Ada Lea – when i paint my masterpiece

Saddle Creek

How does someone approach creating their magnum opus? The title of Ada Lea‘s third album when i paint my masterpiece might set the bar very high for the Montreal artist, not least off the back off two stellar records released in 2019 and 2021 respectively, though spend time within the album and it becomes clear it is not so much concerned with the final product as the process of creation itself. Because contrary to its name, when i paint is no lesson in artistic obsession. Rather it is an ode to the value of stepping back and allowing life the space to unfold. Because while Alexandra Levy did indeed take a big swing, writing over two hundreds songs before slowly distilling the list into the final sequence, her artistic practise was intentionally spacious, curious and open-ended. Levy lists “resting, extending my creative reach, going back to school, studying painting and poetry,” as key components to this mode of working. “Taking a step away from music as guided by industry expectations. Simplifying things. Getting a job, starting to teach. Engaging with the process rather than the product.” The trick to painting a masterpiece, it seems, is learning to put the brush down every once in a while. Being kind to yourself and opening your heart and eyes to the surrounding world.

Adeline Hotel – Watch The Sunflowers

Ruination Record Co.

Across a string of recent albums, Dan Knishkowy’s Adeline Hotel has welcomed listeners into the most complicated, intimate recesses of life, examining themes of love, loneliness, codependency and loss from every angle you might imagine. He’s zoomed in so close the familiar is rendered strange, pulled back so far we get a bird’s eye view from above, each record seeing the sound shapeshift into something different in order to capture a new perspective or subtle change in the circumstances. There’s been solo guitar, piano ballads, languid jazz and raucous rock, but after the austerity and uncertainty of 2024’s Whodunnit, latest full-length Watch The Sunflowers pivots towards the opposite pole of the spectrum with a kaleidoscopic style. “The album is a reaction to the threadbare arrangements of its predecessor,” as we wrote earlier in the year. “As though, having endured the aftermath of loss, the colour has come back into Knishkowy’s world.” This change might not represent a total epiphany, Knishkowy’s lyrics are as questioning as ever, but rather a newfound clarity in which entrenched beliefs dissipate and such searching begins to feel meaningful.

Anna Tivel – Animal Poem

Fluff and Gravy Records

“’It’s hard to know how to hold a creative life in a time that feels fraught with venomous division, careening technological advance, and an ever-widening chasm between the affluent and the dispossessed,’ says Anna Tivel, the songwriter who has won acclaim with albums like Blue World, Outsiders (plus its stripped back Live in a Living Room twin) and Living Thing. Such concerns have long troubled Tivel’s work, the latter record being was what we called ‘a decidedly existential response to a period of entrapment and encroaching death.’ It used the pandemic as a platform to explore human suffering more generally, though dwell on such ideas too long and the entire artistic endeavour can come to seem futile. ‘What good are poems when affordable housing is scarce,’ as she continues, ‘the climate teeters on a dangerous edge, and war breaks out over misinformation spread by profit hungry algorithms?’ Tivel’s latest full-length Animal Poem is not so much an answer to this question as one artist’s small contribution towards one. A small piece of the colossal, communal whole demanded of us. The imperative to celebrate life and warn of its fragility. To remind everyone of just what we stand to lose should the malevolent forces of this world be allowed to grow.” [Review]

The Antlers – Blight

Transgressive

“’Lately I’ve become more aware of the cost of convenience, how the choices I make as a consumer seem insignificant, but can add up to something disastrous.’ So explains Peter Silberman of The Antlers when speaking about the origins of the project’s seventh album Blight. The record, written over several years and mostly recorded at Silberman’s home studio in upstate New York, utilises The Antlers’ distinctive mix of raw emotion and almost otherworldly arrangements to cast the present moment in a new light. One able to take something familiar and apparently ordinary and reveal it as anything but, be that the calamitous consequences of our consumerist culture or else the oft-ignored beauty of the natural world which stands to be lost as a result. As Silberman concludes: ‘These songs were born out of an attempt to come to grips with my guilt’.” [Review]

Benjamin Shaw – Strange Feelings in Nervous Business / Publicly Funded Research into Lofty Enchantment / Immortal Jellyfish

Hand Drawn Hand

Unofficially dubbed the “Fumblinginthedark trilogy,” the three albums Benjamin Shaw released in the second half of the year were as much an exercise in musical therapy as they were creations for an audience. Shaw’s life took a turn for the difficult, and he took refuge in a creative world of his own making, using (mostly) just guitar, synth and some pedals to establish its borders and depths. “In an attempt to try and escape my flailing brain I wanted to find a way of playing and improvising in a live way,” Shaw explains. “After a bit of experimentation and a few trips to Facebook marketplace, I eventually stumbled on a nice way of live-looping and building things in real time.” Luckily for us, Shaw does not close the door behind himself. The trilogy, best experienced as a whole, offers a life line to anyone in need of time out of the harsh realities of the day to day.

Carson McHone – Pentimento

Merge Records

Pentimento is a term from art history that refers to the traces of an earlier painting that show through layers of paint on a canvas. A thought or sketch or discarded draft, even a different painting entirely, that nevertheless informs the final work, if only in its absence. The concept is central to Carson McHone’s latest album, which itself is built from (and literally on top of) a vast catalogue of inspirations, from literature and field recordings to diary entries, watercolour paintings and lines of poetry scribbled on postcards. The result is a folk rock record rich in detail but with a loose artistic flair. Barrelling rockers sit next to beautifully simple pastoral folk, interspersed with snippets of poetry and snatches of other recordings, lost conversations, forgotten songs, fragments that drift in and are suddenly gone. Set against what McHone describes as a “backdrop of global crisis,” this mosaic manages to ponder questions otherwise too big to broach, its apparently dissonant style giving some voice to the unsayable and ultimately exploring how love and beauty can persist in a world in such a dire state.

Craig Finn – Always Been

Thirty Tigers

The theme of redemption has long run through the work of Craig Finn, most notably the resurrection arc of Holly on The Holy Steady‘s seminal Separation Sunday, but also across his solo catalogue, as with the evocation of the story of Ulysses S. Grant on 2019’s I Need a New War. Finn’s characters are often on the margins, existing in the aftermath of lives lived too fast or too hard, searching for salvation in any way it might avail itself, even if it’s just leaving enough of a story behind that people will remember your name. The protagonist of Finn’s sixth solo full-length Always Been is no different, a man with no faith who nevertheless joined the clergy, seeking the security and gravitas afforded to the role (“Cause when I was a child, I used to fixate on the chaplain,” he sings on opener ‘Bethany’, “The way he brought the widows all to tears / And that looked like a decent way to make a little living here / Gave myself to God for a few years”). Only our would-be priest quickly falls from grace and into the arms of any number of vices, and Always Been charts the slow arc towards his own redemption. With this clear focus and a polished LA aesthetic, the record could be one of Finn’s most narrative to date, though various tracks drift from the central character to illuminate other corners of his world. And it’s a testament to Finn’s writing that these songs are some of the highlights. Recalling the likes of Zevon or Browne, ‘Crumbs’ is golden and gathers momentum, while the quasi-bonus track ‘Shamrock’ is a stripped-back slice of traditional folk, though both capture pictures of people driven to desperation by the ratcheting pressure of life, yet always reaching into the future, ever hopeful of that one break which might erase the past and elevate them above the present. The moment they’ve always been waiting for in which they might be saved.

Dao Strom – Tender Revolutions

Antiquated Future Records / Beacon Sound

“Born in Vietnam and now based in Portland, Oregon, Dao Strom is an artist interested in overlap, convergence and symbiosis. Someone, as per their bio, ‘who works with three ‘voices’—written, sung, visual—to explore hybridity and the intersection of personal and collective histories.’ The result is the perfect marriage of style and substance. Music, poetry, writing and various amalgams of all three cross-pollinated by collaboration and linked across time and geography, giving voice to those who might otherwise be silenced and breaking down established boundaries. Drawing on the sensibilities of ambient, folk, post-rock, spoken word and sound collage, Strom’s latest full-length Tender Revolutions is the embodiment of this style. A joint release between Antiquated Future Records and Beacon Sound, the album comes complete with an accompanying book, released via The 3rd Thing press, to support and expand upon its themes. ‘These songs are, for me, inward and outward (ex)tendings across boundaries of self, diaspora, modalities of voice, across fractures and refractions,’ as Strom explains. ‘They are attempts at honoring small points and lines of connectivity I’ve been entangling in, for over a decade now, namely through creative collaborations and friendships with other Vietnamese women writers and artists’.” [Review]

Daughter of Swords – Alex

Psychic Hotline

“In some ways Alex is the perfect spring record. There are quiet moments of green shoots and bursting buds, and others of sudden, somewhat shocking, metamorphosis. The brash pop moments must be how a butterfly feels after emerging from its chrysalis, suddenly brighter, bolder, realising it has these beautiful wings and deciding to flap them. Messy in the best way possible. [Daughter of Swords‘] Alex Sauser-Monnig takes on the overwhelming, confusingly contradictive nature of contemporary life by mimicking it in music. If their career thus far has been defined by the restraint and minimalism of voice and (sometimes) guitar, Alex is something of its inverse, throwing everything into the pot and stirring gleefully. There’s danceable electronic pop and rumbling indie rock, easy melodies and tangles of synthetic textures… Left-field pop structures and inventive electronics create something equal parts catchy and deep. Plus, its moments of political awareness mean the introspective moments of self-reflection feel less like selfish solipsism and more a blueprint for liberation. A less-than-gentle nudge to defy convention and have the courage to live life as oneself in a world that feels increasingly allergic to outliers and eccentrics.” [Review]

Dean Johnson – I Hope We Can Still Be Friends

Saddle Creek

“Well, I’m feelin’ so much better now,” sings Dean Johnson in a moment that encapsulates his sophomore record I Hope We Can Still Be Friends. It’s the beginning of a song, his emotionally piercing throwback vocal style ringing out unadorned like a breath of fresh air, and it’s easy to imagine the bustling barroom fall to silence as people turn to listen. But, typically for the Seattle-based songwriter, the initial relief is something of an emotional sleight of hand. “Since I had my mind erased,” he continues as the true scenario reveals itself, “If I passed you on the street, I would not recognize your face.” What at first seemed like an instance of self-actualisation was actually just heartbreak wrapped up in a pretty melody and a joke about electroconvulsive therapy. It’s illustrative of a record that effortlessly marries sardonic humour and sincere vulnerability, icy bitterness and easygoing charm. Johnson croons like a long-lost Everly brother as he delivers tragicomic missives on our weird world and the sad and absurd characters that populate it, at times approaching broad social commentary and others bitingly personal. It’s Johnson with his complexities and foibles on full display, prickly and sensitive, hopelessly romantic and unapologetically cynical, often within a single song.

Devin Shaffer – Patience

American Dreams

“As Patience is the first album on which Devin Shaffer is joined by a group of supporting musicians, you’d be forgiven for anticipating something even richer and more intricate than her previous work. But the reality is something different. Because rather than showing off an increasingly ornate, layered sound, the album pivots towards the opposite. A sound stripped back and intimate, swapping out its textures in favour of increased precision, the instrumentalists coming together in a collective effort towards clarity. This turn towards lucidity speaks to the themes of Patience too. If previous album In My Dreams I’m There represented an arc of sorts, Shaffer moving from confusion and hesitancy towards a sense of acceptance, then the new record instead interrogates just what it requires to achieve lasting peace. That is, to reject the idea of a neat arc entirely, resist the temptation to believe one achievement or epiphany will solve your life for good. The songs of her debut sound like Shaffer battling against the noise of the world in search of an answer, but in dropping this ambient backdrop, Patience ceases the fight. Submits to the messiness of our interiors and indeed the wider world.” [Review]

Dylan Henner – Star Dream FM

Phantom Limb

“‘Late one evening, I was listening to the radio alone at home. I couldn’t find the station I wanted, so I shifted the dial around for a while. Between frequencies, fading in and out of fidelity, I found a station I’d never heard before. To my amazement, the station was broadcasting my own memories. Memories from when I was seventeen.’ So explains Dylan Henner of Star Dream FM, the enigmatic producer using this idea as the basis for a collection of songs which explores both the tactile experience of adolescence and the nostalgia of times now past. ‘The result feels personal,’ we wrote in our review, though there’s the undercurrent of something different. The sense Henner is not so much tapping into his own memories but a kind of collective yearning. One developed not through individual experience but the culture itself. The cinematic version of youth delivered to us so steadily we come to mourn it as our own.” [Review]

Ear – The Most Dear and The Future

Self-released

The project of Yaelle Avtan and Jonah Paz, ear make glitchy collages of indie pop and electronic music that draw on the duo’s background in “experimental electronic hardcore” and twee folk. Following some near-viral success on streaming services, debut album The Most Dear and the Future presents their unique and oddly compelling style to the world proper. Each of the eight songs are short and sweet, slipping effortlessly from gentle, near-whispered pop to headphone-shaking electronica in the blink of an eye. It all feels very now. Like indie pop for the age of short form video, kind of wild and hyperactive but also sad and lonely in a way that’s best described as nostalgia for something that has never existed. Imagine a dark room lit only by the harsh blue light of a screen, the world and everything in it whizzing by fried eyeballs in a blur of angst and emotion. It would fit on the soundtrack to the next Jane Schoenbrun film for sure.

