“A song which shows how the age-old themes of work, loss and responsibility are as much a facet of contemporary folk as any other era.” That’s how we described ‘Platform No. 12 (Old Friends)‘ last summer, the first taste of David James Allen‘s forthcoming album Potpurri Jubilation. The Prince Edward County, Ontario-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist “writes classic country songs,” as we continued, “full of aching longing, wistful reflection and undying hope, as well as a small cosmic twist,” and latest single ‘By Your Side’ further cements these sensibilities ahead of the album’s release later this year via Littleknown Records. “There’s something in the way that she loves me / that keeps me warm through the coolin’ of the night,” Allen sings in the opening lines, immediately pulling the listener into the warmth and fondness of the track. An ode to the safe harbour of a significant other, where calm might be found no matter how stormy the outside world might prove. Tune in and allow the pressures of work, money and self-doubt to dissolve, if only for a while.

Fugue State – We Are Lasting

The new collaborative project fronted by Northampton, MA-based composer, producer and engineer Dan Langa, Fugue State refuses the typical distinction between solo project and traditional ensemble. An outfit which treats collaboration as its own form of compositional methodology, Langa practising what the press release describes as “an obsessive cultivation of studio recordings with a rotating cast of musicians, transformed into spectral, unrecognizable forms.” Released to celebrate signing with Switch Hit Records, and featuring vocalist Maia Friedman (Dirty Projectors, Coco) and VSF fav Erika Dohi on piano, single ‘We Are Lasting’ provides our first glimpse into this new world. The style draws on Langa’s wealth of experience across music, film and multimedia, as well as the sensibilities of its collaborators, though also follows the direction the present moment suggested. “That improvisation became the foundation, and we slowly built everything on top of it,” as Langa describes. “This was the first track that really found its identity, and I often found comfort in it during the creative process—whether for inspiration or just a moment to breathe.”

Gia Margaret – Everyone Around Me Dancing

“A picture of solitude not as some lonely retreat but rather the path towards recognising the wider connection of things. That sweet dark warmth of the whole world.” That’s how we described Gia Margaret‘s 2023 album Romantic Piano, a collection of careful, considered compositions which held a kind of melancholic curiosity for its surroundings. Now Margaret is gearing up to release her much anticipated follow-up, an album titled Singing coming via Jagjaguwar this spring, and opening track and lead single ‘Everyone Around Me Dancing’ suggests a continuation of such themes. The record might be the first to properly feature vocals since 2018’s There’s Always Glimmer (the consequence of illness, as we covered when reviewing Mia Gargaret), but it is far from a simple reversion to a previous mode of working. Rather, Margaret considers every lesson learnt through the difficult process, the resonance of every person she has ever been. The vocals might have returned, but Singing understands something greater. The voice is only part of who we are. There are deeper ways of communicating.

Watch the video directed by Catherine LoMedico below:

Singing will be released on the 24th April via Jagjaguwar and you can pre-order it now.

Little Lungs – The Heat

Little Lungs is a Baltimore folk rock project led by songwriter Leena Rhodes. With Brendan Russell (bass), Eli Simms (drums), Ricky Schwarzenberg (guitar) and an assembly of other friends and collaborators in support, Rhodes creates soundscapes inherently intimate yet often sweeping too. Songs personal, compassionate and often affirming, driven by equal parts warmth and energy. Next month, Little Lungs will put out the full-length album The Heat, and Rhodes and co. have shared the title track to establish the mood and themes of the record. A typically emotive track build around Rhodes’s vocals and the braid of tenderness and strength they are able to evoke. “Face down against the bed frame / You woke to the fire alarm,” she sings, in an opening snapshot that captures the vulnerability on display throughout.

Mary Ocher – The Narrative (First Movement)

“Has roots in the early twentieth century, both in terms of the minimalist sensibilities and the overarching themes, but it is impossible to think of the intra-war period of the 1900s without hearing ominous echoes of the present day.” So we wrote of Mary Ocher‘s forthcoming album Weimar back in January. The challenging, politically-charged album was introduced by lead single ‘The Dance’ (what we called “a mournful dirge for that which is slipping through our fingers”). And now Ocher has shared taut, plaintive new single ‘The Narrative (First Movement)’. Though it is perhaps the video which will earn the most attention. The expressionist piece is by Boris Eldagsen, one of the first ‘reputable’ artists to explore the possibilities of AI who nevertheless carries a strictly critical approach to the nascent medium (back in 2023 Eldagsen refused the Sony World Photography Award after winning for an AI-generated image). Whether this self-awareness might justify the use of such artistically disheartening technology is still very much in question, and personally we’d query whether the video achieves anything which might be unobtainable via more organic means, but if nothing else it fits into Ocher’s overall project in its willingness to push into uncomfortable places and ask the audience to examine exactly how they feel.

Weimar will be released on 13th March and is available to preorder via Bandcamp.

Miserable chillers – Bikeman

“I’ll be the bike, man / the basket and the bell / the breath before I fell / Open skin up to the air / my mouth to taste the day.” So sings Miguel Gallego in the opening lines of ‘Bikeman’, the delightfully smooth and strange introduction to Miserable chillers‘ latest album, Innocent victims, coming soon via Baby Blue. The New York-based composer and artist has covered plenty of ground with the Miserable chillers project over the years, moving from devotional to danceable and back again, or else occupying both moods simultaneously. But the uniting spirit across all releases has been one of curiosity, a mood delivered in sleek, eighties-adjacent pop that allows Gallego to push into surreal territory without losing an anchor to real life. With its anthropomorphic bicycle, ‘Bikeman’ might be the perfect encapuslation of the Miserable chillers aesthetic, and one which whets appetites for the full release.

