Now Puzzlecuts returns with a sophomore album, No Max Amount, and today we’re happy to unveil a brand new song from it. ‘All Wound Up’ is a perfectly pitched indie rock song, dialling back the rawness of the rest of the album to build in a slow and slightly off-kilter manner, periods of relative silence growing and gathering like thunderheads, but always wrapped up in a sunny slacker vibe. Things eventually get their release during the chorus, with the surprisingly catchy throaty cry of:

“but if gravity co-operates with me
my shoulders might not feel
so damn heavy
a thousand pounds a piece
man I ain’t Hercules here
guess Mount Olympus can wait ’til I’m
all wound up to go…”

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‘D’You’ is a laid back track built from a bright acoustic strum, McCall’s voice gentle and calm if not quite as buoyant as the instrumentation. Indeed, the vocals are what elevate the track into something more complex, a certain nostalgia (and therefore sense of loss) allowed to infiltrate the otherwise warm scene, although it’s far more than a simple juxtaposition between light and dark. Instead, we find McCall on the other side of something, the pain and longing long since eroded to a soft-edged pebble, tepid and tactile and and fitting right into the palm of his hand.

Speaking of hands, the second single is based around them entirely. ‘Ideal Hand’ is slower and sadder, pulling the opposite effect to the opener in that hope or happiness is left to appear between the lines, within the light flicks of instrumentation which appear staccato amongst the melancholy mood. As such, the sense of warmth from the first track persists, albeit threatening to leak away, meaning listening is like lying on stone warmed by summer sun as evening descends.

“Don’t have a plan,
come make one.
Got two ideal hands,
you can take one”

The post Premiere: Fazed On A Pony – D’You | Ideal Hand (Double A-Side Single) appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Opening track ‘Strawberry Moon’ is the perfect introduction for a number of reasons. The title alone conjures all the right images, gently fantastical and full of wonder, like childhood dreams that glimmer at the edge of reality. The sound too is evocative of a dreamscape, pastel-coloured swirls of haze hugging Bozella’s smooth vocals. Vivian Fantasy enlists the help of fellow Virginia band The Snuggalos on the title track, another enchanted dream pop song, before ‘Where’s the Fantasy’ glitters like the cosmos twinkling above a 16-bit palm-lined seascape.

‘Are U Clean Yet?’ is a smash hit from an alternative dimension, dripping with a summertime late-night nostalgia, sounding like everyone’s favourite pop song playing at top volume in the club next door, while ‘You Were My Forest’ is a glitched-out heartfelt number, succeeded by an interlude of looped and distorted vocal samples and gauzy instrumentation, before closer ‘Surgeon is Death’ recalls acts such as Passion Pit with its emotive falsetto delivery and shimmering electronics.

If you choose to download the album (which you can do for nothing), you also get two bonus tracks which are well worth your time. Head to the Vivian Fantasy Bandcamp page to gets your hands on it!

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We were therefore very pleased to hear that the duo, based between Umeå and Stockholm in Sweden, are back with a brand new single, ‘Condensation’. The track is a great example of what Old Amica do best, lush layered electronics gild gentle vocals and a steady pulsing drum beat. It has a decidedly yearning feeling, but isn’t necessarily a totally sad song, a point highlighted by its warm, fuzzy undertones.

The song comes complete with a beautiful video, comprised of Super 8 footage found by Johan from the band when he visited his childhood home last Christmas, filmed by his late father when he arrived in Sweden back in the 70s. Watching the images feels like looking at memories themselves, ethereal footage of lonely gulls and blazing sunsets and lines of wandering reindeer providing the perfect backdrop to the song’s wistful dreaminess.

You can get ‘Condensation’ now from the Old Amica Bandcamp page.

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The album opens with the instrumental ‘Crossing’, which shifts and swirls in a cloud of 90s grunge, dissonant squealing guitar and slapped drums. The song seemingly finds its sense of purpose around the 5 minute mark, narrowing its focus and driving forward at a sauntering gallop. Follow-up ‘Everyone I Know’ introduces vocals, which are surprisingly soft and gentle amongst the instrumentation.