Eliza Niemi – Progress Bakery

Vain Mina / Tin Angel Records

“To describe the music of Eliza Niemi as pop music feels like both an over- and understatement. On the one hand, these are deeply quirky and unique songs, built with an artist’s intuitive sense of composition and with little regard for conventional structures. But they are also undeniably infectious, packed with of melody and a sense of playfulness that feels baked into the record’s very bones. Which makes its sense of childlike curiosity (admittedly with more than a little added grown-up cynicism) feel genuine rather than cloying or twee. Niemi isn’t painting a pastel-hued cartoon of real life, but focussing on its gritty, peculiar details. And at the heart of it all are those questions, some funny and knowing, but others piercingly direct and vulnerable, evoking a very relatable sense of bewilderment at trying to find one’s place in this weird world. “Will it be what I wanted?” as she asks on ‘Pocky’. “Will it be how I pictured it?’ It’s a style full of wonder, though not often in the starry-eyed-awe-at-the-majesty-of-the-universe sense. Rather something more literal and commonplace, with Niemi often picking up thoughts and ideas and putting them down again, only to return eight songs later to wonder anew. ” [Review]

Ella Hanshaw – Ella Hanshaw’s Black Book

SPINSTER

Ella Hanshaw always dreamed of being a country star. Born in Procious, West Virginia in 1934, Hanshaw took up the guitar when she was twelve and hardly put it down for the rest of her days, writing hundreds of songs and touring across the state with her quartet, though never recording professionally or releasing anything in an official manner. Released five years after her death, Ella Hanshaw’s Black Book corrects the latter fact, Hanshaw’s granddaughter curating a collection of tracks recorded at home and church, not only celebrating and preserving the legacy of one of Appalachia’s most prolific songwriters, but allowing her devout message to continue to find new ears. “By the late 1970s, her music had become inseparable from her faith,” as the album notes describe. “She considered her work to be authored by God, who would ‘give’ her a song—both lyrics and melody—which she could write down and complete in fifteen minutes”. But ultimately, Ella Hanshaw’s Black Book is more than a document of one singular artist’s faith and vision. It is proof of the rich, lasting history of artists working in the margins, outside of the mainstream, and the ways in which music might allow a person to transcend the hand they are dealt in life. “By writing gospel music, performing in church, and viewing her artistic talent and inspiration as gifts from God, Ella framed her work in such a way that she could still claim artistic agency while avoiding individual attention that may have been perceived as self-indulgent and socially unacceptable,” as the album notes continue. “Resistant to the potential consequences of a professional music career as a woman and mother, Ella chose to keep her music a non-professional pursuit, shared with family, community, and God, which allowed her to uphold the duty she felt to all three.”

Erika Dohi – Myth of Tomorrow

Switch Hit Records / Figureight Records

“Described as ‘a sonic meditation on catastrophe, resilience, and rebirth,’ [Erika Dohi‘s Myth of Tomorrow] builds upon the eclectic style of predecessor I, Castorpollux to push Dohi’s sound in new directions, utilising a variety of sensibilities from dance, jazz, ambient and classical modes to create soundscapes as singular as they are striking. The record draws its title from the Taro Okamoto’s mural of the same name, and the title track draws the clearest line between the two artworks. A song concerned with the endless cycles of existence, not only asking what they demand of us but also how we might find peace and healing within the recurring patterns of life.” [Review]

Florry – Sounds Like…

Dear Life Records

“Positivity permeates [The Holey Bible],” we wrote of Florry‘s seminal album back in 2023, the release seeing Francie Medosch and co. embrace a country aesthetic but swerve the lonesome blues so common in the genre in favour of something more uplifting. “Through woozy waltzes, fuzzy Country-fried rockers and no small amount of narrative attention, Florry rise from an uncertain, bleak world like a Roman candle, as though the only way to live nowadays is to meet despair with an equal and opposite force.” With this style established, follow-up Sounds Like… fires on all cylinders from the off. The release of a band who have nailed down their identity and are now able to explore is vast, idiosyncratic terrain, jamming the pedal to the floor in order to cover as much ground as possible with good old fashioned rock and roll abandon. When Medosch cites The Jackass theme song as a big influence on the record, you sense the inspiration was less stylistic than spiritual. A calling to gather a group a pals together and whip up a storm, even if it means a little chaos and risk along the way.

Friendship – Caveman Wakes Up

Merge Records

“Reconnected trailer hitch / Rerouted drainage ditch / Resenting your fellow man / Shotgunning a Busch Light can.” So plays the average day for the protagonist of ‘All Over The World’ from Friendship‘s Caveman Wakes Up, a hard-working man going nowhere fast, his days locked into an apparently endless cycle of effort, small comforts and jaded acceptance. Yet true to spirit of the album, this apparent mundanity is layered with a plethora of different experiences, revealing the everyday to be more absurd than ordinary. Take how the simmering class consciousness which spikes the nine-to-five (“Got a job pulling weeds / On other people’s property / Shoring up liquidity / On other people’s property”) coexists with a near total capitulation to the boss’s desires (“Boss wants to know where you’re at […] Boss calls and you cave just like that”). Or how laying a lawn, surely the most banal, consumerist and unnatural thing on this manicured-green earth, leads to a chance encounter with the divine (“Dandelion seed caught your eye / Felt the beating heart of God / Laying down a roll of sod”). The song is just one example of a style running through Caveman Wakes Up, and arguably Friendship as a project more widely. A small world in which life is boring and surprising, shocking, magic and lonely all at once.

Frog – 1,000 Variations of the Same Song / The Count

Audio Antihero

“An album which runs the gamut between indie rock, alt country and smoky lounge cool, and packs the expected density and diversity of references from a Frog release, with Daniel Bateman nodding to My Chemical Romance, Gucci, Stillwell construction supplies, fatherhood, the 6 train and seemingly a million other things. But for all of these maximalist sensibilities, the record also lives up to its title by repeatedly orbiting the same ideas […] The effect is something like that of a phylogenetic tree, where the same amphibian DNA passes through generation after generation, morphing through all manner of phenotypes yet retaining that Frog spirit through them all. Just where this organism will evolve next is anyone’s guess, but we have a thousand possibilities to get through yet.” [Review]

Fust – Big Ugly

Dear Life Records

“[Fust‘s] Big Ugly functions as a detailed picture of such a [contemporary Southern] milieu, offering small glimpses into the lives of various characters which move across the frame. The artwork is a mural taken from the Big Ugly Community Centre [in West Virginia] that once served as a backdrop to a school play. Here it serves an identical purpose, albeit in a more abstract light. We meet people wandering as though dazed in the post-industrial present, pining for hard labour and good wages, struggling to find hours selling junk at the gas station. Or struggling with small home improvements as their houses slowly fall down around them. But also, most importantly, we see life continuing its rhythms, memories repeating, hopes emerging still. A picture of Appalachian or Southern life which does not yearn for escape or preach self-improvement, but loves and dreams instead. ‘They’ll have to haul me off,’ as the title track opens. ‘Off a down slope / in some front end loader / in a pine box / if they want me gone / if they want me lost / If they don’t want my lonesome here / they’ll have to haul me off.’ You are from where you are from, after all. A squalid home is home nonetheless, and the funny thing about fondness and pride is how they survive the most naked of truths. Fust aren’t interested in willful ignorance, rose-tinted reminiscence or giddy myth-making. The record wears its name for a reason. They want the big ugly whole.” [Review]

Greg Jamie – Across a Violet Pasture

Orindal Records

“‘I’d get away from that body / there’s nothing left we can do / and if I ever come back from the country / I’m going swimming with you.’ So sings Portland, Maine songwriter and painter Greg Jamie in the opening lines of ‘I’d Get Away’, the first track from his new album Across a Violet Pasture. The cryptic, almost contradictory verse is a fitting introduction for a full-length which exists at the intersection of things. The real and unreal, the physical and spiritual, the personal, the historical and the mythic. One which does not so much blur the boundary between such categories as embrace their duality, the real world punctuated with high strangeness and vice versa, the known and unknown superimposed. The result is undeniably weird yet intrinsically human, demonstrated by an opening verse where the image of floating away from the body is paired with the pleasure of floating within it. As though to exist is to both long for transcendence from corporeal reality and desire an unending experience of bodily sensation. We want to feel forever, yet wish for something more.” [Review]

Hannah Frances – Nested in Tangles

Fire Talk

“Released in 2024, Hannah Frances‘s album Keeper of the Shepherd represented an act of exhumation, digging through the remnants of the past to unearth those things which had long been lost. The process led to no small amount of dirt under the fingernails and demanded a fundamental vulnerability, something Frances happily endured in order to undertake this vital process […] Frances’s new album Nested in Tangles plays like the thicket of flora which sprouts from the ground broken by its predecessor. The life brought forth from turned-over earth. A diversity present not only in theme or tone but style itself […] A healthy and fulfilling life is never just one thing, a monoculture neat and constant and happy, but rather an ecosystem of moods, periods and personas. A place where our different selves coexist and even care for one another, and there’s space for every shade of shadow and light.” [Review]

herbal tea – Hear as the Mirror Echoes

Orindal Records

“The recording project of Bristol‘s Helena Walker, herbal tea takes the DIY intimacy of bedroom pop and expands outwards, building what might otherwise be humble demos into rich, nuanced soundscapes, as though the original basis of each track is merely a door through which entire new worlds lie in wait. The result is a sound rooted in the personal yet innately transcendent. An ethereal space not unlike a dream, stitched together from memories, desires and nostalgic longing yet impermanent by its very nature. A place, that is, removed from the physical demands on existence and thus the ideal vantage for self-reflection. One imbued with the weightlessness of flying or floating which offers the opportunity to examine the familiar without the everyday burden of the body.” [Review]

HLLLYH – URUBURU

Team Shi

“Anyone clued into the indie scene of the noughties will likely have encountered The Mae Shi, the outfit which delivered a blend of art rock, punk, pop and electronic sensibilities bundled up in a manic, madcap intensity, culminating with acclaimed Biblical full-length HLLLYH in 2008. The project has been through various stages of hiatus in intervening years, but now founding member Tim Byron has rounded up the original cast for a new album, URUBURU. Only when Jeff Byron, Ezra Buchla, Brad Breeck and Corey Fogel got together, the result felt less like the last chapter of the Mae Shi and more like a fresh beginning. Hence a new name—HLLLYH. Described as ‘an end-of-the-world story written on a mobius strip,’ URUBURU shows HLLLYH have hit the ground running, displaying no let up from the infectiously inventive sound that won the Mae Shi so many admirers. ‘Built from bright colors and loud sounds, it is a puzzle to be solved written in English, Morse code, and machine language,’ as the band write of the record. ‘It tells several interconnected stories of punk house party disasters, young monsters in love, space travel gone wrong, adventures in other dimensions, showdowns with malevolent forces, and the never ending quest for meaning.'” [Review]

Hour – Subminiature

Dear Life Records

Collected from recordings captured on a variety of devices across more than two years of touring, Hour‘s Subminiature is less an ordinary live album than a celebration of the entire project. Led by the apparently inexhaustible Michael Cormier-O’Leary, the Philadelphia-based ensemble has established itself as a dynamic, ever-shifting entity over recent years, albums like Anemone Red, Tiny Houses and Ease the Work practising an inventive, curious style of chamber folk never content to stay in one place. Thus the form of Subminiature could not be more fitting, the release positioning tracks from all previous albums alongside new material and seeing the band shift from number to number along with the settings and venues. All in all, Jacob Augustine, Jason Calhoun, Em Downing, Matt Fox, Peter Gill, Lucas Knapp, Evan McGonagill, Peter McLaughlin, Keith J. Nelson, Erika Nininger, Abi Reimold and Adelyn Strei all appear, with Cormier-O’Leary the only constant. But spend any time at all within this music and it becomes clear that, far from losing something with the perpetual change, such fluidity is itself the very essence of Hour.