Natalie Jane Hill – Colors

Natalie Jane Hill‘s forthcoming record Hopeful Woman is one of our most eagerly anticipated releases of the first half of this year. A collections of ten modest but supremely assured songs that explore love in its many facets. Hot on the heels of ‘Never Left Me’ and ‘I Thought Love Meant’, Hill has unveiled a third track, ‘Colors’ another richly imagined but still down to earth rumination on romance. “Simply put, ‘Colors’ is a love song- specifically about the beginning period of falling in love with someone,” Hill describes. “But it’s also about having a better understanding on personal boundaries and not losing yourself entirely in the potential of something new. It’s being able to enjoy the colorfulness of it, while leaving space for the mystery, too.” The song has a fittingly Spring-like feel, tender like new green shoots and ripe with a glorious sense of possibility.

Old Man of the Woods – Edges of Pleasure

Taken from the album Tendrils, Old Man of the Woods‘ most recent single ‘Meditation’ was “a self-described  ‘breathy, minimal ritual'” as we wrote in 2025, “[a song] which performs its own form of transubstantiation, taking a desire which might otherwise appear absurd and changing it into something charged and devotional.” Miranda Elliott appears to have taken such a style to heart, because new album Cape Perpetua sees the Seattle-based artist embrace aesthetics both religious and ecological to push their ambient avant-pop into an increasingly sacred terrain. Elliott intends to release a track every week, building up to the full release in March, and opener and single ‘Edges of Pleasure’ highlights the meditative style. A song of swirling layers which draws on the choral accumulation of Gregorian chants to conjure something that’s at once otherworldly and fundamentally present.

Turner Cody – Recognize a Friend

In a present milieu where country songs are as likely to be about Disneyland and Pepsi as heartbreak and whiskey, St. Louis-based songwriter Turner Cody shows that the traditional and alt forms of the style can coexist. Out via Capitane Records, latest full-length Out for Blood has all the thematic concerns of the giants of the field, mining the American psyche to explore ideas of freedom and fate, individualism, sin and salvation in a way which would make Van Zandt proud. Yet, as songs like single ‘Recognize a Friend’ show, there’s a playfulness within his style too. An idiosyncrasy which, by way of Prine, allows Cody to sit as comfortably next to his alt-country contemporaries as the old masters. The narrative of the track is a familiar one. Ordinary man Billy finds himself gradually growing despondent as he drifts from youthful optimism into the doldrums of normal living. The personification of an entire demographic which finds itself slipping out of its countercultural pep.

Watch the video below, directed and shot by Cam Kennedy, with editing by Ben Chace, co-direction by Ben Chace and color grading by Thomas de Hemptinne:

Out For Blood is out now via Capitane Records and you can get it from Bandcamp.

The Yum Yum Tree – Shine

It has been nineteen years since Georgia-based indie rock outfit The Yum Yum Tree released their last album Paint By Numbers, a hiatus long enough to make even the most optimistic fans fear for the future of the project. After all, the band have other things to think about, not least lead Andy Gish who has spend over two decades as an ER nurse, as well as working in harm reduction. But good things come to those who wait, and this April will see The Yum Yum Tree return with brand new full-length Turn Down the Noise, an album which builds upon the foundations of its predecessor while proudly displaying the extra wisdom, self-awareness and emotional bravery which comes with near enough twenty years of living. Single ‘Shine’ embodies the spirit of the release, packing that nineties-flavoured indie rock punch while showing a newly unguarded, introspective personality. “Shine is about wanting something that doesn’t belong to you,” as Gish explains, “being able to sit with that and still wanting the best for them.” Watch the video directed by Katherine Lucas below:

Turn Down The Noise will be released on the 10th April and you can pre-order it from Bandcamp.

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

Last May, Toronto songwriter  and multi-instrumentalist Abigail Lapell released Anniversary, an album of love songs that explored the L-word in a variety of its many guises. Now, almost a year on, Lapell has announced More Songs About Love, an extended version of the record that adds eight extra tracks, including acoustic versions and French translations of some of Anniversary‘s standouts. Lapell made the album with the help of Tony Dekker (of Great Lake Swimmers), and he lends his vocals to the lead single, an acoustic duet version of ‘Wait Up’. “I feel like it brings out such a different, more intimate side of the song,” Lapell describes, “and was super fun to play and sing live together.”

Amiture Music – Mountain

Jack Whitescarver’s Amiture might be a thing of the past, but a new project has risen from the ashes. Amiture Music sees Whitescarver enlist drummer Justin Fossella, bassist Max Berine Shafer and multi-instrumentalist and percussionist Allie Wrubel to push into a style of experimental rock unreachable to a solo artist. “As musicians, the four of us are able to access an unspoken knowing, a shared voice,” Whitescarver says, “and this intimate understanding has allowed us to blend and mold our distinct approaches and styles into a unified, total sound.” The first taste of this new beginning, single ‘Mountain’ embodies the deep sincerity which underpins Amiture Music, forgoing any conceits or flashy gimmicks in favour of open collaboration and good old fashioned craft.

