This time, Be Softly has teamed up with Zoë Blair-Schlagenhauf to create Unfinished Apology Letters, a product of transatlantic communication and eventually friendship. Graduating from Loyola University New Orleans this year and since moving to Los Angeles, Blair-Schlagenhauf is the author of Chlamydia Summer and the co-founder of Tenderness Lit. Her work explores the twin forces of alienation and connection, as though loneliness explained well enough can be in salve in itself. The idea is wholly apparent on this collaborative record, as the album’s press release states:

Unfinished Apology Letters is about trying and failing and sometimes just not knowing what to do to help the ones you love most. But it’s also about the healing power of art and the joy that accompanies collaboration. It represents the solace we can find in the people who believe in us.

Opening track ‘Best Friend’s Vomit’ attempts to re-personalise the opioid crisis, moving away from the nebulous, far-away feel of stark headlines and dire open-eds, centring mundane life as Ground Zero for the tragedy. Indeed, Blair-Schlagenhauf draws upon image of 9/11 to force home this idea, the violence and suffering not some cultural norm or self-chosen curse, but rather a precipitation of far vaguer problems that lurk beneath our culture.

“A Yahoo article tells me that with 142 deaths a day, it is equivalent to 9/11 happening every three weeks,” Blair-Schlagenhauf says, her tone simple, kind of far-off, as though speaking more to herself, testing out the words, thinking it all through. “Because we can only measure things in terms of the worse thing that has ever happened ever.” Only, the Worst Thing Ever is something that happens on TV, impersonal and awesome, and this is not that. “But I’m crying,” she continues, “because I can only measure things in your names, or the amount of unfinished apology letters that selfishly sit with the lights on in my Google drive, like when I sit in my parked car for too long, hoping I’ll never have to go inside.”

‘g.o.m.’ is a slow shuffling track pitched somewhere between warmth and animosity, as though the two emotions are not so far apart, or two sides of the same coin. Blair-Schlagenhauf’s writing is keyed into such as idea, her daydreams tending toward violence or love, her thoughts toward diving in front of speeding cars. “I don’t want to die,” she explains flatly. “I just think this would be a great way for all of my bones to feel the same way at once.”

Exploring the discrepancy between reality and the ideas of hold of it, ‘falling’ is chock full of phony images and our pining for their truth, while ‘water molecules’ brightens with a slow dawning. The momentum in the repetitive structures lend something of a mantra-like quality, as though by stringing scientific facts into the correct arrangement, Blair-Schlagenhauf might unlock an answer that surpasses cold hard facts and get straight to the bloody beating heart.

Unfinished Apology Letters is out now and you can get it from the Be Softly Bandcamp page. The proceeds of the album will be donated to Shatterproof, a US nonprofit dedicated to ending opioid crisis, and Mind, the UK mental health charity.

The post Zoë Blair-Schlagenhauf & Be Softly – Unfinished Apology Letters appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Tracklisting:

The New Tusk – Tarmac
Lazy Legs – Gloss
Sam Moss – Flowers
Varsity – Must Be Nice
Falcon Jane – Go with the Flow
Desert Liminal – Heavy Heads
Jamison Isaak – Sharalee
Nilein – Central Park
Pendulum Girl – crying in the carwash
Freya – Breath and Chime
Malena Zavala – A Vision That’s Changed
Alex Bayly – Wade in the Water
James Edwyn & The Borrowed Band – Pushing Statues
Tiny Fireflies – Nothing
Boreen – Halley’s Comet
Jenno Snyder – Take Care
Normal State – Summertime
Clare – Loquats
Leathan Milne – Now I Say Goodnight
John Moods – Leap of Love
Guts Club – Mustard Tears
Brianna Kelly – To Behold You
Sympathy Pain – Bless This Ugly Heart
Lung Cycles – Smoke column (Jonathan)
Be Softly – My Hands End With You Fingertips
Hour – Still New To This

Spotify:

Playmoss:

You can find all of our monthly mixes here, and be sure to check back in May for whatever April brought by way of good music.

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

A new volume will be posted every few weeks and will offer a collection of really great songs that we’re determined not to let slip past our radar.