Jahnah Camille – My sunny oath!

Winspear

Jahnah Camille “has a knack for combining emotion and self-awareness,” we wrote of 2024’s i tried to freeze light, but only remember a girl, as the EP reached across genres to create a nuanced tone “entirely committed to the feelings being explored but never lacking a wry wrinkle to add that extra layer of personality.” With help from producer Alex Farrar (Wednesday, Indigo De Souza, MJ Lenderman), Camille’s latest release My sunny oath! takes this style to new heights, tapping into a freshly thunderous sound to capture the tumultuous experience of young adulthood. Shoegaze, alt-rock and grunge influences assert themselves more prominently, and while the same sweet and sour approach of its predecessor allows for both heart and sardonic humour, there’s a notable new edge to the tracks. A kind of self-defensive toughness that gives the sense of a young woman passing into a hostile world and coming to realise what it takes to survive.

JJJJJerome Ellis – Vesper Sparrow

Shelter Press

“Through a combination of saxophone, organ, hammered dulcimer, electronics and vocals, Grenadian–Jamaican–American artist JJJJJerome Ellis creates atmospheric, often improvisatory soundscapes able to disrupt the normal flow of things. Having had a stutter since childhood (the stylising of ‘JJJJJerome’ is a reference to the fact they most frequently stutter their own name), Ellis sometimes found it difficult to express themselves verbally while growing up, though soon found an outlet after discovering the saxophone in seventh grade. The creative practice which developed from that point of origin does not exist in spite of the stutter but in fellowship with it, Ellis developing into a multi-instrumentalist interested in how both stuttering and music can suspend or expand time, working to utilise this fact to further the artistic and thematic potential of their work […] Vesper Sparrow uses this as a framework around which to build something even more ambitious. A space carved out of the hectic every day into which the listener is invited, Ellis using the album as a kind of intermission within ordinary time where we might consider histories both personal and communal, as well as those of the natural world, and thus come to honour and understand ourselves more faithfully. Blackness is central to the record, as is lineage and spirituality, and the result is something which upends the linearity of experience to invite us back into the present.” [Review]

Jouska – How Did I Wind Up Here?

Koke Plate

“While the previous Jouska record Suddenly My Mind Is Blank was crafted from a notably polished electro pop, How Did I Wind Up Here? record sees [Marit Othilie] Thorvik favour something more textured, wrapping raw emotion with a gauzy style. The result, as [single] ‘Pierced’ shows, owes a debt to both dream pop and trip hop. A sound full of contradiction, somehow managing to conjure a sparse night time atmosphere without sacrificing any weight, and managing to pair emotional immediacy with an ambiguously dreamy drift.” [Review]

Kitba – Hold The Edges

Ruination Record Co.

“Proof that art can offer a picture of identity more nuanced than simple labels,” we wrote of Kitba‘s self-titled album back in 2023. “A deeper understanding reached via an embrace of confusion. Identity as an ongoing thing.” New full-length Hold the Edges continues and deepens this exploration of identity, the Brooklyn-based harpist and songwriter calling on a number of friends and collaborators to offer a typically lush, detailed and intuitive sound which works through a particularly tumultuous period while refusing to be dragged down. The path to self-discovery is not a finite number of epiphanic steps but rather something convoluted and unending, Kitba seems to understand. Full knowledge is always just out of reach. But while this might be frustrating in the present, it can be freeing across time, allowing skins to be shed, renewal to manifest, life to be leavened by an ongoing sense of possibility. “Am I enough to carry me through?” asks closing track ‘Cards’, showing that doubt will always be close by, but step back and consider the record, and it becomes clear Hold The Edges has provided the answer already.

Kristin Daelyn – Beyond the Break

Orindal Records

“’I used to hurry everywhere, / and leaped over the running creeks. / There wasn’t / time enough for all the wonderful things / I could think of to do / in a single day. Patience / comes to the bones / before it take root in the heart / as another good idea.’ So wrote Mary Oliver in her poem ‘Patience’, the principle inspiration for the lead single of Kristin Daelyn‘s Beyond the Break. ‘Patience Comes to the Bones’ introduces a collection of songs which looks to carve a space of reflection and peace within the tumultuous present, approaching the dissatisfaction and suffering common to us all from a decidedly compassionate angle. Supported by guest appearances from Dan Knishkowy (Adeline Hotel), Danny Black (Good Old War, Gregory Alan Isakov) and Patrick Riley, Daelyn’s soulful vocals and intricate, intimate guitar welcome the audience into the space so that we too might re-examine our lives from new angles and come to appreciate the fellowship to be found in the universality of longing.” [Review]

Lael Neale – Altogether Stranger

Sub Pop

Written after bouncing between rural isolation and urban rush for several years, Lael Neale‘s Altogether Stranger lives up to its title in more ways than one. “On returning to Los Angeles I felt like an extraterrestrial landing on a dystopian planet,” she explains, “so I’m writing from the perspective of a being from another realm witnessing the peculiarities of humanity.” Thus the ‘stranger’ of the title functions as both a noun and a verb, Neale approaching LA from an oblique angle, an alien who sees the city’s banality as bizarre and its absurdities even weirder. Clocking in at a succinct thirty-two minutes, the record seems to promise more of the tight, electrical minimalism established across previous LPs Acquainted With Night and Star Eater’s Delight, though in reality holds some of Neale’s most adventurous work to date. Because scratch the sleek surface and you’ll find a dizzying concoction of moods and influences, the album a mirror of the odd, alluring city which serves as its setting, enemy and muse.

Last Quokka – Take The Fight To The Bastards

Self-released

Not every band would kick off their new record with the story of an anticapitalist mihirung (a now extinct Australian bird also known as the ‘demon duck’ or ‘thunder bird’) tearing through the oligarch class of Aussie society. But Last Quokka are not every band. Woolworths, Woodside and favourite enemy Gina Rinehart all get their comeuppance at the hand of this vengeful living fossil within the first three minutes of Take The Fight To The Bastards, setting the tone for a record as fun and furious as anything the Perth punks have put out to date. Across the subsequent ten tracks we get diatribes against the insidious rise of identikit watering holes (‘Save Our Pubs’), condemnations of the greedy and their exploitation (‘Cost of Living’, ‘Out for the Weekend’) and even an ode to the queen of SW6 Sam Kerr (‘Stupid White Bastard’). The newly expanded line-up push the sound further than ever and give Trent Rojahn’s acerbic vocals the backdrop they deserve. We might live in disheartening times but, with the fire of Last Quokka behind us, retaliation starts to feel possible once again. As Rojahn sings on call to arms ‘Murujuga (DBH)’:

Disrupt Burrup Hub
And industry expansion
Take the fight to the bastards
And paint the town yellow
Take the fight to Woodside
Take the fight to Rio Tinto
Take the fight to BHP
Take the fight to the police
Take the fight to the bastards

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson – Live Like The Sky

You’ve Changed Records

“Our minds are spread out all over this place / full of persistence and surrounded by grace, / their starving lies are crumbling all around / but we belong to this sacred ground.” This verse, taken from the opening track of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson‘s latest album Live Like The Sky, not only encapsulates the spirit of the record, but illuminates the heart which drives the Michi Saagiig Nishinaabeg writer, scholar and artist’s work more generally. Like her novel Noopiming and more recent genre-bending book Theory Of Water, Live Like the Sky is both an expression of struggle and celebration of history. It confronts the violence and genocide of the White Western project and reclaims the lands it tried to make its own, all while documenting the catastrophes the colonial powers have brought upon themselves and offering modes of survival and resistance. The result is a castigation (‘Disintegrations’), an elegy (‘Nizhooziibing’), a practical manual (’85 Dollars an Acre’), a prayer (‘Minode’e’). A reminder of the interconnection of all things, and the dire consequences to be faced by those greedy or foolish enough to believe they can rule on their own. “Courage sits and smiles, breaks open the overpass,” Betasamosake Simpson sings on ‘Murder of Crows’. “She sings a hymn for the cars at the pipeline mass / the winds pick up and the snow falls from the lake in the sky / she packs up and drives on to the next lie / she sings no god no boss no husband no state / she sings to me with a murder of crows.”

Leilani Patao – daisy

Audio Antihero

“Starting in 2021 at the tender age of seventeen, Brooklyn (via Los Angeles) based songwriter Leilani Patao put out a series of DIY self-releases, culminating in the acclaimed 2024 album But What If? which earned, among other things, a feature on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon. But despite this success, Patao grew disillusioned with the biz, not an unfamiliar story within a contemporary music scene which demands not only on hard work in an artistic sense but an even greater degree of effort (and luck) be spent on self-promotion, algorithmic appeasement and any number of equally soul-destroying things. Many criticize this system but few take concrete action against it, which makes Patao’s new EP daisy all the more notable. A release which promises to shun streaming services, playlists and social media in order to focus on what really matters, and thus an experiment to judge what exactly is possible within the conditions of the twenty-first century. As Patao asks: “Is it possible to share my music properly, pay everyone who was involved, get paid myself,’ Patao asks, ‘and not have to interact with the many systems in place that make me dread music?'” [Review]

Léna Bartels – The Brightest Silver Fish

Glamour Gowns

“‘Only the brightest silver fish / Shows when the light hits,’ sings Léna Bartels on the title track of her second full-length The Brightest Silver Fish, out now via Glamour Gowns. The image might be a small miracle, over in a moment, or else a figment of the imagination caught from the corner of an eye. That we never find out which is typical of a record that does not so much mask its meaning as refuse to settle on a single answer. One caught within a series of dualities, be it between autonomy and inaction, startling beauty and the punishingly mundane, and thus open to a variety of interpretations. Even when, peering into the water later on in the track, Bartels believes she sights the fish again, the result remains ambiguous. Does the small, glinting creature she sees swimming with its family represent the possibility of the things most desired: freedom, connection, agency? Or only reinforce the opposite reality, where such ideals can only exist at a remove from our lives in their own watery, alien world?” [Review]

Lia Kohl – Various Small Whistles and a Song

Dauw

“As the artistically-inclined might deduce from the title, [Lia Kohl‘s Various Small Whistles and a Song] takes inspiration from Ed Ruscha’s Various Small Fires and Milk, a book released in 1964 which featured fifteen photographs of fires and one of a glass of milk, Kohl matching not only the structure of Ruscha’s work (the album offers fifteen whistles and one song) but also its playfulness and deceptive depth. The result is an attempt to convey the subtle textures of life in a way that feels at once incidental and carefully curated, and one that ultimately adds up to something far greater than the sum of its parts. The humble whistle, it turns out, is the ideal medium around which to build such a mission.” [Review]

Lily Seabird – Trash Mountain

Lame-O Records

“This album is dedicated to Trash Mountain,” Lily Seabird describes in her liner notes to the record of the same name. “A real place where I lived while writing and recording this record.” That real place is a house for artists and other creative types built on top of an old landfill site in Burlington, Vermont, somewhere which offered both the reliable constancy of home, especially via the like-minded community where Seabird would return after long stretches on the road, and a place of constant flux. This juxtaposition marks the record, Seabird facing up to the regretful pasts and uncertain futures by embracing change as a perpetual truth, though also coming to realise the anchoring stability that can be found in connection and community. “I don’t have hope for the oppressive systems that abandon us, but I do have hope in people,” Seabird says, a line that sums up the record perfectly. “Sure, the world is really messed up, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make something beautiful out of the garbage.”

Lisa/Liza – Ocean Path

Orindal Records

“’Ocean Path is a look back at the first songs I made in my teens and early twenties, including some of my very first recordings,’ explains Liza Victoria of the latest Lisa/Liza EP. ‘For me, it is a letter from my younger self.’ But more than an exercise in nostalgia, the release becomes a meditation on memory and personal change. The ways in which we shift over time, the ways we stay the same, and how we are constantly settling into who we are. ‘I wanted to be a musician, I wanted to share my inner world with others. And now I see where that lead me and feel gratitude for the path set out before me,’ Victoria continues. “Each song holds time between it, at least a year between each, love and memory, and different worlds of view, threads between them’ […] What results is the sense of witnessing Lisa/Liza form in real time, this early [release] already offering that magic, almost contradictory blend of the past, present and future Victoria has since mastered, able to offer sanctuary from the world without ever sacrificing the hope intrinsic to the act of looking forward.” [Review]

Lisa O’Neill – The Wind Doesn’t Blow This Far Right

Rough Trade Records UK

“Some terrors are born out of nature / Some terrors are born overnight / Some terrors are born out of leaders / With their eye on a different prize.” So sings Lisa O’Neill on the title track of The Wind Doesn’t Blow This Far Right. Consisting of handful of covers, original songs and a James Stephens poem reimagined as song, the release is at once timeless and contemporary. An album which pairs a rendition of ‘The Bleak Midwinter’ with Dylan’s ‘All the Tired Horses’, and places an ode to union organiser and activist Mother Jones near a meditation on the current housing crisis. But it is the title track which stays longest in the memory. A searing indictment of the state of the world and the rapacity from which it was born. “Natural disasters devastate and turn our world upside down,” O’Neill explains, “but it is the man-made greed-motivated unnatural disasters put upon our beautiful planet and it’s people that inspired this song.” Such malevolent forces seem to be gathering at pace across the globe, and music like this has never been so timely.

