Various Small Flames’

Songs of 2017

Anamon – Kneel Old
Android Automatic – Dark Roads*
Angie McMahon – Slow Mover
Basement Revolver – Johnny Pt. 2
Baxter Roy Long – Paribanou
Bea Troxel – Let Them Know
Big Thief – Mary
Black Belt Eagle Scout – Soft Stud
Bully – Running
Cayetana – Mesa
Charly Bliss – Percolator
Chastity Belt – Different Now
CHUCK – Happy Birthday
The County Liners – Maria
The Courtneys – Tour
Craig Finn – God in Chicago
Crumb – Locket
Crushing – Emery Board
Cut Worms – Like Going Down Sideways
David Bazan – Care
Distant Reader – First Try
Emperor X – God Save Coastal Dorset
Fits – Ice Cream on a Nice Day
German Error Message – 2017*
Gleemer – Soothe Me
Great Grandpa – Favorite Show
Haley Heynderickx – Oom Sha Lala
Hiccup – Teasin’
Horse Culture – Texaco
Illuminati Hotties – ‘(You’re Better) Than Ever’
Japandroids – No Known Drink or Drug
Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit – If We Were Vampires
Jay Som – The Bus Song
Jeremy Squires – Night Cars
Katie Ellen – Drawing Room
Lizzie No – Monuments
Lomelda – Bam Sha Klam
Mike Pace and the Child Actors – Audits & Surveys
Meursault – The Mill
Mount Eerie – Crow
Nice Legs – Mighty Three
Oceanator – Nowhere Nothing
Ohyeahsumi – Daisy
Old Earth – Pit Dynamics
PASTEL – Stammer
Peter Silberman – New York
Phoebe Bridgers – Motion Sickness
Pope – Talk Me Out of It
Protomartyr – Windsor Hum
Rainwater – Place
Ratboys – Elvis is in the Freezer
Rick Rude – Bald & Fat in Houston, TX
Roadkill Ghost Choir – Classics (Die Young)
Rose Dorn – Dirt
See Through Dresses – Lucy’s Arm
Shannen Moser – A Funeral, A Friend, My Sanity
Sinai Vessel – Died On My Birthday
Slaughter Beach, Dog – Phoenix
SOAR – Fort Funston
Soft Fangs – Jordan // Jackson Elementary
Spartan Jet-Plex – We Believe
Strange Ranger – House Show
Strawberry Runners – Garden Hose
Timid, The Brave – Alice
Us and Only Us – Bored of Black
Vagabon – Cold Apartment
Viewfinder – Instant Moonlight
The Washboard Abs – Veil
Waxahatchee – Never Been Wrong
Wild Pink – Albert Ross
William Ryan Fritch – In Our Blood
The Wooden Sky – Swimming in Strange Waters
Ylayali – Cherry Tomatoes

*Strictly released in 2016, but barely, and we covered it in Jan. 2017.

If you missed it, you can see our Favourite Albums of 2017 list here. Also, the curious can find such lists from previous years here.

The post Favourite Songs of 2017 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

In the meantime, check out the mix below to hear everything we covered during June 2017, and click through the links in the tracklisting to be whisked away to the specific posts.

Tracklisting:

Roadkill Ghost Choir – Classics (Die Young)
Julia Lucille – Darkening
girl valley – faceback
Deer Scout – Sad Boy
Crushing – Emery Board
Crumb – Plants
Alex Napping – You’ve Got Me
Squirrel Flower – Daylight Savings
Andrew Younker – Pretend Therapist
Outside The Academy – Anaesthetise
Sammus – Perfect, Dark
Miserable Chillers – Love Theme (For The Wilderness)
Ohyeahsumi – Cosmos Bowling
Maud Scheltinga – I’ve Come to Know You Well
Midwestern Exposure – Riverboat
Will Graefe – Blood Feather
Baxter Roy Long – Purpose Against An Unavailing Balance
Idan Altman – Heroic Bee
american poetry club – how i felt about most things
About a Million – Young Bull
Flamingods – Bhima
Headless Pin Up Girl – Forever Watching the Skies
Wild Pink – Albert Ross

Check out the previous round-up mixes here, and stick around next month for yet another selection of the best new music.