“i’ve got reasons why i go to the woods at night
everyone that i know is standing all around
they say its okay now
chetty it’s okay”

‘Captain Spark’ has a kind of inelegant rhythm before ending in a snarl of guitar and crash of drums and the repeated line “i see you hiding but i wanna move forward”. ‘Crowded Room’ is probably the album’s most danceable track, lo-fi guitar sashaying around katie’s drums, while ‘Care Song’ is a joyously raucous instrumental, chetty’s guitar searing through the gloomy lo-fi rock vibes. ‘hahaha’ is much more ruminative, hoping and wishing for, or perhaps even promising, something different:

“im gonna be my own star in a gross world
im gonna lean on you
dont you know angels are dreaming of you
plants are in your front yard
i wanna fall asleep on my back
think of nothing for awhile”

The vocals on ‘Shimmer’ are soft and breathy and barely there, delivering opaque and simple lyrics that are thick with imagery, like how minimalist photographs of everyday scenes can sometimes be infused with something more. Closer ‘Sister Girl’ is enveloped in a shadowy lo-fi atmosphere, like a sweaty basement show from the 90s, all screeching guitar and unpredictable percussion. It’s a cool end to a really great collection of songs.

You can get Feed the Bug now on cassette from Reflective Tapes or as a download from the Twelve Gardens Bandcamp page.

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That’s a pretty good description to my ears. The skittering percussion and winding guitar on ‘Knowing 1’ are as autumnal as brittle leaves on the wind. Things get decidedly colder on ‘Blind Edit (Knowing 2)’, which has this strange and desolate vibe that fits perfectly with the photograph on the album art, like the sound of a gale making voices on some arctic tundra or empty plain. It morphs after around two minutes, becoming insular and indistinct,  almost as if Delaney has come in from the cold and shut a heavy door behind him, tape hiss like the crackle of a fire, the long slow drones like the oncoming fingers of sleep.

‘Smooth J’ begins all skittering percussion and echoing guitar, like a gentle, psych-tinged take on epic post rock, before a strange field-recorded interlude of muffled, indecipherable voices. The title of ‘The Heat is On’ is somewhat misleading, a drawn out drone that sounds sparse and cold, before ‘Still Life Photographer’ breaks the ten minute mark with its rattle and sway and surreal, midnight distortion. The final track, ‘Thrown into the Water’, is the longest of all, opening with twitchy drums and smooth elliptic guitar, hitting its stride to become the perfect meditative driving song, complete with skating synths, unfurling guitar and noisy reverberating interludes. The percussion falls away after around ten minutes, leaving a shifting ambient atmosphere that feels somehow transcendental, a moment of perfect clarity to close the tape.

Order Secret Wind on cassette via Lily Tapes & Discs, or as a digital download from The National Park Service Bandcamp page.

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In support of this move, many bands and artists have decided to follow suit and donate some/all of their proceeds too. There’s already a pretty comprehensive list over at Bandcamp Daily of people taking part, but it doesn’t include all of our favourites and focuses mainly on those donating to the ACLU too. We know that many have been gifting proceeds to other causes (Planned Parenthood, Southern Poverty Law Center, Forward Together, Sister Song etc. etc.) pretty much since the election, so we wanted to make sure they got a mention for their generosity too. Therefore, you buy any/all of the below and rest assured that the acts will make a donation to some great organisation along with Bandcamp’s ACLU end of the deal.

Also, though not wanting this descend into self-promotion (the ship has sailed on that front anyway), we released a benefit compilation back in 2015 in support of Worldreader. For the next 24 hours, every penny (minus postage) will be donated to the ACLU. Digital downloads are set at ‘name your price’, tapes are available for as little as £1, and we have a super limited number of postcard artwork prints left too. We’ve included some examples at the end of the post, but can see most of the prints here, or by clicking on the individual songs on Bandcamp. If you like any in particular send us a message and we’ll mail them out for a small donation.

(Also, we understand that not everyone is in a position to make financial contributions, but there are plenty of ways to help. Even if you just support minority artists, writers and thinkers, as we suggested in a recent piece in response to the Women’s March movement).