Malena Zavala – A Vision That’s Changed

Born in Argentina but raised in London, filmmaker, artist and producer Malena Zavala is set to release her debut album, Aliso, this spring. As the previous singles attest, Zavala makes a dreamy brand of indie rock coloured with a Latin dimension, and the third single from the record is no different. Slowing the tempo from the other tracks, ‘A Vision That’s Changed’ sees Zavala’s vocals suspended within a column of dusky warmth, though an underlying sadness lurks just out of view. As such, the track plays like a snatched dream of a previous love, any joy or solace shaded with the realisation that the experience will not last, and morning will bring reality back once more.

Aliso will be released on the 13th April and you can pre-order it now via Yucatan Records.

James Edwyn & The Borrowed Band – Pushing Statues

Rooted in the classic Americana tradition, Glasgow six-piece James Edwyn & the Borrowed evoke timeless tales of love and loss and moving on. After releasing their debut album, The Tower, back in 2014, last year saw the band put out the follow-up, High Fences. The second single from that release, ‘Pushing Statues’ is the perfect introduction for the uninitiated—the heartbroken tenderness conjured not just through the lyrics but the instrumentation too, the rhythm driving a sense of motion that threatens to run away with itself. In doing so, the song captures the tension of travel in this genre, the push and pull between moving on and returning home.

High Fences is out now via Dead Records Collective and you can buy it from the James Edwyn & the Borrowed Band webpage.

The New Tusk – Tarmac

Describing their sound as “lo-fidelity short attention span punk,” Brighton trio The New Tusk make short, frantic songs that smash together punk and post-punk sensibilities, the vocals darting between sardonic and snarling and shouting. New single ‘Tarmac’ is no exception, with the instrumentation whipping into a frenzy as the vocals try to keep up with a kind of pissed-off demeanour. However, by the end of the track, you wonder whether it’s in fact the vocals that are commanding the instruments, as a new, more hopeful tone emerges. It can’t promise a new start, or some deliverance to eternal satisfaction, but rather some semblance final comfort, the antithesis of a sting in the tail.

“This year’s came and went, just like the last ten of them.
In my honest uneducated opinion I believe it’s in us all to die happy.”

You can grab ‘Tarmac’ now from The New Tusk Bandcamp page, as well as a number of previous EPs.

John Moods – Leap of Love

The solo project of Fenster‘s Jonathan Jarzyna, John Moods is set to release a debut record, The Essential John Moods, this spring. The album came to life during a hiking trip along the Iberian coast, with Jarzyna recording songs each evening as he arrived in a new town, and the method informs the sound and style of the track in more ways that one. On the surface there’s the languid, psych-tinged summer aesthetic that runs across the record, but the analogy can also be applied in a metaphorical sense—each song representing a different stop in a journey, all linked by a certain structural and stylistic (think architectural) similarity, yet made distinct by differences in mood, pace and atmosphere, not to mention the small nuances and details which populate each track.

The Essential John Moods is set for release on the 20th April via Mansions and Millions.

Nilein – Central Park

Based in Kolkata, nilein make a shimmering bedroom pop that draws on both lo-fi indie rock influences and elements of shoegaze. Last year, the trio put out the short holiday ep, as well as single, ‘Dive’, and 2018 sees them return with a brand new song. ‘Central Park’ feels more weighty than its summery predecessors, the wistful opening and murmured vocals giving way to a heavier midsection, channelling the likes of Gleemer in the way that the drums pound their way over the more delicate guitars before dropping to allow pretty ambient swells. The track comes complete with a video taken from the Makoto Shinkai film, 5 Centimeters Per Second.

You can find nilein on Bandcamp and Facebook.

Alex Bayly – Wade in the Water

Following his self-released debut EP, New America, ‘Wade in the Water’ is Alex Bayly’s first single with My Little Empire Records. Drawing its name from the African-American spiritual, the track uses a rich sense of imagery and metaphor to strike a balance between pain and healing. This is clear from the allegorical visions of the natural world in the opening verse, right through to the steely optimism of the conclusion, preaching a sense of endurance and hope in the face of adversity.