Domino Lewis – Do It All

Described as a songwriter “born in France but raised on Gordon Lightfoot and Joan Baez,” Domino Lewis crafts a timeless style of folk which owes equal debts to the classics and contemporaries of the genre. Ahead of a new EP scheduled for release sometime later this year, Lewis has shared brand new single, ‘Do It All’. A song which draws on a quote by Sylvia Plath—”I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations possible in my life. And I am horribly limited”—to form a sound at once affirming and shot through by melancholy. An apparent contradiction embraced throughout the track, as though to fully inhabit one’s life is to grasp both sides of the coin with identical curiousity. “I wanna see a morning /and moonlight just the same,” as the opening lines assert. “I wanna burn the sunshine / wanna drown the rain.”

Lewis joined up with Western AF on their European tour to record a version of the track. Watch the video recorded and mixed by Will Ross and edited by Manuel Deakins below:

‘Do It All’ is out now and available from the Domino Lewis Bandcamp page.

Foxtails Brigade – Forevermore

Described as “a lonely, bedroom anthem for the lost and forgotten,” ‘Forevermore’ is the latest single from San Francisco‘s Foxtails Brigade, and the first taste of their upcoming new full-length Red Album. Led by Laura Weinbach, the project has long made what we’ve called previously “a peculiar brand of Gothic folk-pop which embraces the weirder side of life,” and the new single is no exception. A poignant ode to those who exist at some kind of angle to the conventional modes of living, too often shunned by the cultural and political gatekeepers of their time.

‘Forevermore’ is out now. You can sign up for early access of Red Album on the Foxtails Brigade website.

Hectorine – Is Love An Illusion?

Bay Area-based songwriter Sarah Gagnon, AKA Hectorine, is preparing to release thrid album Arrow of Love later this spring with Take a Turn Records, an album which invoked the Sumerian goddess Inanna in its conception. Mesopotamian myth tells of Inanna descending into the underworld, giving up clothing and possessions at each of the gates of hell to finally arrive naked, and Gagnon followed the analogy to trace a path through a period of intense change during the pandemic, stripping away all protections to confront demons unguarded. Single and opener ‘Is Love An Illusion’ signals the start of this journey, with flitting marimba and dramatic vocals drawing the listener into dark, alluring netherworld.

Arrow of Love is out on the 23rd May on Take a Turn Records and you can pre-order it now.

IE – Simplify

Later this spring, Minneapolis quintet IE are releasing their latest album Reverse Earth on Quindi Records. The release draws upon kosmische, lounge pop and psychedelica in its sound, though with an intentional style which prioritises intuitive flow. There’s sizeable variation across the five songs, but lead single and centrepiece ‘Simplfy’ shows off the evocative patience of the outfit. A song which seems to raise itself from minimal beginnings, stirring with an almost organic logic, like the mysterious mechanical movements of subcellular particules, or else the heavenly bodies burning bright through outer space.

Mae Powell – Rope You In

Having signed with Karma Chief and Colemine Records, self-described “songstress and rainbow entity” Mae Powell is preparing to release a second album this summer, and latest single ‘Rope You In’ introduces the audience to the ethereal atmosphere and emotional clarity of the Bay Area artist’s work. The song was essentially the origin point of the record, the first steps of a challenging journey through a myriad of emotions, though step into the lush sound and crooned vocals and you’ll soon discover the experience to be one which places comfort front and centre. “I feel grateful for the way writing songs helps me make sense of and process emotions while I’m in the thick of them,” as Powell explains, and now the songs exist as something which might help listeners too.

Mourning [A] BLKstar – Stop Lion 2

Following on from 2024’s stellar Ancient//Future, Mourning [A] BLKstar are already on their way back with Flowers of the Living, a brand new full-length to be released by Don Giovanni Records to coincide with the Afrofuturist collective’s ten-year anniversary. And, if lead single ‘Stop Lion 2’ is indicative of the album in its entirety, MAB draw on the full breadth of creativity and expertise gained across this decade, bringing to life a sound packed with detail yet unafraid to spread its wings and take its time. Indeed, this is a song where space is given equal footing next to any instrument or vocal. “Not only does space represent stillness, contentment, and mindfulness, it’s also the fulcrum of collectivism and free expression, and a key tenet of the Black ecstatic lineage,” as the press release puts it. “Space has always been politicized, and to view it from a place of abundance rather than scarcity, even in a conceptual sense, is a rebuke of fascist oppressors and an affirmation of love and self-belief.” The result is every bit as defiant, moody and assured as this suggests, and primes the canvas ready for a blockbuster album. Watch the video below:

Flowers of the Living is coming soon via Don Giovanni Records and you can pre-order it now.

nina gala – honey

Back in 2022 we wrote about swan heart by Baltimore-based songwriter nina gala, an album we described as “reflecting on what was and what might have been with an almost reverent tone. One which explores feelings of longing, anger and despair yet descends fully into none, instead suspended in the strange wonder that things such as love could ever happen at all.” Now nina gala is back with ‘honey’, a brand new single which further descends into a shimmering world of romance and fear. “do you still wanna taste my honey? / do you miss my touch? / do you love my body?” as the opening lines ask, gala’s vocals soaring over a sparse arrangement like concerned thoughts filling an empty room at the dead of night.

Penny & the Pits – Montenegro on Ice

Penelope Stevens is perhaps best known as part of New Brunswick alt-rock outfit Motherhood, but is now ready to introduce a new project to the world—Penny & the Pits. Out via Forward Music Group, first single ‘Montenegro on Ice’ lacks none of the mood or bite of the Motherhood sound, Stevens matching head-banging heft with an abstract, poetic lyricism which plays like a personal journey into the strange currents and slacks of this thing we call life. A song “about letting your memories overwhelm your life,” as Stevens explains, “and about using any ol’ thing to avoid confronting your trauma.”