Little Mazarn – Mustang Island

Dear Life Records

On their third LP, Little Mazarn branch out from their primitive folk roots into something more experimental. The core tenets of their style remain, namely Lindsey Verrill’s distinctive vocals and Jeff Johnston’s singing saw, but now there are drums, synths and what the liner notes describe as “a chorus of orchestral oddities.” It’s a new and fitting entry into the canon of Southern outsider art, joining the work of countless other musicians, artists and writers which, although disparate in style, are united by a shared spirit. The result is something sparse and sombre and sincere, evoking the both the wide-open spaces of the band’s home state and something altogether more intimate. Grief and loss are major themes, and the record functions both as a kind of emergency valve to liberate these big feelings and a reminder to hold on to them. “I built a gate for my grief to go freely,” Verrill sings on ‘The Gate’, in a line that captures the entire album, “I’m not meant to contain wild horses / I see them run and I feel their hot breath, alive. I can’t pen them in and I can’t let them go.”

Living Hour – Internal Drone Infinity

Keeled Scales

“Almost didn’t take a photo / But I’m happy that I did / Cause it melted all around me / When I crossed across the bridge.” So sings Living Hour‘s Samantha Sarty on ‘Things Will Remain’, the closing track of the Winnipeg outfit’s fourth album Internal Drone Infinity. Or rather, so sing Living Hour as a whole, the verse delivered with a communal conviction that underscores its importance to a record all about the small beauty and slow pain that constitutes the passage of time. Internal Drone Infinity is the perfect example of “what the band themselves have coined ‘yearn-core’,” as we wrote in our review, “[combining] slowcore, indie rock and dream pop into something shaded by the gauzy texture of memory,” though it hurdles the saccharine nostalgia which can sometimes haunt such music with a shapeshifting sound that isn’t afraid to push into heaviness or intensity. Because while the project is wistful by its very nature, there’s a harder truth inherent within it too. An awareness of entropy. The immutable fact of change. The knowledge everything we have will break down and fall away. Living Hour are here to preserve what they can while it is still possible, but also do something more. An attempt to evoke this wider cycle in all of its messy reality, and come to find meaning in its perpetual, inevitable turn.

Mal Devisa – Palimpsesa

Topshelf Records

We first wrote about Deja Carr’s Mal Devisa back in 2016 with breakout album Kiid A personal record which “plays like condensed version of life,” we wrote, “reaching high and falling low, crackling and bursting and simmering under the surface, at times exploding in urgent streams of consciousness as if the words and thoughts can no longer be held in […] It’s not jazz or gospel or indie rock. Kiid is everything. Kiid is whatever it wants to be.” We might be almost a decade down the line from that startling debut, but latest album Palimpsesa shows that Mal Devisa has only grown in the interim. Eschewing genre conventions to touch on everything hip-hop, jazz, folk and spoken-word poetry, this is an album which manages to surpass the fizzing energy of its predecessors. Verbose but also rhythmic, experimental but never ostentatious, Palimpsesa plays like creation of an artist at the height of their powers, but then again we thought that nine years ago, only for Carr to prove she could reach higher still.

Michael Beach – Big Black Plume

Goner Records / Poison City Records

“Did the sea come near / When you held the shell to your ear? / Did you hear the sound of the tide / Coming or going? // “Did you smell the scent of the brine / In your blood flowing / Or did you hear / The desperate lonesome wind blowing?” So asks California-born, Melbourne-based songwriter Michael Beach on ‘The Sea’, the opening track of his fifth full-length album Big Black Plume. The lines serve as a fitting introduction to a record grounded within our present moment, a reality in which any experience of wonder or joy we might find within the natural world is shadowed by an ubiquitous sense of mourning, and the true cost of humanity’s avaricious folly is coming to pass. But rather than succumb to despair, Big Black Plume pushes further through this cataclysm and emerges with something startling. “While there is an undeniable darkness [to Beach’s work], it is often sublime in nature, and certainly anything but nihilistic in its intentions,” we wrote of the album earlier in the year. “A fact made clear by new record Big Black Plume, which works with perhaps the only form of optimism left. ‘I was wrestling with the beauty and intensity of the natural world and coming to grips with the human destruction of it,’ as Beach explains. ‘I have an overwhelming sense that humans will come and go, and the world we depend on will outlast us.'” This is the soul of the record. One of both unfathomable loss and determined perseverance, where only a reconnection with nature and all of its systems might allow us to transcend the cursed fate we have carved for ourselves, or at least grant the solace of nature’s sure continuation after we are dead and gone. “There are countless ways for disaster,” as Beach sings in the closing title track. “The dreaming of the natural world will go on.”

Mourning [A] BLKstar – Flowers of the Living

Don Giovanni Records

“Released to coincide with the project’s decade anniversary, Mourning [A] BLKstar‘s Flowers of the Living sees the Cleveland-based Afrofuturist collective draw on every ounce of creativity and expertise gained across the years, resulting in a sound that’s intricately detailed yet confident enough to spread its wings and take its time. ‘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.’ MAB hold this sentiment as a mission statement, the album defiant in every sense, from its refusal to restrict itself to any single genre convention to its unbridled invention and confidence.” [Review]

The Noisy – The Secret Ingredient is Even More Meat

Audio Antihero

“A deluxe edition of the project’s debut album The Secret Ingredient is More Meat, [The Noisy‘s The Secret Ingredient is Even More Meat] casts a wide net for its inspiration, drawing on a whole range of cinematic and literary influences as well as the ideas which underpin and support the drag and queer communities. The result is inherently personal yet larger than any one life, lead Sara Mae Henke evoking the true dimensions of their interior with songs that can be televisually glitzy (‘Twos‘) or as intimate as a home movie (‘Grenadine‘), and moreover songs unafraid to delve into the most individual of subjects in order to locate more universal truths (as with ‘Nightshade‘ and its examination of difficult relationships). The superstitious ‘Ballerino’ and its Suspiria-inspired video by Ewan Hill collect all of these ideas together into under two minutes, celebrating all sides of an identity while working through memories and learning to love the past while focusing on what is to come.” [Review]

Okkung Lee – Just Like Any Other Day (어느날): Background Music For Your Mundane Activities

Shelter Press

“Just Like Any Other Day (어느날): Background Music For Your Mundane Activities by Okkyung Lee sees the South Korea-born, Berlin-based cellist and improviser reject the established tropes and signifiers of experimental music and thus magnify its creative potential. A style which, per the album notes, sits ‘at the juncture of ambient music, minimalism, and the baroque’ but is not beholden to established pattern or language, forcing both artist and audience to reckon with each composition on its own terms and nothing else. And yet, for all these ambitious intentions, the result is not some exercise in avant garde excess, be that ostentation or confrontation, but instead something tactful, modest and intuitive. The sonic equivalent of the title’s ‘any other day’, where apparent ordinariness is revealed to contain the multitudes of memory, longing and latent emotion which comprise each and every spin of the earth.” [Review]

Patrick Shiroishi – Forgetting is Violent

American Dreams

“It is fair to say multi-instrumentalist and composer Patrick Shiroishi is unafraid to broach big themes. Previous releases like Descension, Hidemi and I was too young to hear silence have all in one way or another revolved around the internment of Japanese-Americans, but new full-length Forgetting is Violence takes things even further. [The album] considers, amongst other things, racism in a wider sense. An attempt to wrestle with the phenomenon as both a historical fact and contemporary shame, and furthermore one which confronts the impossibility of living in this world without participating in its ongoing function. Acknowledging that if the desire to eradicate another is something allowed into the world, then no aspect of a culture can be said to exist above or beyond it. A truth more apparent now than ever as genocide is televised in real time.” [Review]

Pickle Darling – Bots

Father/Daughter Records

It might be tempting to view Bots as metamorphosis of the Pickle Darling project. In fact we did just that back in June, describing how New Zealand-based producer and multi-instrumentalist Lukas Mayo decided to channel Robyn, Cher and Ray of Light-era Madonna for single ‘Massive Everything’, dropping some of the playfulness and poetry of previous releases to instead “embrace the exhilaration of being wholly direct.” Subsequent single ‘Human Bean Instruction Manual’ complicated the picture, stretching the definition of direct with a sprawling seven minute slice of fuzz pop. “This new era of Pickle Darling does not jettison the idiosyncratic charm which has won the project so many fans,” as we wrote. “Nor does a commitment to forthright communication elide any sense of ambiguity. Indeed, this is a song all about such ambiguity, and how learning to embrace the doubt inherent within growing up in this strange present.” Spend any time with Bots and you’ll come to see it is less a revolution than the next chapter in a story Pickle Darling has been building from day one. An album willing to embrace contradiction—between old and new ideas, familiarity and foreignness, even the joy and frustration of making art—and in doing so go further than most to evoke the feeling of being alive in 2025.

Ruby Gill – Some Kind of Control

Self-released

“I had been grappling with what it meant to have all and no control over my time and body—all at once,” so explains Ruby Gill of her second album, Some Kind of Control. A record marked by what she describes as “cheekier, looser, gayer and even more raw” style, embodied by ‘Touch Me There’. “[A song] which examines the body in ways both intimate and political, embracing the queer experience both as a means of personal fulfilment and as a wider radical force,” we wrote in our review. “This duality is evoked by the interplay between Gill’s searching delivery and the communal backing chorus which sees the likes of Annie-Rose Maloney, Hannah McKittrick, Angie McMahon, Hannah Cameron, Jess Ellwood and Olivia Hally (of Oh Pep!) all lend their voices. The result is the sense of a call being answered. A single voice echoing back as a community.” [Review]

Sam Moss – Swimming

Self-released

“Stuck in the past / But somehow living / Out of my depth / But somehow swimming.” Four succinct lines from the title track of Sam Moss‘s Swimming capture the album’s essence, as the Virginia-based guitarist and songwriter embraces contradiction in more ways than one to create what might be his strongest release to date. The warm, ostensibly modest arrangements seem to deepen with each listen, not least thanks to the careful additions from a supporting cast of Isa Burke, Jake Xerxes Fussell, Sinclair Palmer, Molly Sarlé and Joe Westerlund. Moss’s lyrics and delivery follow a similar pattern, their gentle fondness belying the intensity beneath the surface. The result is something of a paradox, though one which feels entirely natural. A folk album that is humble in tone yet existential in nature, one drawn with a careful hand that nevertheless reaches for the full spectrum of emotions life inevitably brings. Dip a toe into Swimming and you will feel a pleasant warmth. Submerge yourself within it and something far more urgent will be revealed. “There’s no seasons left that matter / There’s no days, only hours,” as Moss sings on the closer. “And there’s so much to gaze at / In this world.”

SG Goodman – Planting by the Signs

Slough Water Records / Thirty Tigers

SG Goodman‘s Planting By The Signs takes its title and philosophy from the Foxfire books, a series first published in 1972 which aimed to pass on the collected wisdom and history of Appalachian life. The phases of the moon, this volume suggested, have a notable impact on our earthly endeavours, so anyone looking to undertake a task, be it planting a garden, weaning a baby or writing a folk rock album, would do well to align their efforts with the lunar cycle. Goodman’s record, easily one of the strongest released this year, seems to support the utility of this tradition, or at least the wider reconnection to the natural rhythms so often buried within our hectic, fatally human present. Written in a period of great loss, and helping to facilitate a process of reconciliation, Planting By The Signs is a highly personal album about the most universal of themes. Grief, love, God. The suffering of poverty and the dignity of those made to bear it. Not to mention that bond we share with the wider environment, a truth of life whether we like it or not, and the responsibilities of stewardship which result. There’s no small amount loaded into these songs, take the principle image of ‘Snapping Turtle’, where cruelty is met with a fury fit to match that of Christ in the temple, anger which only exists because of the compassion which burns underneath. This aching fondness for all life permeates all the tracks and culminates in the playful, crushing, transcendent closer, ‘Heaven Song’.

