into the drift.” With the EP now out via Nettwerk, Cereus Bright has released the opener and title track as a final single. Inspired by stories of a “hard, complicated figure” of a grandfather, the song delves into the tangled world of cause and effect not so much in search of an answer but to instead reveal the layers of complexity which define any given person. As the artist explains: “It’s essential to reckon with the people or institutions that have affected us or hurt us, but some times truly understanding is impossible.” The song comes complete with a video filmed by Follow The Leader which you can watch below:

Boys is out now via Nettwerk and available from Bandcamp.

Fresh – Merch Girl

London punks Fresh have made a name with a heart-on-the-sleeve brand of rock, with tracks like ‘Babyface‘ and ‘Morgan & Joanne‘ typifying the bittersweet celebration of the queer experience offered by LP Raise Hell. Ahead of tours with Teenage Halloween and Los Campesinos!, Fresh are releasing a brand new EP Merch Girl on Specialist Subject Records next month, and have unveiled the title track for an early taste. It’s a song “about living in that space between wanting something and achieving something” as lead Kathryn Woods explains, centring on the titular character as they yearn to break free from the sidelines and make art of their own. “Standing at the back of the room / Wishing I could do what they do,” as Woods sings, “After all, I could play that guitar part better / I could hit those drums much harder / I could sing that song far louder // But I’m just a merch girl.”

I’m tired of living like this
Letting people talk over me for years and years and year and years
Gonna start doing things my way
Gonna write a song with a voice so strong it knocks you sideways

I’m not just a merch girl

Hour – Ease the Work

Though named after an image from a tragic Greek myth, Hour‘s 2018 album Anemone Red had more quotidian concerns. “Hour present the same heartbreak and longing as it occurs today,” we wrote in our review, “repressed and layered behind our day-to-day responsibilities, manifest not in blood-dripped flowers but the slow, sad progression of the world around us.” The project, led by Michael Cormier-O’Leary, returns this spring to build upon this foundation with Ease the Work, a brand new release on Dear Life Records. Challenging any clear distinction between composition and improvisation, the album performs the same small miracle of the previous records, presenting the everyday in all its joy and melancholy, comfort and strangeness. Listen to the title track now:

Jack Name – Cherie’s Eyes

Described as a “homage to the IRL world and its twisted and varied romance with the worlds of our minds,” Fabulous Soundtracks is the fourth album from Los Angeles-based musician Jack Name, out this May on Maple Death Records. Each song on the record is intended as a mini-soundtrack to a specific scene, and Jack Name runs the gamut of genres and stylistic influences in order to create cinematic soundscapes able to elevate these moments into their full surreal potential. Single ‘Cherie’s Eyes’ is the first example of this singular effort, presenting a sound at once odd and strangely intuitive, as though Fabulous Soundtracks functions within the logic and physics of dreams, where everything is off-kilter yet charged with meaning.

 Logan Lynn – To Be Of Use (Smog Cover)

Songwriter, producer, filmmaker, television personality and activist Logan Lynn is releasing new LP SOFTCORE this June on Kill Rock Stars. The album, written in the aftermath of a break-up, serves as a vehicle of rebirth. “A record of my coming alive again, and coming back to myself in the face of pretty extreme betrayal,” as Lynn puts it. “It’s a party album in a way—loud, wild, unhinged and abrasive at times—but it’s also a collection of tender songs about longing and togetherness.” A cover of Smog’s ‘To Be Of Use’ opens the album, a plaintive track which slowly gathers momentum, as though Lynn uses Bill Callahan as a way to shake off the shrouding gloom and turn a new page.

Magana – To My Love

Last month we introduced Magana‘s new album TEETH on Audio Antihero with the single ‘Paul’. “A song where grief is transcribed almost verbatim,” as we put it, “and tenderness, strangeness and plain disbelief can exist simultaneously.” With the album out today to coincide with the Worm Moon’s peak illumination, Magana has released final single ‘To My Love’ to further introduce the witchy rock atmosphere. A strange sound for a strange world, made by an artist determined to use every style available to best communicate their own experience of trying to exist within it.