Laps like milk, with my mind like silt,
I underwent the kind of thing you can’t forget,
Unbroken, but not unbent
full eclipse
I was held up, transfixed
I was looking for some kind of sign I can’t ignore
But I found no sign I can’t ignore.

‘Montenegro on Ice’ is out now via Forward Music Group.

Slake – Bonecollector

Written to christen their new project, Mary Claire has just released the single ‘Bonecollector’ under the moniker Slake via Cherub Dream Records. Produced by Ryan Albert (Babehoven) and mixed by Melina Duterte (Jay Som), the song is both a window into the singular vision of the Californian artist and an embodiment of the collaborative spirit which brings their work to life. Bridge Gamble (bass), Ryan Albert (additional guitar), Lil Spakoski (synth/theremin), Oona Albertson (drums) and Maya Bon (additional vocals) all lend their talents, as too do a whole crew of directors, editors, camera crew and performers for the track’s accompanying, suitably commited, video filmed at the Padma Yoga Studio and Kilowatt Bar. Watch below:

‘Bonecollector’ is out now via Cherub Dream Records.

The post Weekly Listening: March 2025 #2 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Best known as the songwriter and lead of Baltimore indie rock band Outer Spaces, Cara Beth Satalino spent the last fifteen years living a strangely predictable existence. Playing shows, writing and releasing records, attempting to follow an assumed blueprint as to what a musician’s life should look like. Eventually Satalino decided to get out, upping roots and moving to New Jersey with partner and fellow Outer Spaces member Chester Gwazda to go back to school and start a new chapter. But the universe had other plans, both on a personal and global scale. Satalino fell pregnant, was diagnosed with a chronic illness, and battled “looming mental health issues,” all while the pandemic hit and the world changed for pretty much everyone. Forced to drop out of school, she had to find a way to deal with all this upheaval.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Satalino took to writing songs, looking for solutions to the current turmoil by examining the present and delving into the past. Musically, she looked back to her earliest influences, namely her upbringing in upstate New York where her father (himself an accomplished instrumentalist) immersed her in what she describes as “the vibrations of fiddle, banjo, guitars and mandolin.” Working in this traditional folk tradition felt like both a fresh start and a return to her roots. The unveiling of a true self that had previously sat beneath a noisier indie rock surface.

The result of this work is Little Green, a collection of ten of the most stripped back and vulnerable songs Satalino has ever written. There are gentle folk numbers and moments of warm and organic country rock, fleshed out with additional instrumentation (namely percussion, pedal steel and cello) from Gwazda, Angie Boylan, Nicholas Metz and Dan Kassel. But though the arrangements might sound like safe harbours from the chaos of the wider world, these are songs unafraid to face up to the deepening sense of uncertainty which marks our times. As though unease has wormed its way into our most personal, comforting habits in the day-to-day.

“I would take daily walks to to watch a family of eagles in their nest, tending to their eggs,” Satalino describes of the period in late 2020 when she escaped the city to stay with family. “The world felt big to me at the time, like it had its own agenda and we were all just along for the ride.” Tracks like ‘The Great Liberator’, which directly references this time, are imbued with such a mood, their warm fondness chilled by the shadow of impending change as it looms above. “Things felt like they had reached a standstill and yet we knew things were changed and changing,” she continues. “Like pushing a big boulder toward the edge of a cliff, it was difficult to move it, but soon it would be free falling at breakneck speed into the abyss.”

It goes around and round again
It’s all begun to change again

The success of Little Green is in no small part a result of the nuanced nature of Satalino’s approach. Early on you come to appreciate her uncanny ability to combine deep soul-searching with offhand observations and gentle humour, inventive imagery and smart turns of phrase creating something rich and full of life despite the surrounding turmoil. “I float above my body like a tetherball,” she sings in a typically wry line on opener ‘Warmth of a Golden Sun’. Or the opening lines of ‘Time’—“Got plenty of things to get into, when time abides and fear subsides, I’m a block of ice just melting in my shoes”—a track which explores old fears and uncertainties with a deceptively light hand, turning philosophical musings on the unstoppable march of the clock into something warm and buoyant and hopeful.

Nowhere is this balance more apparent than on the title track. A slow, hushed song which exudes a kind of bravery and self-acceptance with its dawning richness, embracing frailty rather than trying to hide it and finding some semblance of freedom in dropping such pretences. “It’s partly about finding compassion for myself as a young person, despite all my mistakes and troubles,” Satalino says of the song. “It’s saying something about identity: who we tell ourselves we are, how limiting those perceptions can be and how freeing it can feel sometimes to let go of them.” It’s a fitting encapsulation of the record as whole, soft and fragile as a little green shoot but with a spark of energy too, a desire to keep on. It might be too dark to see what is in front of you, but the earth is still turning and the bright star is still burning. There is time yet to grow towards the light.

Little Green is out now via Worried Songs. Get it from Bandcamp.

The post Cara Beth Satalino – Little Green appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Following in the lineage of songwriters such as Lana Del Ray and Ethel Cain, april june is a Madrid-based artist whose Gothic brand of synth pop muddies the line between desire, fantasy and reality. With a full-length edging closer, april june has been releasing a steady stream of singles in recent times, and the latest ‘it’s all my fault’ serves as the ideal introduction for those not already onboard. Shimmering nostalgia, heartbreak and loneliness marble into something enveloping, with a melodramatic gloom that is nevertheless shot through with shining longing.