“The grass is growing
on the hill
my time’s not up yet
or so I feel”

‘Wade into the Water’ is out now via My Little Empire Records.

Falcon Jane – Go With The Flow

Fronted by Ontario’s Sara May, Falcon Jane describe their sound as ‘plez rock’—”a music genre inspired by nature, truth, peace and magic.” Ahead of a full-length Feelin’ Freaky which is to be released this summer, the band have released single ‘Go With The Flow’. Described by May as  “the ultimate chill out song for freaky, anxious, over-thinkers like me,” the track is a half-paced bob down a meandering river. With the languid instrumentation and May’s lovely vocals, Falcon Jane encourage you to stop thrashing against the current and float wherever the water takes you. Check out the video, directed by Deviio, below:

Feelin’ Freaky is set for release this summer, so keep a eye on the Falcon Jane Bandcamp page.

Guts Club – Mustard Tears

Last year, London’s RIP Records ran an Introduces… series, with the likes of Dama Scout and Canshaker Pi contributing singles that were eventually released as a 12″ record. After the success of Volume One, the label are back with a second edition, including a new track from New Orleans’ Guts Club. The recording project of Lindsey Baker, Guts Club make tunes woven from the American landscape, drawing upon the likes of Scout Niblett and Patti Smith to explore the concepts of situation and place, and how all but the most privileged are more or less confined to certain spaces and lifestyles—unless they want to risk it all in an attempt to change.

‘Mustard Tears’ is to be released on RIP Records, and a new Guts Club album is set to appear later this year.

Varsity – Must Be Nice

We first featured Chicago’s Varsity back in 2016 when we wrote about the dreamy pop of their single, ‘Smash / Still Apart‘. Now the band are readying a full-length album, Parallel Person, due for release on Babe City Records at the end of April. As a taster they have unveiled ‘Must Be Nice’, another pop gem that shimmers with a gently kaleidoscopic psych edge. The lyrics are a little less sunny though, as lead Stephanie Smith delivers lines that are blurred with uncertainty.

“I know I can’t cry in front of them
But if I could…”

Parallel Person is out on the 27th of April and you can preorder it via Babe City Records and from the Varsity Bandcamp page.

Dan Michaelson – Sand

The final track to be taken from the album First Light, ‘Sand’ finds Dan Michaelson at his tender best, his throaty vocals cutting through the sparse, moving soundscape. Thanks to the work of Arnulf Lindner (Skeleton Key), the instrumentation soon develops into a full-bodied orchestral piece, juxtaposing simplicity with carefully crafted emotion to produce a hopeful, poignant track.

First Light is out now and you can get it via the Dan Michaelson and the Coastguards website.

Clare – Loquats

Houston quartet Clare is described in the press release as not so much a band, rather “a group of friends who love and support each other and help each other make sense of this crazy world through music.” Taken from a new EP, Always Afternoon, their latest single ‘Loquats’ acts as solid proof of this relationship, the energetic shimmer propelled forward by a sense of cohesive and community. Thematically, the track takes inspiration from the tangy fruit of it’s title to explore the end of a relationship, finding some nourishment in the bittersweet aftertaste that lingers on the tongue.

Always Afternoon is out now via Poison Moon Records an you can get it from Bandcamp.

Be Softly – My Hands End with Your Fingertips

Last December, we wrote about a collaboration between American poet Sam Pink and Bristol’s Be Softly, an experimental blend of spoken word and music we described as “like the fever dream manifesto of the archetypal Disillusioned Kid.” Be Softly has returned with a new single, this time the providing poetry themselves. There is a big difference between this and Pink, the words carved more out of melodrama than nihilism, though the instrumentation manages to provide moments both mean and lonely enough to prevent it becoming too sentimental or affected.

You can find on ‘My Hands End with Your Fingertips’ on Bandcamp.

Be sure to stick around for the next volume, and check out the entire Bright Sparks series here.

The post Bright Sparks: Vol. 10 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

However, as always, we want to point out that ‘free’ does not have to mean pay nothing in this context. Indeed, the title of the post says ‘free’ music because it’s snappier than ‘name your price’ music, but really that’s a convenient/attention-grabbing misnomer. Last year we spoke about how paying artists makes for the best soil in which to sow creative seeds, and things are no different now. Indeed, with the dawn of Spotify and the all-powerful algorithms, it is more important than ever to support independent artists and labels, and in reality there are already enough free ways to consume music that we don’t need to encourage another.