Pina Palau – We’ve Got No Time At All

“The birds outside my window, they are singing as if the world was still the same.” So opens ‘We’ve Got No Time At All’, the centre point of Get a Dog, the sophomore album by Pina Palau. It’s a song that very directly captures the despair felt by young people across the globe, describing a world of war and mass shootings, heatwaves that “no AC can get us out of.” The Swiss artist put a career in medicine on hold to pursue her musical career, and her creative work is driven by the same fascinations that led her to the path to becoming a psychologist—what label Mouthwatering Records describe as “a desire to understand unvarnished humanity—the motivations, emotions and stories that shape our lives.” Which is why ‘We’ve Got No Time At All’ stands out on an album full of varied emotions. A rare track that stares down a generation’s biggest concerns head-on, blowing out into furious noise in its cathartic climax.

We’re still young they say we have time
But the truth is: we’ve got no time at all

The post Weekly Listening: March 2024 #4 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

On the surface, Sunk feels like an expression of anguish’s long tail. The weeks and months and years after a loss, when exhaustion sets in yet grief loses none of the its teeth. “You look like you’re tired,” goes ‘Getter Better’ in a typically weary moment. “I don’t know how I / got along before / somehow, I just keep going.”

With tiredness comes fatalism. The constant realisation that the future looks no more promising. That there’s plenty more shit coming down the line. “I’m thinking how can I plan a life in turn,” Bon sings on ‘The Way That Things Burn’, “when everything is hopeless?” And fatalism in the future comes with a wider pessimism too. As ‘Creature’ captures:

You’re standing tall, though you’re upside down
It’s a crisis
I don’t know how to love anymore
I don’t know what love is

But Sunk is not a record that is content to dwell on these worries. In fact, its central message is rather different, offering if not a solution to the multitude of problems then at least an able coping mechanism. “What would happen if, rather than constantly fighting against the immovable tides of unfixable things,” reads the EP’s press release, “[Bon] gave herself permission to stop struggling altogether?”

Closer ‘Twenty Dried Chilies’ collects all of these thoughts into one final communication, presenting the thesis of the EP with Babehoven’s signature blend of thought and emotion. A song about disconnecting from things as the existential weight of the present bears down upon us. “I’m at a loss at what happens in this world,” Bon sings. “It is a cruel sensation, remembering I am human / And I’m prone to accidents of heart.” Accidents increasing in frequency by the day. In the face of personal loss, our increasingly fractious and atomised society, and the existential threats of conflict and climate change, battling every loss can feel worthless. Why waste so much energy struggling against such a powerful current? Why cause so much distress? Better to still oneself, to drift to the bottom. To become sunk.

Sunk it out now via Double Double Whammy and you can get it from the Babehoven Bandcamp page.

The post Babehoven – Sunk appeared first on Various Small Flames.

After 2018’s EP Sleep, and follow-up SOLEMNIS which was released in March this year, Babehoven are set to release a brand new EP, Demonstrating Visible Difference of Height, early next year. Today, we’re delighted to share the second single, ‘Maybe I’m Bitter’, to really whet the appetites for the new album. With sound artist Ryan Albert (of Pornog, The Metabolic Studio) acting as an instrumentalist, engineer and co-producer, the track sees Babehoven unlock new levels in the development of their sound, and achieve their most fully-realised song to date.

Opening with a subtle wash of guitar and slowly growing in intensity, the song gathers an assortment of layers across its length that threaten to overwhelm the vocals, Bon fighting to be heard from the midst of a chaotic swirl.  ‘Maybe I’m Bitter’ is concerned with “the emotional aftermath of a loss of home, a loss of trust, and a splintering of family.” Bon explains. “It is a personal attempt to encapsulate what dissociation feels like in my life.” Therefore, aside from making for an immersive sound, the style is fully in line with the wider themes, pushing into areas both surreal and uncanny in order to more fully represent the realities of life and trauma.

If I were an actor
I’d cut off all of my toenails
And put them inside a jar
Tell them it’s magical
To be somebody else
To make up someone else’s protein
I don’t need anything
I, I don’t need anything

‘Maybe I’m Bitter’ comes complete with a video by director and animator Brin Gordon, providing a suitably surreal companion to the single. Gordon’s work explores “the intersections and boundaries between forms of knowledge as diverse as poetics, science, and common sense to study the ways in which subjectivity is created and in turn creates the world around it,” and the video uses such ideas to represent the surreal fracturing of the song’s theme.