ARXX – Baby Uh Huh

Earlier this year, Brighton duo ARXX released their album Ride Or Die via Submarine Cat Records, a record which saw Hanni Pidduck and Clara Townsend push the garage rock sound which made their name towards polished, soaring power pop. To close out the year, ARXX have returned with another evolution, this time of single ‘Baby Uh Huh’. Developed in collaboration with trans collective charity We Exist, the reimagined version collects a bunch of friends to celebrate the Queer community’s communal power, taking an already affirming track and elevating its joyous spirit even higher. “We were looking at the world around us, at all the attacks on Queer lives and in particular Trans lives and we wanted to do something to show our support with our Queer community,” the duo explain. “‘Baby Uh Huh’ is about finding the right people to surround yourself with to make you a better version of yourself, which is a very Queer experience.”

You can grab the charity single on Bandcamp. Ride Or Die is out now via Submarine Cat Records.

body / negative – sleepy (feat. Midwife)

Back in October we introduced body / negative‘s forthcoming album everett, with multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Andy Schiaffino enlisting the help of Midwife to create an incredibly personal memorial to her parents. “An attempt at communication through planes of existence and accumulated time,” as we described of the title track, “reaching across seemingly impassable gaps to ensure the line between loved ones remains open, regardless of how distant they might come to seem.” Latest track ‘sleepy’ is no less poignant, its sparse arrangement and layered samples playing like an evening in an empty room. Only within the stillness something else stirs, echoes of past days returning to dispel the apparent solitude, as though time is not a straight line but a stack of superimposed snapshots.

everett is out on the 8th December via Track Number Records and you can pre-order it from the body / negative Bandcamp page.

Haley Heynderickx & Max Garcia Conover – How Does The Horse Go Home?

Both Haley Heynderickx and Max Garcia Conover have been regular fixtures here at VSF over the years, so it was a real treat to have the pair join forces for Among Horses III, one of a series of collaborative releases from Son Canciones. “Whether writing confessions about themselves or imagined fictions about others, the genius of both Heynderickx and Conover is their ability to draw a relatable emotion from their subject matter,” we wrote, “tapping into a universal sense of nostalgia and longing and presenting it back to us, shaping and polished into its most gleaming form.” To celebrate the fifth anniversary of the EP, the pair have returned with a new extended edition, featuring new songs like the ‘How Does The Horse Go Home?’—another deft, striking contemplation on love in all of its changing, persistent forms.

Land Dweller – Losing Touch

Having previously recorded under the moniker Varsity Dad, Denver‘s Dan Harvey has now taken up the name Land Dweller and is preparing to release the project’s debut full-length Past Life. With Harvey on bass, guitar and vocals and Larry Shaw lending drums, the album establishes the Land Dweller MO—a blend of slacker and garage rock which melds bright rhythms and nostalgic textures. Take lead single ‘Losing Touch’, where the sound’s fatalistic reflection is counterbalanced by a rising rhythm, allowing for something at once despondent and cathartic.

Luah – To Relate

Luah is the recording project of Brendan Paul Sullivan, a Florida-born, Baltimore-raised and Kingston, New York-based songwriter, alongside an assortment of friends. The first taste of a forthcoming album, new single ‘To Relate’ is a slow unfurling of a song. Downbeat vocals bob along a meandering arrangement, so what might at first appear to be a morose mood is gradually revealed to be something more varied and natural. As though in committing to the flow, Sullivan not only accepts the changeable currents but finds beauty in every small eddy and pull.

Other Suns – To Adrianne

The cornerstone of debut full-length album Songs About Death, ‘To Adrianne’ introduces the hushed, introspective sound of Other Suns. Opening with the gentle lap of the tide, the song uses a spare folk sound to conjure something both warm and searching. A space outside of normal things in which to voice questions or share sentiments in the aftermath of loss. Or perhaps just to listen, to attune to the quiet sadness inherent in all things in an effort to sense the connection which exists between them. As the final line offers: “If everything dies, I’m not alone.”

Touch the Clouds – Dissolve

“A study on retrospection itself, calling attention to the artifice of memory and the rose-tinted fictions it has us believe.” That’s how we described ‘Gordie and the Cruisers‘ by Detroit‘s Touch the Clouds back in 2022. A bright indie rock anthem which held a more ambiguous message underneath. New track ‘Dissolve’ is no less dichotomous in style, its driving momentum and impassioned vocals detailing a headspace altogether less certain. As though only in leaning into forward motion can one shake free of the baggage of modern living. “I’ve been goin’ through a lot / trying to find a little peace / in all the yuck / racing around inside of me,” as the song opens. “Like dogs on the loose / running the street / howling a tune / into the moonlight.”

The Wolf In Our Own Backyard – God Help Me

The songwriting project of Kevin Gigler, The Wolf In Our Own Backyard is a Providence, Rhode Island-based outfit that works within folk’s best traditions. New album Stuck in Useless Country is full of wry humour, self-deprecation and dissatisfaction, all delivered with an upbeat and often scrappy folk rock style which twists and bends conventions as it sees fit. Single ‘God Help Me’ is perhaps one of the more traditional tracks on the album, though is shot through with the same spirit. Think John Prine’s ‘Paradise’ updated for a slightly later stage of capitalism, where the citizens of said useless country are left with no recourse but to mourn its perpetual decay.