Advance Base / Casiotone For the Painfully Alone – You know Owen Ashworth is pretty much a genius, right? Most recent album Nephew in the Wild supports this notion.

Alanna McArdle (in support of Right to Remain)

Andrew Weathers – A perfect blend between traditional folk and weird ambient stuff

Andrew Younker – new release Microchasm is like a digital dream.

Anti- – including great new albums from Japandroids and Peter Silberman, plus that exceptional John K. Samson record

ATO Records – Margaret Glasby, Okkervil River, Hurray For The Riff Raff…

Ba Da Bing Records – e.g. Claire Cronin’s beautiful album, Julie Byrne‘s new gem

Barsuk Records – who have a great compilation, Sad!, featuring David Bazan, Say Hi etc.

Beat Radio – You could say we believe in Brian Sendrowitz

Benjamin Shaw – Whatever his moniker, wherever in the world he’s hiding, Benjamin Shaw’s music will make your day a little easier.

The Burning Hell – The prolific Mathias Kom has something for everyone

Cellar Door Tapes – Plenty to explore here, though wished bone are an underappreciated diamond.

The Chairman Dances – Time Without Measure is as timely as it is brilliant, as we explained a few months ago.

Cryostasium – Blow off some steam with this black metal

Dicktations – The band’s cut will be donated to CAIR or a charity of your choice, so it’s as good a time as ever to grab their latest album, Super Paradise.

Disposable America – Scientifically-proven to have the best logo/tag-line in the indie music sphere, so obviously their music is great. Lillith’s Apology Plant is out today, if you want to be cutting edge.

Dogbreth – With 100% off their takings going to No More Deaths/No Mas Muertes, their latest (excellent) record Second Home is doubly alluring.

Drunk With Love Records – An interesting, exciting label putting out experimental DIY music. Surf the tag to check out our reviews

Emperor X – Matheny is splitting his proceeds between five non-profits: Syrian Arab Red Crescent, Women’s Refugee Commission, Union of Concerned Scientists, B’Tselem and Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Father/Daughter Records – maybe new Diet Cig, Vagabon, Nnamdi Ogbonnaya, or all of the above?

Fire Talk Records – We liked the latest Nassau EP, Hoss.

Flannelgraph Records – Whole host of stuff to keep you busy

Folkadelphia – You could dig into these sessions and compilations for days and days

Forged Artifacts – The Bombshells are cool, as are Some Pulp, ahem and a ton of others.

Foxes in Fiction – Hildebrand released Virgos to Waste, a set of rare, one-off and unreleased recordings in support of the Southern Poverty Law Centre.

Fox Food Records (donating to Samaritans) – Too much good stuff to rec, but our pals Nice Legs have a new release on vinyl! Alternatively, cruise the Fox Food tag to read our previous reviews.

Friends For Equality – Nancy Kells of Spartan Jet Plex went to town on this compilation, as we discussed here

Full Spectrum Records – A wide spectrum of odd, weird music. AKA the best music

GoldFlakePaint – The king of our musical jungle has put out some killer compilations over the years which will introduce you to a shed load of new talent.

The Grey Estates – Talking of blogging royalty, everyone’s favourite purple website also plays the compilation game. We wrote about why Sugar Rush is good and important a while back.

Hallelujah the Hills – We loved their most recent album so much, I spoke to Ryan Walsh for Bandcamp

Jacob Furr – Latest record Sierra Madre is one we’ve been meaning to tell you about

John Heart Jackie

Kill Rock Stars – A good time to get acquainted with Horse Feathers

Land Animal Tapes – The perfect excuse to grab that new Travis Trevisan release.

Los Campesinos!

Lost Tribe Sound – We’re continually blown away by the likes of William Ryan Fritch, Western Skies Motel and Seabuckthorn

Mat Riviere – Some fuzzy, not-doom pop music, just what the doctor ordered.