The post Babehoven – Maybe I’m Bitter appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Tracklisting:

Mike Pace and the Child Actors – Everyone Out of the Car
Miranda Winters – The Futuristic District
Exam Season – Strawberry Milk
Saccharine – Pumpkin Guts
Tuvaband – Wolfpack
Devon Welsh – Dreams Have Pushed You Around
Mending – Alan after the Fire
Reddening West – Even If
Valley Maker – Light on the Ground
The Washboard Abs – Return to You
Manatree – Brushfire
Miserable Chillers – Horse Opera
Saint Charles – She Don’t Wanna Know
new casino – going for a walk*
Frankie Valet – Why Blue
Goodbye Max – Old Photos
Adeline Hotel – Habits
Joe Kaplow – I Said I Was Going and I Went
Pecas – Tuesdays
Sun Kin – Neglect
Baby Cages – flowers
Crooked Spine – Skinned Knees
Lauren O’Connell – Out of Focus
Mount Goldie – Summer
Harvey Trisdale – Baby
american poetry club – the sum of your parts
Babehoven – Out of the Country
Adam Arcuragi – Low Parade Rain
Jason Bemis Lawrence – Southern Midwest
Campdogzz – Sorceress
Barfoot – A Thin Place Between Worlds

* not on Playmoss

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

Miranda Winters – The Futuristic District

Usually found fronting Chicago noise-rock band Melkbelly, Miranda Winters put out a solo record this summer that shows she is equally comfortable with the energy toned down a little. Which isn’t to say Xobeci, What Grows Here? is without its own bite, just that its intensity is not quite of the eardrum-busting variety. Opener ‘The Futuristic District’ is a good example, an electrically charged blend of bedroom pop and indie rock along that fans of Hop Along and Waxahatchee will appreciate, though Winters’ vocal rhythm carves out a space all her own.

You can get Xobeci, What Grows Here? now via the Miranda Winters Bandcamp page, or on cassette via Sooper Records.

Tuvaband – Wolfpack

The Berlin-based project of Norwegian singer/songwriter/producer Tuva Hellum Marschhäuser, Tuvaband create ethereal and emotive songs that sound something like a more radio friendly take on the reverb drenched drone pop of Midwife or Allison’s Gate. The latest Tuvaband single, ‘Wolfpack’, is a wonderful example, a smoky and twilit song that borrows elements of panoramically affecting singer-songwriters like Daughter and buries them in a dreamworld of smoke and twilit. The delicate shimmering beauty is offset with a sharper edge – as the title suggests, the track has teeth.

Be sure to keep an eye on the Tuvaband website for future releases.

Valley Maker – Light On the Ground

We’ve featured Austin Crane’s Valley Maker project numerous times here at VSF, culminating in a review of the excellent record, When I Was a Child released in 2015, which we described as “an album about belief and love in a variety of guises, about the big and unknowable questions, from love and growth and family to God and everlasting life.” Crane is back with a brand new Valley Maker album, Rhododendron, that will be released this autumn, and has released a single to whet our appetites, complete with a video from Joseph Kolean. It sounds like the album will be one to look forward to.

Rhododendron is set for release on the 12nd October via Frenchkiss Records and you can pre-order it now.

new casino – going for a walk

Taking their name from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Brooklyn’s new casino began as a solo project of Morgan Kaplan though has since expanded to incorporate Carlo Pisanu on bass. New single ‘going for a walk’, released in preparation of the band’s first full-length, Oshiki 2, gives a good flavour of the new casino aesthetic, combining a minimal slacker sound with an engaging lyrical flow. Every so often this rhythm gathers itself into something of a crescendo, which appears not in an increase in volume or energy but rather in the sincerity of the vocals, the feeling breaking through the disaffected cool of the genre to offer something a little more heartfelt.

Oshiki 2 is out now and you can listen via Soundcloud or Spotify.

Joe Kaplow – I Said I Was Going And I Went

After traversing the USA for the better part of three months playing all manner of clubs and bars, Joe Kaplow began to feel a profound longing for the tiny details of life at home. The idea of tour might conjure an image of exciting adventures, though Kaplow realised he was missing the decidedly unexciting, the household chores, cooking food from scratch. New single ‘I Said I Was Going And I Went’ channels this into an emotive and homesick sound in which uncertainty reigns, where the halcyon ideal of home is known not to be entirely true, though allowed to persist to drag him through the days away.