Shallowater – God’s Gonna Give You A Million Dollars

Self-released

If ever there was an album built to evoke a specific place, it is Shallowater‘s God’s Gonna Give You A Million Dollars. Following on from their acclaimed debut There Is A Well, the Houston outfit doubled down on their self-described ‘dirtgaze’ aesthetic to capture the sweeping landscape of West Texas. Six tracks of crushing weight and panoramic space where the stillness of distance is shot through with dust storms and squalls of violence. ‘Sadie’ is one of the highlights, a song loaded with images as stark and foreboding as the sound itself, its lights in tornadoes and dust covered angels speaking to the mythos of a record keyed into the sublime, though also offering a surprisingly tender meditation of grief that ties the personal into the elemental heft which surrounds it.

Snocaps – S/T

ANTI-

Way back when, before Katie and Allison Crutchfield won hearts via Waxahatchee and Swearin’ respectively, the Alabama twins played together in the beloved yet short-lived P.S. Eliot. In the wake of personal success, diehard fans have called for a reunion, though the Crutchfields are too wise to believe there’s any chance of going home. Snocaps is the alternative, a project with MJ Lenderman and Brad Cook which sees Katie and Allison reunited without forgetting the history in between, the pair taking turns to pen songs about all the obstacles on the road to the present moment, as well as the convictions which have kept the wheels turning all the same. “Give me shit while you can’t see straight,” goes the final verse of opener ‘Coast’. “I got the pedal on the floor / Or I’m slamming on the breaks / I could never just coast.” A simple reunion might have been the easy route to take, but since when has the easy path been true?

Soup Dreams – Hellbender

Candlepin Records

“Storm flooded the freeway / It thundered almost all day / Crying on the street in my hometown / Trapped in the car, the rain coming down.” This image, taken from a verse in opening track ‘Wonderdog’, captures something essential of Soup Dreams‘s Hellbender, the Philly outfit reaching across indie rock, emo and alt country to create a sound that’s nostalgic, emotive and intimate, yet nevertheless charged with a roiling energy. Comparisons will inevitably be drawn to contemporaries like Waxahatchee and Wednesday, with lead Emma Kazan’s lyrics falling somewhere between the unguarded confessions and sardonic bite of the two, though to reduce Hellbender to its influences is to underestimate what is one of the very best debuts of the year. One of heart, subtle humour and bite which captures the tenderness and desperation of solitude without losing the ever-thundering tumult of the world outside.

talons’ – in retreat

Self-released

“There’s a lot about the Covid era that I can’t get past,” says Mike Tolan (aka talons’) in the liner notes to latest album in retreat. “It changed me and largely not for the better.” The project has always been something of a raw wound, conjuring an air of desperate melancholy devoid of any romance or melodrama, but even so, this record feels different. Recorded live to tape at home with all the imperfections left in, this is a dispatch from a troubled mind during troubling times. Songs marked by the kind of quiet despair which descends at the dead at night, the anxiety of the contemporary moment matched only by the deadening suspicion things are only going to get worse. As Tolan concludes: “Things are not OK. The near future is bleak, but we’ve gotta dig in and grind it out for the kids.”

Tan Cologne – Unknown Beyond

Labrador Records

“The music of Taos, New Mexico duo of Lauren Green and Marissa Macias, otherwise known as Tan Cologne, has long probed at the intersection of the physical and ethereal, a style established on 2020’s Cave Vaults on the Moon in New Mexico. ‘Orbiting around the the titular state, the record excavates the physical and metaphysical layers of the specific location,’ as we wrote of the album in our review, ‘digging through strata both natural and supernatural in attempt to represent New Mexico in all its strange, stark beauty’ […] Tan Cologne’s latest full-length Unknown Beyond represents both a continuation of this style and a broadening of its horizons. Almost literally, in fact, with Green and Macias turning their attention skyward with the same curiosity, openness and longing which has always underpinned their work. Their search is driven by griefs personal, communal and global, the songs written in the wake of bereavement amid a country, indeed a world, on fire in more ways than one.” [Review]

Tobacco City – Horses

Scissor Tail Records

Chris Coleslaw, Lexi Goddard and pals make country music that has one foot in the golden-hued past and another in the painfully real present. This is true both in terms of the Tobacco City sound, which freshens up classic seventies country (think Emmylou and Gram) for the modern ear, and its lyrics, which compound the often confusing, disappointing and bittersweet nature of the present day with a yearning gaze at the past. Horses moves from good-time toe-tapping euphoria to solemn late-night longing, and spans comforting nostalgic familiarity to a manic desire to leave the depressing desolation of small-town existence. This is achieved principally through a focus on small snapshots of bygone days. Seemingly mundane moments where boredom breaks its levee and becomes something of its own rush, where the dissatisfaction of cooped-up small-town living is tempered by time’s unhurried passage. Here, the future is not some dark unstoppable force rushing toward you in a clatter of hoofbeats, but something intangible, indistinct. Something to worry about tomorrow.” [Review]

Tuxis Giant – You Won’t Remember This

Worry Bead Records

“You Won’t Remember This both continues the themes explored across [Tuxis Giant‘s] previous albums and expands their sonic palette. But more than a lesson in testing the borders of a project, the invention and experimentation serves its ultimate intention. That is, to paint a picture of life as it is lived, a full spectrum of moods, the shades shifting day to day. And moreover, something experienced not only as the immediate present but also a constant retrospection, memories appearing, merging and changing as the months pass by, each colouring our outlook at any given moment. The album’s most autobiographical song ‘Heart Surgery’ encapsulates all of this in one track. A retelling of the day lead [Matt] O’Connor’s mother underwent the titular operation, complete with stark emotion, naked concern and the small funny details which pop up no matter how serious the occasion. But it is also a meditation on memory. The things we remember, the things we do not, and how both of these might haunt or protect us as we grow and heal.” [Review]

Weakened Friends – Feels Like Hell

Don Giovanni Records

“Back in August we introduced Feels Like Hell, the new album from Weakened Friends [on] Don Giovanni Records, with single ‘NPC‘. What we called ‘a decidedly existential track featuring guitarist Buckethead inspired by the reality-bending simulation theory,’ though one rooted in a very real, contemporary struggle. ‘Far from some exercise in idle sci-fi daydreaming, the song is urgent, defiant and cathartic,’ we described. ‘Fatalistic, but delivered with the kind of full-throated passion that can only exist in those still with the spirit to fight.’ This attitude is the cornerstone to Feels Like Hell, the record representing a rejection not only of the myriads of forces which make our current culture so bleak and painful, but the all-too-common apathy with which so many react to such conditions. A collection of spiky, confrontational and cathartic songs, notably different from the tone of the Portland, Maine outfit’s previous LP Quitter. ‘Every soul-destroying facet of our present moment is used as fuel on the fire,’ as we continued in our preview. ‘The hegemony of global capitalism, complete with its mass surveillance, environmental destruction and rampant inequality, is enough to drive anyone to despair, but Weakened Friends are determined to deny it that one last victory. Better to scream, yell, bring the whole thing crumbling down with us.’” [Review]

Weirs – Diamond Grove

Dear Life Records

“[Diamond Grove by Weirs is] a repertoire of classic songs so indebted to the particular conditions of the moment that they have never sounded quite the same before, and likely never will again. ‘We wanted Diamond Grove to be a record in the truest sense,’ as [lead Oliver] Child-Lannin describes in the liner notes. ‘A living document of a specific time, place, and gathering of friends. Recorded in farmhouses, fields, and an abandoned silo, it channels the spirit of traditional music as a shared practice, alive with the sounds of its surroundings.’ The result owes more to musique concrète than the crisp, professional recordings of the folk revival. It is up for debate whether this represents a stylistic leap for the genre or a circle back towards an even older tradition, music delivered and enjoyed in situ. But to ponder whether Weirs exist in defiance or deference of their forebears is to miss the point completely. This is not an attempt to raze conventions, nor reproduce them. But rather imagine how folk could and should sound today. If the entirety of traditional music could be viewed as a series of specific moments threaded into a timeless whole, then with Diamond Grove, Weirs offer their own bead to add to the chain.” [Review]

Wilder Maker – The Streets Like Beds Still Warm

Western Vinyl

“Wilder Maker’s The Streets Like Beds Still Warm is a very different record to 2022’s Male Models. One even more ambitious in scope (it’s the first of a planned triptych to be released across the next eighteen months) and unique in its creation which nevertheless seems driven by the spirit of its predecessor […] Birnbaum has called The Streets… ‘the inverse of the typical songwriter record,’ the music recorded during open-ended sessions where core band members Adam Brisbin, Nick Jost, Sean Mullins improvised and swapped instruments at will, and guests including Katie Von Schleicher, Joseph Shabason, Macie Stewart, Chuck Johnson, Will Shore, Rebecca el-Saleh (Kitba) and Cole Kamen-Green added their own touches too, before Birnbaum took the result home and slowly whittled it into the form it takes today. The result, made possible by both a band now experienced in working together and a label in Western Vinyl willing to trust them, swaps the sleek psych and goodtime rock sensibilities of its predecessor for something altogether more stark and lonely, less a house party than a late-night wander through unfamiliar streets. Which is not to suggest minimalism, the sound owing much to experimental and alt-jazz forebears, but rather the presiding mood. One indebted to the shadow and subtle desperation of noir cinema, the perfect soundtrack as Birnbaum’s world-weary narrator flits between bars and hospital rooms while nursing concerns both trivial and existential.” [Review]

Will Johnson – Diamond City

Keeled Scales

Diamond City is Will Johnson’s tenth solo album and one that finds the legendary Texas songwriter’s style stripped back to the bare bones. Created at home in his Hays County farmhouse “in one room alone with his thoughts,” the record is inspired by the landscapes of both Johnson’s childhood in southern Missouri and the Texan Hills outside his window, painting a picture of the USA’s vast interior using initially just guitar, drum machine and an old Tascam 424. Once completed in this pure form, Johnson sent the songs to longtime collaborator Britton Beisenherz, who fleshed things out just enough, blowing on the embers of Johnson’s demos without smothering them in needless polish and ornamentation. The result is a new entry in the long and storied list of masterpieces created many miles from a professional studio, squirreled away in some corner with a tape recorder and something to say. Lyrically the album is poetic, fragmentary, even opaque, but viscerally emotive too, indebted to the pantheon of Southern writers from Faulker on down. Put simply, Diamond City is a reminder in the raw power of austere simplicity, that sometimes things are better without all their creases ironed out.

Will Stratton – Points of Origin

Bella Union

Set across the full breadth of California over a timespan of ten thousand years, you’d be hard pressed to find a more expansive record than Will Stratton‘s Points of Origin. The ambitious album is as detailed and crowded as an entire book of Where’s Wally? illustrations. Its cast of characters a Pynchonian smorgasbord of artists, con men, criminals, deadbeats and truck drivers, government men, snitches and counter-culturists, all inhabiting a world irrevocably altered by the presence of man. A picture of America before, during and after the imperialist project which has come to shape it, where fires and floods haunt the land as though in divine retribution, and a myriad of tiny struggles add up to the longest of wars. And, for the wild scope of Points of Origin, it is these tiny struggles which mark its true spirit. Each song intimate and detailed, a square inch of a picture too large to display, yet so richly imagined that they are able to evoke the full frame. Be it through the image of ancient hunters on snow-topped peaks or Vietnam attack choppers repurposed to drop flame retardant on home soil instead of napalm aboard, Stratton works with a hand careful, tender, heartbroken and seething, empathetic to the plight of his individual characters while damning the sum of their endeavours.