Merge Records – The new Alison Crutchfield record is great, but there’s also the likes Titus Andronicus, Mount Moriah, The Mountain Goats…

Mexican Summer – Quilt released a superb album last year

Mike Pace & the Child Actors – Get Soft is probably my favourite release of the year so far, for reasons explained here.

Most People

Negative Fun Records – A veritable gold mine of good music

Old Earth – WTD fav Todd Umhoefer has put together a special charity bundle just for today. Surf the tag for our thoughts on why Old Earth rules

Old Flame Records – Shark? will add a little energy to your day

Paper Garden Records – The latest ARMS record is a beauty

Paul Lawton – The Ontario musician has put up a whole load of ‘lost’ recordings from a whole host of his bands and monikers especially for ACLU day

Peter Mulvey – Mulvey teamed up with friends to release a benefit compilation in support of various good organisations.

Petridisch – If you’re looking for weird, experimental spins on classical compositions, look no further.

Pinegrove (Donating to Southern Poverty Law Center)

Radiator Hospital – Torch Song is a special record, today’s a great day to welcome it into your life

Rhyme Sayers – An embarrassment of hip-hop riches to delve into here

Run for Cover – Elvis Depressedly, LVL UP, Spencer Radcliffe, Modern Baseball etc.

Sam Moss – His latest album, Fable, is just lovely

Skinny Blonde – The band have gone a step further than most, promising to donate 100% of all Bandcamp sales/Spotify and Apple Music revenue etc. to the ACLU and Planned Parenthood until Trump is no longer president. Read our thoughts on their music and get involved.

Someday River

Sorority Noise – Numerous albums worth your time here, as our reviews attest.

Space Mountain – If you haven’t got Big Sky yet, what on earth are you waiting for?

Specialist Subject – The new American Enthusiasm is great (and kind of appropriately named for this whole idea)

Speedy Ortiz

Sub Pop – If you haven’t already, now’s a good time to grab some stuff by Damien Jurado, Low, Wolf Parade, Father John Misty etc.

Wake The Deaf – As stated above, we usually donate to Worldreader, but for 24 hours the ACLU will get every penny after postage.

Wilder Maker – The Everyday Crimes Against Objects Of Desire trilogy is fantastic, as we can attest

The World is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid to Die – Released a special track in support of the ACLU

Xiu Xiu

Here are some of the artwork prints we mentioned at the beginning, from the likes of (in order) Mouni Feddag, Jean De Wet, William Exley, Heather Swenson, Rachael Perisho and Mina Hamada. They’re all postcard size on nice sturdy card. Not many of each left, but let us know if you have a favourite and we’ll sort something out.

Pssst, a little secret… we’re changing our name really soon, so all this WTD-branded stuff will be super rare and collectable.

The post Bandcamp’s Charity Friday: A Shopping List appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The first Pleasure Systems release is this collection of six songs, what Sondermann describes as “october demos / crush songs”. Fans of his other band will be glad to know that things don’t sound too drastically different, just with a minimal dream pop vibe. The first track, ‘hurt’, opens cautiously, the song putting out its feelers before slowly emerging, Sondermann’s vocals sounding like a late-night answerphone message playing to an empty room. ‘orchard’ has the same poetic lyrics and soft and muffled intimacy of my favourite Washboard Abs songs, while ‘mt dew’ has a wurlitzer-style background synth, which teamed with the vocals bring to mind a gentler version of Owen Ashworth’s various guises.

“all i want is a quiet life
a bed and a blanket and you by my side”

The mere 20 words that make up the lyrics on ‘colorblind’ somehow manage to conjure an entire scene, more emotion than most bands get from ten verses (“rain is falling, i don’t mind /
hear me calling, no reply / see the clouds glow, colorblind / winter circles, stay inside”), while the title track has a subdued and gauzy clarity that reminds me a little of the later Trouble Books stuff. Closer ‘the knife’ brings a fearless meditation on death, Sondermann’s vocals sombre over plaintive guitar and slowly gathering atmospherics, creating the same melancholy vibe we heard on The Washboard Abs’s The Beaming.