So please delve into the below list, curated entirely by humans, and spend whatever is left of your Christmas money when you stumble across something you like. We can vouch for the quality of everything here, so don’t be afraid to judge a record by its cover to begin with.

Here’s a handy mix featuring one song from each of the free / ‘name your price’ albums featured:

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

Following Sam Pink’s lead, the record is brutal and dark, the instrumentation allowing the violent alienation and dissatisfaction of his words to soar. ‘False-Bottomed Coffins’ opens with an introduction to the album’s themes, with self-consciousness disguised as misanthropy, caring too deeply masked as blank indifference, and the constant pressure of these repressed emotions pressing on the crown of the skull, like a volcano about to blow. ‘I Own You and You Own Me’ continues this, opening with a pretty clear sentiment—”Two types of eye contact: none and fuck you”—navigating a depressive state that feels like “all there is inside your skull is melted plastic.”  Again, the narrator is tangled within their own thoughts, their attempts at freeing themselves only furthering the bind, a predicament communicated with a Wallacean, inside-my-head tone.

“Living as three people: one inside your head saying hateful/depressed/hopeless shit, another as the one inside your head trying to deal with the first one, and the third one as visible to the outside world, trying to keep people from noticing any trace of the first two.

That moment when you start to have a little feeling/emotion and you look back on having just acted out of not having any feelings/emotions.”

‘Bonus Magnets for my Brain’ meanders in a way that could be relaxed or ominous or both, the instrumentation threatening to bubble over but never quite managing the energy required. Hyper-self-consciousness, banal everyday observations and macabre imagery coalesce into something at once relatable and unhinged, where lines like “The feeling that everything is obvious in a way that’s embarrassing” are followed by “Making friends with the firing squad.” ‘One Night, Your Pillow Will Swallow Your Head’ and ‘Making Friends With the Firing Squad’ furthers this feeling, growing increasingly morbid and strange as horror, paranoia and deep-seated anger make violent ends inevitable—either the narrator will be destroyed or else the entire world around them. All the while, a slow creeping dread advances, looming.

“Talking to the lone lobster left in the tank at the supermarket to calm down and feel connected.
Talking shit to the firing squad.
Smiling wide as you allow your latest ghost to slowly come out of you in front of others, unseen.
Smiling wide as you allow someone else’s latest ghost to go into you as if you earned it.
And you have.
You have you have you have!”

Both this nameless dread and the hope of escaping it fuel the entire collection, and these forces manifest themselves as monsters on ‘No Way to Defeat It but Jump In / No Way to Help It but Let It Die.’ The dread is “A monster with a head made of a hundred toothless mouths (No way to defeat it but jump in),” and the hope “A monster with a head full of knives that never dies, just stumbles around shrieking (And no way to help it but let it die).” Within this tale of suffering, a relationship is painted, though one so fiercely held that it becomes its own form of torment, the narrator’s performing a verbal self-flagellation as penance for their perceived inadequacy, lashing themselves into nothingness in lieu of any better ideas. After all there’s no way to help it but let it die.

Check out the striking video from Wild Child Studios below:

Your Glass Head Against the Brick Parade of Now Whats plays like the fever dream manifesto of the archetypal Disillusioned Kid, someone who, instead of shooting up his school or oxycontin, decided to let the tirade out as language. Stinging and self-loathing and strange, the narrator is sick and tired of a phony world and phony people yet dying of cold within this self-imposed exile. The record then, feels like one final, fatal gesture—self-immolation just to feel that half-second of warmth before the pain sets in, just to see your own blazing reflection in eyes of the faces around you.

Your Glass Head Against the Brick Parade of Now Whats is out now and you can get it from the Be Softly Bandcamp page. Find out more about Sam Pink on the Lazy Fascist Press website.

The post Be Softly / Sam Pink – Your Glass Head Against the Brick Parade of Now Whats appeared first on Various Small Flames.