The post Weekly Listening: November 2023 #4 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The project of Baltimore’s Bob Keal, Small Sur has released four albums (as well as a couple of singles and an EP) over the last decade and a half. Attic Room is the first Small Sur album since 2013’s Labor, and more significantly, it is also the first since the birth of Keal’s daughter in 2014. During these intervening years, he created “hundreds of song fragments scratched into the margins of life,” and spurred on by sound engineer Matthew O’Connell (Chorusing) and his brother Joseph (aka Elephant Micah), Keal began the laborious process of sifting through this collection of voice memos and half-formed ideas, eventually hammering them into ten completed songs.

But the next steps were far from simple. Forced by the pandemic to cancel a five-day recording session at a cabin in North Carolina in March 2020, Keal took a few months to deal with more pressing concerns before turning to alternative plans for the album. He began to work with O’Connell remotely, laying down his vocal and guitar work in the basement of a local chapel while O’Connell handled the engineering and played piano and Telecaster. Eventually they reached out to other collaborators too, the limitations on a conventional full-band setup paradoxically ploughing the earth for a different kind of community to grow.

Keal describes Attic Room as a “bedroom country” record, a tag anyone familiar with the Small Sur oeuvre will intuitively understand. Keal makes music that is quiet and minimal, intimate in the truest sense. The sound of one person’s experience of life here on Earth, focusing not on grand narratives but the gentle wax and wane of everyday existence. The new album evokes images of weather patterns (such as the thundercloud of opener ‘A Clean Patch of Ground’), the changing seasons and countless small moments that are infused with a poetic gravity. Moments like the day’s last cigarette (‘Rays of Light’), watching harbour lights reflecting on dark nighttime water (‘Monhegan Island, 2012’), or even the warm-hued tones of a cherished memory (‘Aperture’).

It’s high tide in Tucson
and I’m bathing in the sun
in those western waters gleaming
with my lover in my arms

Small Sur has always excelled in these fine details, and Attic Room therefore fits neatly into the discography. But there are changes too, as is to be expected for work so inherently personal. Just like the landscapes and relationships he explores, Keal is slowly changing. Because of fatherhood and his relationship with his partner, not to mention the challenges of the last few years.

Nowhere is this new perspective more apparent than on ‘Sun’, a song which harks back to another called ‘I Love the Sun’ from 2008’s We Live in Houses Made of Wood. As its title suggests, the original was a simple ode to the most important star (“I love the sun /And its rays / Which fall by day from the heavens”). ‘Sun’ is the same song but sung from a different position, Keal now sharing his appreciation with his daughter. “I will show you the sunrise,” he sings, “in the meadow at dawn.” It’s a moment that, perhaps inadvertently, captures the essence of the record—the idea of finding fortitude and beauty in time passing, in cycles repeating, in the fact the sun continues to rise and set despite whatever else is going on in the world. What is love, after all, if not a study in time?

Congratulations on the release of Attic Room. How does it feel to have a new record out in the world?

Thank you! I haven’t recorded much since our last full-length, Labor, from 2013, so I feel happy to have some new music in people’s ears. It’s a bit surreal, too, mostly because of how people consume music these days, even compared with 2013. It feels like there is so much music being released—not sure if that’s reality or just my perception—so I’m just really thankful a few folks have given the album some time to sink in.

As with most artists over the last few years, the recording process was far from a simple one. How did you manage to work around the restraints of the pandemic, and do you think the album sounds different because of the circumstances it was born in?

First and foremost, my co-conspirator, Matthew O’Connell of Chorusing and Elephant Micah, brought so much to the table in terms of technical know-how and creative input. He engineered most of the record and co-produced it with me. I stand by the songs themselves, but the album would’ve been very different if I’d recorded it live with a band and added a handful of overdubs afterward. That’s what I’ve done in the past because of time and budget constraints, and that approach has its limitations. Because of the pandemic, Matt and I hunkered down and built things up from their basic parts, usually starting with voice and nylon string guitar. I’ve always tried to layer in sounds and parts in a way that feels subtle and intentional, but our overall approach really allowed that to take center stage rather than being an afterthought. In the end, I don’t think this album would be what it is without the limitations, so that’s one of the few positives I’m taking away from the pandemic’s many negatives.

Although Small Sur is very much your project, you enlisted the help of a pretty stellar cast of collaborators. How big an influence did each individual bring to the record?

I’ve always loved inviting folks to put their own stamp on my songs. I offer my opinions and input, but the spontaneity of having others just going for it is really fun. Aside from Matthew’s technical contributions to the album, he also played on piano, Telecaster, tape dubs, bass, and percussion. Erik Hall delivered an incredible mix and played some crucial piano parts. Andy Stack of Wye Oak/Joyero had a huge impact on these recordings, too. He has a super intuitive approach and special relationship with my songs, and I loved what he brought to the table, as always. Andy Abelow has played saxophone on my songs for 15 years, and he has some amazing contributions here, too, as does Will Ryerson, who’s played bass in the band for almost a decade. Cara Satalino of Outer Spaces on backing vocals, Joseph Decosimo on fiddle, Dave Hadley on steel guitar, Joe O’Connell on bass—all incredible contributions, too, and I can’t imagine the record without them.

One unique part of making this record was that most folks did their own engineering. The feedback/revision loop is a bear when working remotely, so I tried to communicate what I was looking for pretty clearly and to also be flexible and run with folks’ ideas even if they weren’t exactly what I had in mind. It was pretty fun, and everyone who played on the album brought so much talent to the table that I didn’t feel the need to clutch too tightly to control. I feel so thankful to have friends and acquaintances who were willing to chip in to flesh these songs out, and I can’t imagine what the album would be without each and every one of their contributions.