Wine Country – Hard Times

Self-released

“The liner notes for the debut Wine Country record, Hard Times, put the terms “written” and “composed” in inverted commas, a small gesture which speaks volumes. Because these are not songs finely wrought or painstakingly crafted brick by brick. Rather they just arrived, epiphany-like, [lead Matt] Kivel a willing lightning rod struck by a bolt of pure inspiration […] In the past he has drawn on cinema and literature, folk music and ambient music and experimental jazz. But here, in keeping with the overall vibe, things just flow where they want. Long, meandering pieces of psych-tinged art rock, improvisational lyrics that nonetheless feel charged with poetry and meaning. A testament to the value of committing to something without inhibition, and allowing the result to speak on its own terms rather than being edited and overworked beyond its proper shape. Hard Times is inspiration uncut. Not so much an attempt to communicate something otherwise incomprehensible as an embrace of the incomprehensible itself.” [Review]

Wombo – Danger in Fives

Fire Talk

“Feeling every inch the product of a band nearing ten years together, Danger in Fives finds the Wombo sound realised in its purest form, combining the experimentation and risk-taking which marked their earlier releases with the growing confidence so evident on Fairy Rust. That is, the sound of project which has come to understand its spirit and ambitions and is now committing to them with total conviction. ‘Danger in Fives isn’t a reintroduction’, as the press release states. ‘It’s a reminder’.” [Review]

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Nosferatu D2 – ‘It’s Christmas Time (For God’s Sake)’

It makes sense to start at the beginning, doesn’t it? This song comes from Nosferatu D2’s posthumous debut final album: We’re Gonna Walk Around This City With Our Headphones On To Block Out The Noise. Audio Antihero started in 2009 to release this album since no one else was going to and I wanted it on CD. Thanks to Gareth Campesinos! and lots of other folk, the album ended up doing really well–and for a long-time it was what this label would be known for. 

Honestly, I’ve been telling that same story for fourteen years. If anyone has been paying attention I’m sure they’re bored to tears hearing it again. I don’t get tired of Nosferatu D2 though, which is key because it can otherwise feel a bit sad to still be shilling ancient back-catalogue.

That was the point of this belated release though, I wanted people to hear it and I knew that I always would. As a label, it does feel great to have something new to share but I can’t imagine releasing an album that I didn’t least hope would still be worth talking about fourteen years later.

Like everything Nosferatu D2 did, the recording sounds like it’s held together by tape, and it rattles with the beat–but it might be my favourite ever Christmas song, certainly it’s the one I most relate to. In 2014, Spencer Madsen published ‘You Can Make Anything Sad’, and that title might best describe Nosferatu D2 and my connection to their work.

I often tell people that I “hate Christmas,” but what I truly hate is that I just can’t love Christmas. It’s no-showing the office party each year, it’s looking at the “Pound Shop Santa in a plastic sleigh” and feeling nothing, and it’s sitting down for Only Fools & Horses without comfort or contentment. I’d skip the whole thing if I could, and a few times I have.

It’s funny because Nosferatu D2 really did so well. As a dead band on a first timer one-person DIY label, the album kinda overachieved and found an audience, but that CD-buying fanbase never quite translated to Spotify, which in part is my fault for being a late adapter but is probably also common for inactive independent releases. In recent years however, Nosferatu D2 have been getting a bit of a boost on Spotify at this time of year. This particular song has amassed a modestly respectable 37,000+ streams thanks to playlists like ‘christmas cries‘, ‘Christmas Music for Pretentious People‘, ‘loser christmas playlist‘, and bless them: ‘It’s Christmas time for God’s sake‘. 

Between Nosferatu D2, The Superman Revenge Squad Band, and Tempertwig (featured by Various Small Flames here), I’ve worked on a few albums from the Parker brothers. I don’t think that myself or either Parker had particularly aimed for their lasting legacy to be having a very nominal Christmas hit but as their song ‘A Footnote‘ illustrates: you’re lucky to be a part of all this any way that you can be. If you put enough time into it all then you’ll learn that there’s far worse things to be known for in music than having a song people like listening to.

If people should ever want to explore songs like ‘Springsteen’, ‘Broken Tamagotchi’, ‘The Kids From ‘Fame’, ‘The Mojo Top 100’ or ‘Colonel Parker, they’ll all still be there.

Frog – Wish Upon a Bar

If Nosferatu D2 is what Audio Antihero was “known for” (relatively speaking) in its earlier years, then Frog (interviewed by Various Small Flames here) is what Audio Antihero is best known for now (still speaking relatively). ‘Wish Upon a Bar‘ is taken from their Kind of Blah album, which was the first of five that we’ve now worked on together. 

This 2015 album is certainly one of the favourites, though they’ve become so eclectic, and seen such an increase in their audience since that I don’t think there’s any clear favourite. Count Bateman has a lot of fans now and, from within my hyperfixation bubble, November’s GROG album is feeling like a phenomenon right now.

‘Wish Upon a Bar’ is highlight of an album filled with highlights (‘Judy Garland’, ‘All Dogs Go to Heaven’, ‘Catchyalater‘, ‘Photograph’, ‘Irish Goodbye’, ‘(Kind of Blah)’) and I think it has that special quality where it’s a song set over Christmas without being a song about Christmas. 

Don’t tell me where you are
don’t send me holiday cards
I’ma drop dead drunk on the FDR
I wish upon a bar

It’s almost Christmas time
the bartender’s cutting limes
and he asks you about your kids
you respectfully decline

The pain that Bateman describes in ‘Wish Upon a Bar’ existed in November and it’ll exist in January too. If anything, Christmas exists in ‘Wish Upon a Bar’ as a threat–it’s the looming presence of what feels like state-mandated closeness, and the pressure of expectation to feel what you maybe don’t and to be who you maybe aren’t.

To make a Cinematic comparison, 1974’s Black Christmas (considered by many to be the first North American-made slasher) is a brilliant horror film set over the holidays. The season informs the mise-en-scene and influences the circumstances of the plot, but what makes that film so haunting is the sheer randomness of the violence. This could have happened in any home at any time, but it happened here and now. Compared to a film like Silent Night, Deadly Night which relies on the novelty of a psycho-Santa killer, it’s clear how special Black Christmas is–and while it is a brilliant film to gather the children together for on Christmas morning, it shouldn’t be isolated in novelty sub-genre. If you’re not a horror fan, then think Die Hard vs. Jingle All the Way.

Just as there’s plenty of tedious Festive horror films, there’s a lot of shite Christmas songs too–and “Alternative” Christmas songs are no different. Punk covers of ‘Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer’ with bonus-swears are just not for me. ‘Wish Upon a Bar’ and Black Christmas are works that can be appreciated all year round–but they do gain some unsettling powers as the weather gets colder.

Slotted onto Kind of Blah at track three, the Christmas A Go Go! blog called it a “hidden Christmas track,” and I liked that.

Papernut Cambridge – ‘93 Million and One’

People tend to know Ian Button from his work in Death in Vegas, which is funny because I knew Death in Vegas for their work with Ian Button. Ian drummed for Audio Antihero alumni Paul Hawkins & The Awkward Silences, but there’s no way to express his contribution to the group. As a producer, he helped to channel Hawkins’ raw talent and creativity into a blistering debut record for Jezus Factory Records. On stage, Ian helped to contain much of the chaos and was the foundation for increasingly ambitious arrangements.

He had been quietly releasing his own songs for a while but when Ian’s new Papernut Cambridge monicker debuted with ‘93 Million and One’ in the Darren Hayman & Fika Recordings 2011 advent calendar, I was pretty blown away.

From here, Papernut Cambridge became a fully-fledged project, and with the subsequent founding of Gare Du Nord Records, he seemed to really find the freedom to be as prolific and experimental as he truly wanted to be.

There’s lots of great Papernut Cambridge songs, clever, touching, funny, and eclectic, but this little Christmas surprise is the one I always come back to. Whether it’s leading the charge or as a helping hand for the works of others, Ian is a real gift to music and a joy to know.

Benjamin Shaw & Fighting Kites – ‘This Christmas (I Just Want to be Left Alone)’

This was Audio Antihero’s only halfway earnest attempt at a Christmas single. Fighting Kites (featured by Various Small Flames here) were a brilliant band, instrumental and experimental without being pretentious. Their songs were danceable, melodic, beautiful, and fun. I have many joyful memories from their shows.

Conversely, Benjamin Shaw (reviewed by Various Small Flames here), who has since been reborn in Australia as a progressive house DJ called Megadead, was a relentlessly pretentious singer-songwriter with a daft tiny guitar. You were not dancing at this gloomy gut’s shows, and had you even tried, he’d probably have mumbled something rude into the microphone.

Though very different, these friends and labelmates collaborated on a Christmas charity single for Shelter. In a similar vein as ‘It’s Christmas Time (For God’s Sake)’ (which Benjamin Shaw also has a version of), it’s a grudging shrug into the happiest time of the year. The song explores the gnawing feeling of knowing that the one thing you want for Christmas (a day off work without pressure and performance) would be a heartbreaking insult to all around you for reasons you’ll never understand.

It’s not really a representative introduction for either artist but there’s clear chemistry here, which it would have been great to see expanded on with more recordings. I have a great memory of seeing them performing this together live and it was great to see Ben stop moping about in his box room and have a bit of fun with his friends for a change.

Fun fact: Benjamin Shaw did briefly have a regular backing band and they sounded incredible together. When I asked him to record a session of his solo songs with this expanded line-up he said “I’m not Tom Jones, Jamie!” and refused. Too bloody right you aren’t, Ben.

pen pin – ‘Office Party’

If you’ve followed Audio Antihero or Various Small Flames, you might already know the great Jeni Magana who comprises half of the pen pin duo with Emily Moore. ‘Office Party’ is their second single, a delightful song about seeking love at the office Christmas party.

By touching on the absurdity of “celebrating” within your workplace, and seeking a romance with your colleagues (the smallest fish in the smallest pond), it casually offers a terrifying message about capitalism without dropping its gorgeous sheen of 60s pop naivete. Naturally, I prefer their Halloween song but this is stil a really good one.

If there’s a positive to the season, it’s the reminders it offers you of the friends and loved ones you don’t get to see very often. Love you, Jeni, miss you, mama. Glad you’re doing well. Jeni’s solo work is all over Various Small Flames, so when four pen pin singles just isn’t enough for you, there’s still plenty more to dig into within the VSF vault.

Frog – ‘Space Jam’

It would be daft to go on about Frog’s seasonless (but not unseasoned) seasonal offerings after discussing ‘Wish Upon a Bar’ at length–but ‘Space Jam’ from their debut (reviewed by Various Small Flames here), offers something similar:

Thursdays I met you ‘neath the Garibaldi statue
And I held my breath as you came over,
Looking like the best of Auld Lang Syne
Lip-synced Sinatra blarin’ out an idling mack truck…

There’s a bar outside my window and they’re playing My Sharona.
It’s Christmas time, I think so, and the air feels just like home…

Danny Bateman writes songs that understand that Christmas isn’t one unshiftable block of good cheer. We get scraps of time off work where we’re required to be the jolliest versions of ourselves like you can just flip a switch. All the while, loss, regret, grief, illness, exhaustion, anxiety, insecurity, and desire persist. “‘cus it hurts” indeed.

This year is as good an example as any. I’ve bought mince pies and Christmas crackers to amuse my American in-laws, the TV and radio will get shitter and shitter, decorations will go up, and thoughtful gifts will be exchanged. But nothing has stopped. The UK and US governments are supporting Israel in committing a white supremacist genocide against Palestinians this December. If God allows it, Christmas doesn’t stop it.

Broken Shoulder – ‘Stille Nacht’

Broken Shoulder (featured by Various Small Flames here) is former Fighting Kites guitarist Neil Debnam, he began working on solo material due to the physical limitations he experienced when he, as you might have guessed, broke his shoulder. I was already a big Fighting Kites fan and was lucky to release his debut solo album, Broken Shoulderrr, which was all gorgeous sprawling soundscapes, looping guitars, drones, fuzz and lovely lovely NOISE. 

It was a bit of a departure for Audio Antihero but I did a few records with him, and hopefully I didn’t do too bad a job. Sensing my limited understanding of the genre, he joked gently once about how he’d need to prepare “a riffy song for Jamie” when I asked him to contribute to one of our compilations. My mum always called his music “strangely beautiful,” which is a happy memory I have of her now.

There’s a slightly more festive ‘Stiller Nacht‘ version which I also love, but the original is perfect as it is. The composition is performed primarily with a khene, a mouth organ and Laos’ national instrument. It produces the most beautiful sound.

Though themed on a silent night, this composition gives me images of daybreak–but one reserved for cinema, a sunrise intended to express both the power of nature and the terror of pollution. My eyes burn when I hear it.

Whether Broken Shoulder offers a silent night or the dawning of a new day is pretty irrelevant. For me, he offers exactly what I spend most of Christmas day pining for: a few wordless, solitary minutes, ushering in the end of Christmas day or the beginning of a new day. However bittersweet both might be.

In my quasi-annual Christmas shilling of back-catalogue, this eight-and-a-half-minute instrumental never quite makes it on the radio–but I optimistically continue to include it. I don’t know how you do this sort of thing but part of me will always believe that it’s destined for the big screen. Love you, Neil, miss you, king. I hope you’re doing well, mate.