The post June 2017 Roundup appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Flower Essence Questionnaire

If Flower Essence Questionnaire tells you anything about Long’s music, it’s that it cannot be summarised by any neat genre tag. From the dusty warmth of ‘Paribanou’ and almost dream-pop vibes of ‘Alone in Your Fantasy’, to the wistful beauty of ‘Pin to Pin’ and sultry danger of ‘Halib Makkah’, the album is consistent only in its ability to surprise the listener, twisting and turning like an undulating snake.

The variation is best highlighted at the end of the record. The penultimate track is the heavy-aired ‘It Closes How It Opens’, a stark and strange summer storm, the sky streaked and striated with light until the front finally moves on, the air stilled and scented with ozone. This is followed by the mean ‘Baby Baby’, a track far more rooted in human darkness, Long’s whispered vocals menacing and seductive all at once, and a world away from the elemental violence of the previous song. However, Long’s recording philosophy makes such fluctuation unsurprising, his creative process prolific yet the opposite of focused. “I circumvented oblivion tailored to a moment under a shadowed elixir,” he says. “I daydreamed slowly and dilly dallied carelessly. Taking time forever to record songs for nothing.”

Palms On The Setting Stone

Not to be outdone, Palms on the Setting Stone only furthers the experimentation, though is generally a warmer record that builds robust atmospheres of the American kind—vast and lonely and full of life.  Here, every horizon holds the promise of another, one wider and brighter and possibly stranger too, a land full of a million weird, fleeting, experiences populated by jackalope and agropelter, sasquatch and snallygaster. From the slow, matutinal rise of opener ‘Arrow Wrap’ and the bright optimistic sound of ‘Quarter Journey’, to the muted majesty of ‘March of Saginaw’ and the crooked campfire folk of ‘I Am Your New Friend’, this is an album to search in and stumble over. A musical landscape to explore.

Mouth Mirrors Ear

The only purely instrumental record of the three, Mouth Mirroring Ear is another melting pot of sounds and influences. Feeling rooted in memory and tradition yet always moving forwards, the album feels indebted to people and places both, a soundtrack for the small moments when we allow ourselves to fully look around and understand our place in things. The exact meaning of all music is up for interpretation, but this more so than most. Just take a look at Long’s suitably abstract description: “I found an image of someone molding clay hands into the fragile unevenness of plastic sheathing. I took a photo of that photo and placed it between a projector mirror and my center. I bowed beneath it with microphone in hand, elbows acute and catching breath on the offbeat. I rotated the stereo out to a mono in and cut off the high end so the remaining warbles could slowly boil in the cauldron.”

To return to an earlier quote, Long’s idea of “recording for nothing” seems an important one. The lack of purpose or goal allows the record to shaped by natural forces, meaning arising from the instinct and intuition, and perhaps even places where there should be none. In his way, the music of Baxter Roy Long has a folkloric feel, keyed into the land and the passage of time, every variation and coincidence mapped and remembered, woven into the story of the world around us.

All three albums are out now via Furious Hooves and you can get them from Bandcamp. The beautiful cassette editions of Flower Essence Questionnaire and Palms On The Setting Stone are still available so be sure to snag yourself a copy of each.

The post The Weird World of Baxter Roy Long appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Take for example Friends For Equality, the benefit compilation in support of Southern Poverty Law Center, ACLU and Planned Parenthood put together by Nancy Kells and Fox Food Records. Collecting the talents of 42 acts, the release features a diverse range of unreleased tracks from all over the world, including WTD favs such as Henry Demos, Henoheno, PAT MOON, Rainwater, Francie Cool, Lewtrakimou, Slumbers and Monarch Mtn, not to mention songs from the creators themselves in the form of Spartan Jet-Plex and Good Good Blood. As you might expect, it’s also a great way to discover new artists, and while there are too many to write about properly, there’s enough variation in style and genre to ensure every music fan will find something to their liking.

Not content with the compilation, Nancy is organising a benefit show at Strange Matter in Richmond, VA on the 17th February, and working to put together a zine for which the theme is “social justice/civil rights – so anything related to that – drawings, photographs, comics, editorials, poetry, short story, etc.” Submissions are currently open until the 2nd January, so email spartanjetplex@gmail.com if you want to participate or help in any way.

You can buy Friends For Equality now via Bandcamp, and be sure to remember that the $5 price tag is a minimum suggestion (and impossibly generous for 42 tracks). Equally, if you don’t have cash to spare, you can help by spreading the word or getting involved (just contact Spartan Jet-Plex via the email address provided above).

Artwork by Ryan McCardle

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