This is your first release since the birth of your daughter, and while I’m sure this had a practical impact on the album’s creation, I’m interested in how parenthood and the idea of family seeped into the songs themselves. Are you a different songwriter now? Did you write these songs with your daughter in mind?

Aside from the song ‘For Juniper,’ which I specifically wrote for my daughter, I didn’t write any of the other songs with her in mind. Parenting in general and the partnership I have with my wife Monique played a huge role in the lyrical content of the album and my ability to have the time to make it. We’ve weathered a lot together in the 16 years of our friendship and relationship, especially leading up to and during the pandemic. Continually growing in my ability to be supportive and present through the peaks and troughs of life has been a welcome education, and my reflections on that experience are all over the album.

My approach to writing songs has changed over the last decade because I often only have short windows of time in which to work. Most of the voice memos and quick ideas I record have lots of ambient noise in the background: my daughter singing or screaming, dishes clanking, the dog barking or his nails clicking on the hardwood floor. It makes me think of some of Mick Turner’s recordings, especially Moth, and I’d love to incorporate some of those sounds in finished recordings sometime.

The press release also refers to how the record evokes the “Midwestern landscapes of [your] childhood.” Does parenthood cast your mind back to your own childhood? Did you set out to explore these cycles of growth and development directly?

I’m a pretty nostalgic person, so I spend a lot of time thinking about my childhood and other past experiences. The farm in South Dakota where I grew up had a deep impact on who I am, and “place” in general has always inspired me—hence the name of the band and many songs named after specific places and times. I honestly don’t really set out to explore anything directly. Whatever happens just happens naturally.

Talking of cycles, nature has always been very present in your work. Again, is this intentional, or just something that happens as you write? And what is it about the natural world and its rhythms that can bring us so much strength and solace?

I am very intentional about spending time outside. My yearly goal is to sleep in a tent for three weeks, and on a good year I can push it close to a month. In the midst of these blocks of time, I am often—not always—calm and clear and open. During fall 2020, I wrote ‘For Juniper’ while camping in the Catskills. The lyrics and ideas that became ‘Sun’ were written while camping, too. I take great solace in the fact that I can return to places year after year and see things grow and shift and change. And I let those changes illuminate and reflect the shifts happening in my life, too. The natural world is the filter through which I understand and see my life in its clearest form. Some of the poets and songwriters I love most have similar approaches—Mary Oliver, Phil Elverum, Kyle Field of Little Wings, Joe O’Connell of Elephant Micah—so that surely inspires my work and funnels my approach in some way, too

Attic Room is out now. Order it via Worried Songs or the Small Sur Bandcamp page.

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The mood is set by opener ‘a garden, a window, a wedding bell’, a slow and poignant track which plays like some contemporary retelling of an old folk hymn. “I left my man / I left my home / the alley cats / the furniture / all the paintings on the wall,” gala sings. “The wooden spoon / the sugar bowl.” As the list of things left behind grows, so too does the energy within the sound, its orchestral folk swelling with string arrangements by Jon Birkholz and eventually gathering into stormy tumult.

old scars, loose threads
the wedding bells in my head
blood brothers, best friends
all your promises
I asked you nice
then I got on my knees
then I got mean

The title track emerges in the aftermath, shorter and sweeter if no less dramatic, the first of a trio of songs through ‘we looked like angels’ and ‘perfect, precious’ which evokes the very thing being mourned with the fondness of retrospection. Short instrumental interlude ‘healing’ refreshes the canvas before the second grand folk track ‘the river is mine’ announces itself. It’s another plus-six minute song which keeps its intention close to its chest as it unfurls, circling with a cryptic potential. “The river is mine,” nina gala sings with ominous weight, “not a glimmer in your blue eyes,” the track threatening to break into another stormy crescendo and finally making good on the promise.

After the slow turn of ‘tangerine’, closer ‘casalena’ charts the new position in which nina gala finds herself. One where old dreams have faded and the future remains indistinct. “I’ve played the virgin mary / madonna too,” she sings, “once I wanted to be married / now I don’t know what I want to do.” A track about moving on without a full recovery or clean break, pushing forward within the clouded confusion of everything. “It’s time to wear / my fathers name / can’t deny / from which where I came / but I wanna love / without all this,” goes the final verse:

pain and shame
manipulation
fantasy
empty dreams
haven’t I earned my place on earth
after all this suffering

swan heart is out now and available from the nina gala Bandcamp page.

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With their roots in the spoken word, the projects revealed Cal Folger Day’s deep interest in language and its attached rhythms. Music not merely inspired by the nuance and elasticity of speech but born of them, the energy latent within the patterns and cadences manifest as sound. “I definitely have an obsessive capacity for verbal detail,” Day explains. “Ums, you knows, hahas, and all the fragments they weave around, which is simply like a dog I have to take on a walk.” Latest album Piece-dye centres on this fascination, with Day interviewing distant aunt Irene Nally about her life as an immigrant from Sligo living in post-war New York, then using Nally’s verbatim answers as the lyrics for the songs. “I just knew that I liked spending time with Irene and that it was compelling for me to turn her words over and over like a pebble,” Day continues. “At the end of the project I didn’t know anything more than that.”