I’ve put all the above songs together here. Frog’s “GROG” LP is out now via Audio Antihero. It’s good to be back, lads.

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So on the surface at least, it’s a return to type for an artist who has traditionally worked at the gloomy end of the spectrum. But on closer inspection it’s more than that. Written in the aftermath of significant family bereavements Tragedy, Doom & So On is an album about finally relenting and confronting the grief that has been held at arm’s-length for too long. Shaw’s usual sense of misanthropy is replaced with quiet contemplation inspired by those small, mundanely devastating moments, creating space to ruminate on loss and regret and attempt to come to terms with the past.

“I wanted to make something that purposely came from these feelings,” Shaw explains. “Reading old guilt-filled emails from my dad, wearing the terrible ill-fitting watch that my grandad gave me, watching videos of sweet Ned the cat, and seeing what music might come out. All with the plan that I’d have to spend a lot of time listening, editing and mixing these compositions and so actually spend time feeling this stuff rather than pushing it away.”

The result is perhaps the most mature Megadead/Benjamin Shaw release to date. One where the familiar elements—synths, sad melodies and creative use of vocal samples—are utilised toward this different headspace. From the oddly melancholic opening of ‘Hello Friend’, which builds on sombre synths with samples of a robotic voice, the syrupy hellos and goodbyes evoking an uncanny valley type of uneasiness. For a song with no conventional lyrics, it somehow captures the complicated mixture of feelings that are bundled up as “grief”. The pure base-level sense of loss shadowed by a creeping alienation, where platitudes and consolations lose their meaning and begin to sound strange and unreal.

The wistful atmosphere continues across the record, from the instrumental ‘See you at the hotel’ to ‘Inhale Down, Exhale Down’, one of several tracks which incorporate snippets of breathing exercise instruction. Perhaps the most emotional moment comes at the midpoint in ‘Song For Ned’, a straight-up beautiful ode to a pet cat which ends on a thrumming purr, proving equal parts comforting and heartbreaking.

But there’s something else at play across the album too. Something beyond the loss and regret. It’s present throughout if you listen closely, but there’s a moment in the slow-burning title track which feels like it revealing itself more plainly, where murmured synths and ambient recordings of indistinct voices give way to a shimmering glow. A certain enlightenment, a state conjured not by solutions to problems but rather a mind starting to accept them. A feeling which, once apparent, emanates across the remaining tracks. Despite it’s title, ‘With great regret’ has a sense of forward motion that feels constructive if not confident, and ‘Stay?’ sounds genuinely hopeful. Penultimate track ‘You died’ approaches the overarching themes most directly, a song about closure and forgiveness after the fact. It’s one of few songs with vocals proper, Shaw singing its repeated refrain with real purpose.

You died but all’s forgiven

All that’s left then is the closing track, ‘When I think about the future’, an eight minute outro which pairs warm drones with glittering electronics that sound almost like birdsong. There’s only one line, repeated intermittently throughout, sometimes chopped up and distorted but with the same implication. “When I think about the future,” says the voice, before hesitating. “I… hmm…” As a closing note it’s an uncertain one, like that weird come-down after a period of emotion. The message seems to be that after trying to untangle, or at least accept, the knot of the past, what comes next is no more certain, but will perhaps be faced from more even ground.

Tragedy, Doom & So On is out now on cassette and digital download via Hand drawn Hand and available to purchase via Bandcamp. UPDATE: The tapes are now sold out, so if you want one you’ll need to badger the label for a second run.

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Since adopting Megadead as a moniker, Shaw continued this project with an increasingly experimental hand. A couple of EPs last year established the project’s willingness to push further beyond the confines of previous work, and Shaw’s output in 2021 has been no less ambitious. Take 31 Songs About Murder, a collection which drew on ambient, electronic and hip hop to create a collection of cinematic vapourwave snippets which sampled the murder mystery shows from an old timey radio station. What Shaw described as “mini bops, half songs, and top drawer bangers,” all based on killing. 

This month, Shaw returned with what he describes as the “first proper Megadead album,” Authentic Country Music. But true to Megadead’s subversive spirit, it turns out authentic country music doesn’t involve banjos or pedal steel, at least not directly. Instead Shaw has dug through a plethora of crates to build up a library of samples, then matched these with idiosyncratic pop and trip hop beats, weaving a vivid plunderphonic patchwork. A sound a world away from the dismal depressed pop which made Benjamin Shaw’s name, and one all the more triumphant for it. 

The expansive ‘Lo, We Are Bound!” introduces this new widescreen sound, swirling with all the lofty mystery and insistent drama of an made-for-TV eighties documentary, or Oneohtrix Point Never’s soundtrack to Uncut Gems. Effervescent electronics introduce ‘Chief of the Dead’, infusing the track with a kind of infectious energy which lasts across its sidewinding length even as the track spits and spins in different directions, before ‘The Murder Card’ gives the first taste of bona fide country music, albeit of the Scandinavian variety.

‘It goes / It gone’ continues the televisual aesthetic, its moody noir tones and pressing electronics playing like the opening credit sequence of the coolest PI show you’ve never seen. ‘She protec but she also attac’ is equal parts horror soundtrack and nineties hip hop chill bop, while ‘Country Music!’ rolls the dice and throws another combination together, emerging as a kind of European dance hit. Closer ‘Dead Metal’ is equally off-the-wall, a prog/psych hybrid which builds through strange and portentous vibes but ends up vast and affirming.

More than experiments in genre, each of the songs furthers Shaw’s thematic concerns. Take standout ‘Out Spaced’, a track which lives up to its title with cosmic beats interspersed by spoken samples regarding the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Not only is it a fantastic example of Shaw’s playful sensibilities, it’s a continuation of the classic Shaw theme. For while the juxtaposition of transportive sounds and down-to-earth charm capture an entertaining humour, there’s something heart-breaking too. A lesson in imagination which conjures a collective failure of that very quality, or else a willingness to submit too readily to its escape.

The result is to situate the listener away from the presented population. To invoke a sense of remove from others, a distance that can never quite be bridged. A fact Megadead might approach more obliquely, but approaches all the same. Which is to say, the turn to pop and prog is not some triumph over the prior gloom, rather the logical progression of a lasting condition. If Benjamin Shaw’s oeuvre represents a picture of an artist positioned at an angle to the world, then Authentic Country Music finds them having retired all hopes of fitting in. So why not redirect those energies, and start to have some fun?

Authentic Country Music is out now and available from the Megadead Bandcamp page.

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Perhaps the defining characteristics of Shaw’s music is its ability to transcend its own themes. He may be singing about hating his job, about going nowhere fast, but in doing so colours these things with meaning. To create art is to communicate, and as such the songs represent the antithesis to their own concerns, the simulated happiness and artificial connection punctured through their ironic presence.

The last few months have seen Shaw return with two new EPs, released under the moniker Megadead. Put out back in the summer, Screams, Banging, etc. arrived first and put to bed any worries that the change of name signaled some radical change of direction. There’s a casual heartbreak to the opening sample, a mood that could be said to capture the Megadead spirit. Life is awful and all that.

But more than depressed bummer music, Megadead explores the specific cruelty of our times. The undeniable laughable quality amid suffering. The juxtaposition of the chilled beats on ‘There Must Be a Problem’ with the repeated titular refrain gets to the heart of the record. The sense that something is drastically wrong but there is no space to show it. Smile, think positive. Try meditation. ‘OH NO’ follows through on the uncanny unease, its vivid 80s soundtrack style rippled by wavering glitches, the sampled female voice offering nothing beyond “oh no” or “oh crap” with a kind of exaggerated playfulness. Disappointment and disaster as packaged on the Shopping Channel.

The result is a sound that mimics our culture. One which refuses unhappiness, and by that very refusal transmogrifies it into something hellishly odd. The jazzy pep of ‘Almost Self-Sufficient’ teeters between energetic and maniacal, wellness messages echoing through the clamour. A constant escalation that stress tests every vessel and connection. Closer ‘HELL YEP’ continues the feeling, pre-packing the religious exaltation of fitness videos and demanding you smile and shout along. After all, if a room is noisy enough, there is little difference between a face seized by joy or pain.

The second EP, Audio Visual Metro Computers, opens with a more explicit ominousness. The sleek beats of ‘Slowdead’ have a nocturnal creep, an inherent meanness. But ‘Maximum Enjoyment’ slinks into the slow dawning ‘Out of the Woods’, and the sense that we’re perhaps breaking free rises. But rather than some new hope, what emerges is strange and enveloping—some electronic interior baffling intricate yet oddly repetitive. A sense of movement that goes nowhere new, progression as a circle through the same backdrops again and again. ‘Out of the woods’ not as some escape, but a full retreat into the digital space.

So ‘What a Difference!’ lands us back where we started, the too-white teeth of self-help advice closing around our heads. Again jazzy flourishes radiate a kind of false positivity, small wisps of chaos sparking in every direction as palatable voices offer their help and the beat continues unabated, as though fired by the tension of the whole experience.

It’s left for ‘Breaking Open the Head’ to offer the only real human experience on the record. There’s a resignation to the beat but a sense of continuation too, and Shaw’s vocals make their first proper appearance across the two releases. There’s no final triumph, no hope beyond the shallow consolation of keeping on. “It made me feel sick,” he sings, “but I tried.” What else is there to do?

Screams, Banging, etc. and Audio Visual Metro Computers are out now and available from the Megadead Bandcamp page.

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It’s worse than that though because if there’s one thing you can say about rich people it’s that they are great at getting richer. They know all the tricks of the trade and they never stop working at more, even if it involves a deep, clandestine conspiracy of which most people are never made aware. Take for example the classic music ‘Cash Grab’, where artists re-release the same songs in a slightly different form (sometimes even a form with more mistakes) and charge you all over again for the privilege. It’s an open secret in the music world, and we need to open our eyes.

After much probing, we’ve finally managed to convince a whistle blower to come forward. Essentially the Edward Snowden of the music scene, Benjamin Shaw is ready to speak up and blow this thing wide open. It all stems from Live at donaufestival, a new live album recorded in Krems, Austria back in May and released by Audio Antihero, where Shaw reworks and adapts for a rare live performance.

Living up to their name, Audio Antihero is a particularly shameless culprit in the cash grab scene, with recent releases from Fighting Kites, Broken Shoulder and Tempertwig highlighting their status as particularly avid old rope salesmen. Shaw himself has released two anthologies, the singles collection Exciting Opportunities and compilation of oddities and outtakes Should’ve Stayed At Home.

With three cash grabs in less than six months, Shaw has either grown a conscience or else bored of making money. There’s only so many bank notes you can hide under your mattress, after all. But if he’s stopping then he’s bringing the rest of the cottage industry down too, and in order to have something in writing, we got Shaw to make a playlist of some of the biggest and best cash grabbers in the business. It’s far from comprehensive, of course. The likes of Springsteen can afford hitmen.

Various Small Cash Grabs

by Benjamin Shaw

Since I am getting old and nearing the end of my artistic shelf-life, this year has been spent desperately trying to cling on to some kind of relevance, while also looking increasingly desperate. I even ordered a pair of noise-cancelling headphones today, exactly like a man hurtling towards his 40s would. This is life though, and if I’m going to be making extravagant purchases like this, then I’m going to need some extra cash. And what better way to earn around $5-10 from Spotify than release some Cash Grab Compilations.

2019 has so far seen a Benjamin Shaw Singles Collection, Rarities Collection, Obligatory Live Album and forthcoming Classic Reissues. None of which anyone asked for or wanted. So now, to divert attention, I will point the finger at this playlist of other excellent Cash Grab compilations and re-issues. Please kick back, enjoy and think of the money.

Live at donaufestival is actually fantastic and worthwhile and available now from the Audio Antihero Bandcamp page.

The post Benjamin Shaw: Various Small Cash Grabs appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Ruth Garbus – Strash
Mauno – Vampire
Outer Spaces – Gazing Globe
Benjamin Shaw – Long Ago and Oh So Far Away
Erin Durant – Islands
Daughter of Swords – Dawnbreaker
Melissa Mary Ahern – Maria, Maria
Oscar Lush – Kind Living
Midwife – Angel
Young Elk – False Paradise
Wilder Maker – Love So Well
Big Joanie – Way Out
Secrecies – Life We Live
Beat Radio – Everyone I Know, Just Holding On
American Poetry Club – pro pic?
So Totally – sike
halfsour – Paper Window
Joyer – Here
Marbling – Wisdom Teeth
High Sunn – Grateful
Slow Pulp – New Media
Molly Drag – Out Like a Light
Van Houten – Moon
Birdspotter – Riverbed
Tender Perennial – Delivered
JR Samuels – In Brend 2
Elly Swope – Habits
Derek Piotr – The Sign
Fighting Kites – Kita Senju
Nathalie Joachim – Papa Loko (Interlude: September 24, 1918)
Kali Malone – Sacrificial Code
Kate Tempest – Holy Elixir
Little Musket – Fever Blister
Gold Baby – 500/1
Tennis Club – Stay
Young Mammals – Lost in Lima
Abe Hollow – Paradise
bdrmm – Question Mark
Briston Maroney – Fool’s Gold

Check out our previous Monthly Roundup playlists, and be sure to read or Reviews and Previews throughout the month.