‘I Said I Was Going And I Went’ is available now from the Joe Kaplow Bandcamp page, alongside his previous EP release.

Baby Cages – flowers

We featured Baby Cages twice back in 2014, calling single ‘Dark Arts‘ a “shadowy three minutes that slither under your skin” and album Indelicate as akin to “taking a thousands of weird screenshots from Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet and Eraserhead to make one giant mosaic that is super-weird. Hyper-Lynchian.” Well, the Toronto-based music collective are back with a new EP, bitter melon, a release that maintains the off-kilter vibe though this time casting it in a light altogether more bright and peppy. ‘Flowers’ serves as a good introduction, the production relatively crystal clear when compared to that of Indelicate, the instrumentation possessing a manic, restless edge that is at odd with the lyrics.

“teach me to relax
and i am reborn

flowers in the back
of a pair of patterned pants
so I pick up the past
and fall into your lap”

bitter melon is out now and you can grab it from the Baby Cages Bandcamp page.

Lauren O’Connell – Out of Focus

Hailing from Rochester, NY, songwriter Lauren O’Connell has been releasing a steady stream of albums and EPs since 2007, displaying a keen sense of storytelling within her country/folk style. Earlier this year, O’Connell put out a new record, Details, and her writing is as detailed and impressive as ever, managing to craft complex, near literary-level metaphors and imagery while losing none of the immediacy and atmosphere. Single ‘Out of Focus’ is a case in point, a piano-driven track falling somewhere between Leonard Cohen and Julien Baker, though it’s in O’Connell’s words and delivery that the real magic lies. Maintaining a conversational flow capable of accelerating and decelerating at the drop of the hat, the song sounds like thoughts and feelings unfurling straight from the brain, as though bypassing the awkwardness of phrasing and speaking entirely, emerging fully formed and disarmingly beautiful.

Details is out now and you can get it from Bandcamp, along with the rest of Lauren O’Connell’s back catalogue.

Harvey Trisdale – Baby

Based in Los Angeles, Harvey Trisdale make a restrained, languid brand of indie rock that’s perfectly suited to sunny climes. However, rather than being carefree tropicana, their songs possess an emotional depth too, resulting in a struggle between light and dark where neither side wins out. This summer saw the release of their self-titled EP, and such a to-and-fro can be seen across the record, the sunny energy of opener ‘corners’ dampened by the emo-tinged ‘Fit to be Found’. Though these conflicting moods even seem to compete within single songs, as typified in second single, ‘Baby’, with the depressed torpor of the vocal style eventually shaken by the instrumentation as the track rises into a stirring finale.

Harvey Trisdale is out now via Baby Blue Records and you can get in from Bandcamp.

Babehoven – Out Of This Country

Babehoven is the project of Portland resident Maya Bon, rounded out to a trio with the help of Skylar Pia and drummer Elias Williamson. Their latest release, a five-song EP titled SLEEP, is being released by our pals at Good Cheer Records later this summer. In preparation, they have released a single, ‘Out of This Country’, a soft and shambling bedroom pop song that swaddles real feeling in a blanket of restraint. The drums and guitar and Bon’s impressive vocals seem to grow in intensity only to recede and dissipate, a reminder that sometimes less is more, that something intangible can be captured when artists hold a little something back.

SLEEP is out via Good Cheer Records on 17th August, and you can pre-order it now from the Babehoven Bandcamp page.

Adam Arcuragi – Low Rain Parade

For a period from the mid-to-late-00s to 2012, American songwriter Adam Arcuragi was one of the most soulful and stirring songwriters plying his trade, releasing a series of albums and EPs that collected his probing writing within an evocative musical landscape. The good news is that Arcuragi is back, with a brand new full-length due sometime this year, though for now all we get by way of a taster is the single ‘Low Rain Parade’. The track falls on the restrained side of his oeuvre, the slow meandering rhythm dominating what is a contemplative and calm song, though Arcuragi does show flashes of his vocal range as the swells reach their highest points.

The as-of-yet untitled album is reportedly due to appear sometime in 2018, so keep an eye on the Adam Arcuragi website for more information.

The post Bright Sparks: Vol. 15 appeared first on Various Small Flames.