This exploratory attitude informs the music itself too. With help from Phil Christie (keys, guitar, vocals), Daniel Fox (bass), Solamh Kelly (percussion) and Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh (viola), Cal Folger Day weaves what the album notes describe as a “musically omnivorous” sound, encompassing punk and country styles within the experimental and jazz-inflected whole. A sound which fluctuates from bombastic to contemplative and back again with each of the ‘Acts’, all according to whatever vibe or energy is seeded within Nally’s words at any given moment.

What emerges is a fascinating and often contradictory medium with which to explore an equally intricate subject. One capable of communicating a candid story of one woman’s life which nevertheless carries an abstract weight by the very nature of its form. A style of music, that is, able to drill through the layers of history, evoking narratives both personal and social as well as more theoretical or conceptual ideas around language and memory. Piece-dye is the story of Irene Nally, born in Ireland and living in New York, but also a story of women more generally. A story of corporate America, of immigrants, of any human who has ever spoken to another in the hope of preserving something about who they are and where they’ve been.

Lead single ‘Act 2’ serves as the perfect introduction to the project. A journey straddling pop and avant garde which negotiates the pitfalls of the time, guided by Day’s rendition of Nally’s frank and often genuinely funny narration. “I wasn’t even looking for a career,” she explains in the opening:

The career happened
And then I obviously found myself dealing with some of the
I mean it was Mad Men time
Eh so you eh you were dealing with a huge amount of sexism and whatnot
Ehm on this but because of my background
I was able to deal with it in my way
Now it wasn’t necessarily the right way
But I would say my line was I was brought up in a convent
You know I’d stonewall
You know I played the convent card til it was threadbare ha
And then I played the I am married card until it was threadbare

The track also comes with a video by the ‘mysterious Blob Galahad’, which you can check out below:

Piece-dye is out on the 3rd June and you can pre-order it now from the Cal Folger Day Bandcamp page.

Photo by Cameron Kelly

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Lyrically, their songs perform the age-old combination of the genre, marrying themes of the serious and/or existential variety—heartbreak, loss and unrequited love—with a dusty, rollicking energy, the sense that everything will be just fine so long as the guitars keep strumming and the night does not end. As such, the mood veers somewhere between wistful and joyful, or perhaps both at once, a revelling in loneliness and heartache that marks the cowboy life.

We’re happy to share a brand new video for the single, ‘I Like Your Bed’. The name is appropriate for the sound, suggestive of the the playful aesthetic that permeates everything from the lyrics to the instrumentation, though beneath this lies a sentiment altogether more sincere and heartfelt. Here, the focus of a love is left unmentioned, though brought to life through a series of physical objects, items that take on a hallowed quality not through their own attributes but their connection with the person in question.

Lovegrove is out now and you can get it from the Crisco Dreams Bandcamp page.

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In preparation, the band have released lead single ‘ I Saw You’. Falling somewhere between Mount Moriah and Waxahatchee, the song suggests the new album will continue in the same vein as their previous music. The track is both cool and uncompromising, in possession of a spirit that’s buoyant yet not irreverent, shot through with a sense of easy confidence. Check out the video directed by Becca Brooks Morrin below:

A Shedding Snake is set to be released on the 27th May and you can pre-order it now from Don Giovanni Records.

Photo by Micah E. Wood

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“Our debut, full-length LP was written with the notion that narrative, with its specificity of location and atmosphere, is an essential part of all music. As instrumentalists, we understand this to be a narrative without, or rather outside of, words.”

The result is something rather special. If you enjoyed the instrumental goodness we featured last year (e.g. Lejsovka & Freund, Danielle Fricke etc.) then you’re going to love this. ‘Trivial Pursuit’ opens with gentle guitar and the lazy buzz of cello, like a moseying bumble bee on a summer breeze. The song changes pace slightly around the halfway mark, the guitar rushing into quicker strums, little eddies and swirls in the musical current. It really is a lovely start.

‘Old Black, New Black’ has swishy, shaken percussion and undulating licks of cello, topped off with some strummed acoustic guitar, while ‘Every One of Them, Dogs’ has minimal but spiked guitar and barely-there thudding percussion as the cello snakes around, tying itself in knots as it climbs and climbs. Additionally, pedal steel give things a sunbaked, almost mirage-like, western feel. ‘American Mastodon’ has a softly tumbling and cyclical guitar line and gliding cello which skates across the songs bare black background, as well as some harsher blares, sounds I like to imagine are the trump of the titular mastodon as it trudges through a frozen spruce woodland. The impressively-titled ‘When I Die, Bury Me in the Woods So My Husband Will Hunt For Me’ is slow and sad and elegant as a curl of woodsmoke from a lonely chimney.

The second half of the album sees something of a shift as things get a little more electric. ‘The Bell Suite I. Currer’ is a song for Charlotte Brontë, the first in a triptych of songs which the band describe as a “brooding meditation on authorship, which seeks to personify each of the Brontë sisters in stark romantic relief.” ‘II. Ellis’ is the song for Emily, while ‘III. Acton’ evokes Anne, ending in big distortion-smothered electric guitar. ‘Devils Tower’ continues the electric theme but has more of a clanging subdued quality, before closer ‘Ellis (Reprise)’ is slow and somnolent, with gently plodding and plinking percussion and the final elegiac cello line.

Quarterly is a great record, more than just a change of pace to put on when you’re reading a book or concentrating on something else. It packs twice as much narrative content as most non-instrumental albums, it just takes a little more work on the listener’s part to find (and in some cases engineer) them. As the band say:

“These songs are lyrical vignettes that, seeded with associations, are meant to grow in each listener.”

You can buy Quarterly now from the Quarterly Bandcamp page.

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