“when it finally comes i’ll stay in place
when the light comes down i’ll show my face
i don’t think i’ve ever been afraid
i don’t think it matters anyway “

Lowland Sigh is out on cassette on the 3rd February on cassette via Reflective Tapes and you can pre-order it now, or you can get the digital release from the Pleasure Systems Bandcamp page. While you’re in the neighbourhood, why not check out the Reflective Tapes back catalogue to quench your punk/radical-linked indie rock thirst?

P.S. There’s a new Washboard Abs album on the way, and some demos to check out in the meantime! Do it!

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In a recent interview with Trevor Elkin over at Gold Flake Paint, Smith revealed his recent issues with depression, and Heart Land marks a shift towards a more honest, transparent brand of songwriting. Despite being made in what Smith describes as “pretty much the lowest time in my life,” the EP is lighter than many previous releases, with opener ‘Never Doubt Us’ the perfect introduction, an instrumental of shifting, shimmering guitar.

‘Shake off the Present’ sees Good Good Blood doing what he does best, taking what’s essentially a folk song and running it through a twenty-first century filter – guitar and floaty atmospherics and crunchy percussion. The lyrics, which deal pretty explicitly with Smith’s recent mental health struggles, bring to mind the style of Strand of Oaks’ Timothy Showalter, self-deprecating in a heart-on-the-sleeve way and propelled by urgent momentum, as though drawing a certain joyous energy from the catharsis of exposing inner thoughts and feelings:

“I been riding around on the subway
feet are turning round and round
feeling like I let my whole family down
but I just cannot seem to shake of the present
worrying about the pas
knowing that my futile future ain’t gonna last”

The title track sways with gentle percussion and buzzing keys, Smith’s vocals a soft croon, before the surprisingly bright ‘I’m So Ugly’, the guitar here like sunlight prismed through water droplets on the morning after a storm. Gathering momentum just beyond the minute mark, the song becomes what can only be described as a mournfully upbeat dream pop jam that defies its own lyrics (“I’m so ugly / you dare not hold me / I know, I know”).

‘Spiralling’ is another track that sounds deceptively buoyant, and a look at the lyrics raises the question as to whether the music is conquering the sadness or merely working to mask it (“here I go / spiralling / out of control / when did this begin? “). There’s also an audio sample of everyone’s favourite misanthrope, Bukowski, who we’ll quote at length because he gets at the kind of awful stasis of contemporary living, where freedom has been contorted into bars of its own and the struggle for identity and meaning is swamped by the well-worn script of adult responsibilities and should-dos:

“Generally speaking, you’re free until you’re about four years old. And then five arrives, then you go to grammar school and then you start becoming demented and solved and orientated and shoved into areas. You lose what individualism you have. If you have enough, of course, you retain some of it. But most don’t have enough so you become watchers of game shows, you know, and things like that.”

The release finishes on a second instrumental track which, despite its wordless nature, somehow rings as true as any of the others. An all-pervading drone rings bright and clear behind picked guitar and barely-there snatches of real life, the clatter of kitchen utensils, the cries of children, but mostly tape hiss and rustling movement. It’s delicate and pretty at first but soon becomes claustrophobic, a tinnitus-ridden paralysis that something like a view of the inside of your own head, life rolling by oblivious, as is its way.

You can get Heart Land now from the Fox Food Records Bandcamp page. All proceeds go to The Samaritans, so give a couple of pounds and everyone’s a winner.

The post Good Good Blood – Heart Land appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The track is called ‘Everything is Salted Caramel’, a song which sees Exam Season take the juxtaposition of the en vogue sweet treat and apply it to relationships. The message seems to be that it’s okay to take the rough with the smooth and that a dash of proverbially salty feelings is not just normal, but can make the sweet ones taste that much better.

“Everything has to be
sweet and salty”

If you’re unfamiliar with the Pin Pal Club, it’s a subscription service that sends not only a new and exclusive single each month, but also a specially designed enamel pin badge. It was planned to be a thing that ran through 2016, but if you order the year subscription now you get all the previous pins in one package, which might be more or less exciting, depending on your character. Also, the pins and corresponding singles are available for purchase individually via the Art is Hard online store.

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