The post July 2019 Roundup Mix appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The latest to get the big red book treatment is blog-favourite Benjamin Shaw. Anyone who has had the pleasure of listening to Shaw’s music will know that he is 100% the type of artist who wants to be surprised and dragged before a live studio audience to reminisce on past successes, and Should’ve Stayed At Home gives him just the opportunity. Shaw has made a name for himself with what we’ve previously described as “weirdo grump pop,” though in reality is far more than that. Combining lo-fi bedroom sensibilities with folk, ambient, pop, electronic and pretty much everything in between, Benjamin Shaw’s music is easier to describe in terms of mood than genre. Sad and cynical, yearning for connection yet dreading the implications, but shot through with something affirming too. Nothing as misguided as hope, but at least some semblance of dignity in the face of things. As we summed up in a piece on 2016’s Guppy:

[The music of Benjamin Shaw recreates] a weird sense of attachment to our situations, a form of nostalgia for a life never easy but uniquely ours, that feeling of calm wonder which visits all too rarely […] where some semblance of context is achieved and a strange joy is found in melancholy. We know we have to go back down, but for now at least, that is okay.

The weird sister of April’s Exciting Opportunities, which collected Shaw’s singles, the release brings together a range of demos, sessions and cast-offs from the inception of Benjamin Shaw’s solo career back in the early 2000s. In that way, the subtitle of Should’ve Stayed At Home: A Collection of Oddities and Outtakes speaks for itself—a gathering point where the stranger, rougher offspring can stretch their legs and strut their stuff. If Exciting Opportunities was the televisual edit of Benjamin Shaw’s appearance on This Is Your Life, then Should’ve Stayed At Home is what was said once the lights were shut off and the audience gone home.

We’ve invited Shaw to look back through the songs and provide a little more by way of context and explanation.

Ok, so none of this was my idea. Remember that, please. Sifting through old hard-drives to try and find things that weren’t instantly terrifying wasn’t the most fun thing I’ve ever done, but I’m kinda glad I did. Here we go, sorry.

Long Ago and Oh So Far Away

It was difficult trying to come up with a theme for this compilation other than ‘What a Mess’, but in the end I went for a somewhat reverse chronological order. Going from kinda new, kinda hi-fi, to super old, super lo-fi. For some reason this first song is noisy as hell and doesn’t fit any of the above.

The Carpeteer – (The Waiting Room Session)

The original version of this song is still one of my favourites – lo-fi, noisy, no real chorus, etc. I don’t really remember making this electronic version, but it bops.

Break the Kettles and Sink the Boats (The Waiting Room Session)

Possibly taken from the same ‘The Waiting Room’ radio session as The Carpeteer above. I was clearly on a blissed out anxious electronica trip that weekend. Anxietronica? No?

Kick the Dog (Winter Version)

No versions of this song ever made it onto an album, but I’ve always felt like it was one of my best. It just never fit anywhere. But here it is. Spread your wings, little bird.

Goodbye, Kagoul World (The Waiting Room Session)

The Waiting Room radio show in the UK have always been super nice and supportive, so it’s nice to have these tracks on here.

You & Me (RRR Session)

3RRR is the only Australian radio station to have ever played my stuff – I still can’t get a look in anywhere else. Triple R is the best.

Home (WVUMSession)

I believe this radio show was hosted by Kathleen, the now life partner of Audio Antihero head honcho Jamie. And this session was during their courtship. I tried my best to sabotage their relationship by recording a magnificent session using a Yamaha auto-accompaniment keyboard, but Jamie used his One Veto and made me re-record the whole thing. I like to think that by graciously relenting, I single-handedly saved their relationship.

How to Test the Depth of A Well (RRR Session)

In which I dream of the British royal family dying a terrible death at sea. No survivors

Pig (The Waiting Room Session)

Pig! From the lesser-known Rumfucker album. One of the few songs of mine from 2010 I still really like!

Chocolate Girl (Versatile Singer-Songwriter Version)

Ah, we’re getting into Ye Olde Recordings territory now. This was recorded in Tottenham around 2006 i think. One of the first songs from my decade in London and the beginning of a slow decent into madness. This was my first and last attempt at a murder ballad, it’s kinda too cryptic to work in that way tbh, but there’s still some nice imagery in there.

When I Fell Over in the City (HiFi Version)

Written in Melbourne sometime in 2005 and recorded in my friend Rich’s shed. This was the first time I wrote a song and it came out all in one go like a fully formed HIT. It was super cool at the time, and really felt like I’d somehow made something special. Obviously, I’m thoroughly ashamed of it now though, because I hate myself.

You Don’t Drink Tea Do You?

Another one recorded in Rich’s shed in Melbourne, with Clayton on the synths. Clearly this song is all about relationship anxiety, but this was such a nice time in my life. I’d moved across to the other side of the world, on a whim, to live my internet girlfriend, and in the process made so many amazing friends. These guys were so supportive to me. Clayton owns a record shop now, Rich writes the best Scottish folk songs you’ve ever heard, and I have not met up with either of them since being back in Melbourne because I’m a terrible person.

Thanks for All the Biscuits (Versatile Singer-Songwriter Version)

Back to London! And I feel like this recording was the genesis of what would become the I Got the Pox EP. It felt new and slightly more direct than what I’d done before. Less metaphor, more misery. And made me want to specifically set out to make something complete and coherent instead of just random nonsense. Shame my mixing and mastering abilities didn’t have the same idea, lol.

Sparrows over Tottenham

I’m sorry to say that this is a direct rip off of both Neil Young and Bright Eyes. I showed it to a friend one time and he was like (all innocent) “ahh cool, this bit sounds just like Harvest by Neil Young!” and I was like “ahhh ffs “So yep, verse – ‘Harvest’ by Neil Young, chorus – ‘If Winter Ends’ by Bright Eyes. I like the bridge though!

Twisting Turning Killing Learning

Boom! Check out the piano on this baby! It is absolutely not by me! My friend David Wright played that. I met him on the internet (like most of the relationships in my life) and he was the first person that really gave me the support and encouragement that I didn’t know I needed. Most people in my life at that point just kinda took the piss out of my daft wee songs, but good friend Dave really made me feel like I was onto something and that I should continue. Recorded at his house in Lancaster around 2004. Onya, Dave.

Down

Ok, this is it. Song 1. My patient zero. Recorded on one of those little cassette recorders with a handle around 2002/03 I think, and I was D-E-pressed. As you can probably tell. I’d written plenty of songs before, I was like 20 by this point, but I feel like this was the first song I’d written that actually sounded like me, rather than imitation. Old misery guts here. Smiler. Saggy Jim. Mope John Paul II.

Thanks for reading, if you got this far. Here’s to whatever is next in our lives. Make art. Read comics. All cops are bastards, etc.

Both Should’ve Stayed At Home: A Collection of Oddities and Outtakes and Exciting Opportunities: A Collection of Singles and Sadness are out now via Audio Antihero and you can grab them from the Benjamin Shaw Bandcamp.

Photos by Aisha Latosski

The post Benjamin Shaw – Should’ve Stayed At Home: a Retrospective appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Thanks for being with us.

Advance Base – Animal Companionship

Run For Cover Records

““The songs are intended to be a comfort for folks going through their own tough times,” Ashworth explained in an essay for Talkhouse. “Commiseration has always been a guiding principle of my songwriting.” Love need not be hugs and hearts and kisses, and loyalty does not necessarily mean hanging in a relationship beyond all reason. But love is loyalty, and Owen Ashworth has been, and seemingly always will be, loyal to those who need it most.”

REVIEW / BUY

Basement Revolver – Heavy Eyes

Sonic Unyon / Fear of Missing Out Records

“An expansive and spacious sound that’s lit up with a slow-burning emotional resonance, centring around Hurn’s impassioned vocal delivery. Their music combines the magnitude and granular glitter of shoegaze, the personal songwriting of bedroom pop and the cathartic noise of 90s indie rock. [Basement Revolver] play a double game of big and small, switching from quiet personal sentiment to big bombastic broadcast, often within the same song.”

REVIEW / BUY

Benjamin Shaw – Megadead

Audio Antihero

“For all the frustration and (self-)loathing in show, there’s also something else. Perhaps the defining characteristics of Shaw’s music is its ability to transcend its own themes. He may be singing about hating his job, about going nowhere fast, but in doing so colours these things with meaning. To create art is to communicate, and as such the songs represent the antithesis to their own concerns, the simulated happiness and artificial connection punctured through their ironic presence.”

REVIEW / BUY

Campdogzz – In Rounds

15 Passenger

“[Closer ‘Sorceress’] at first might seem a slightly strange segue for a final track soon straightens out into an intuitive sense of logic and belonging, as though the album-long teeter on the edge of some epiphanic transformation has finally fallen headlong at the last moment.”

REVIEW / BUY

Damien Jurado – The Horizon Just Laughed

Secretly Canadian

“While it might be tempting to view [Jurado’s] songwriting career as a fruitless quest for his true identity, perhaps the complete opposite is true. His career is his identity, splinters of truth arriving through dreams or divined from another realm entirely, fractals that can be arranged into a whole that far surpasses the meaning of any one component. A manifesto of sorts, one full of prophecy and history, though rather than country-western stars of [Joseph Billie] Gwin’s vision, the Ten Prophets of Damien Jurado are merely alternate versions of himself—past, present, future, dream—each record its own style or consciousness, born of him, yes, but equal to him too.”

REVIEW / BUY

Dear Nora – Skulls Example

Orindal Records

“You can be anyone, we are told, do anything, though only superficially, a multitude of simulations all working toward to same goal, the means to the end of shifting units and making money. Dear Nora’s music attempts to undermine this by playing the same game, crafting an unreal reality of their own to overlay the other. And, by neutering the money-making end, they in effect invert capitalism’s technique, reestablishing the means (ie. living) as the purpose. Yes, Skulls Example might be a simulation, but it is one of the most meaningful and rewarding you could hope to find.”

REVIEW / BUY

Field Report – Summertime Songs

Verve Forecast

“The summertime theme might conjure ideas of cloudless, uptempo good times, but to limit Field Report’s use of the season to a more poppy sound is to miss the deeper point […] We cannot rely on grand promises or paradigm shifts. Rather, we must commit to the slow, considered process of letting go and working through, of deciding who we were and who we want to be. In these times, we’d be foolish to trust that will be enough, but belief in small moments of agency and human connection is more productive than misplaced prayers for epiphany.”

REVIEW / BUY

Free Cake For Every Creature – The Bluest Star

Double Double Whammy

“free cake for every creature don’t make sad songs exactly, usually tending toward a kind and hopeful feel. Yet there is something intangible about them, a strange sensation that weaves its way into quiet moments, like a kind of everyday poetry or nostalgia that we all recognise but don’t have a name for. The case in point is the penultimate song, ‘be home soon’, which somehow portrays a subway ride home as something beautiful and magical.”

REVIEW / BUY

Frog – Whatever We Probably Already Had It

Audio Antihero

“Contains lines of total sincerity that feel disarming in the face of what has come before, as though the truth of things slips out in quiet whispers to oneself, the party over and room emptied out. The truth being the soul-shearing reality of the American Dream, the tragicomedy of understanding your dreams and desires to be complete fictions while leaning on them with all of your weight.”

REVIEW / BUY

Gia Margaret – There’s Always Glimmer

Orindal Records

“The palette of Gia Margaret is built from shades of sadness—loss, regret, wistful longing, the arresting trap of nostalgia and plain old hurt—though again and again Margaret provides a counter-shade, as though the darkness’ true purpose is merely to highlight the warm, weak glow within. Because, while people up and leave, and time is certainly no kinder, Gia Margaret is here to prove that value is inherent in life itself, meaning and fulfilment not in spite of troubles, but within them. No matter how dark, there is always glimmer.”

REVIEW / BUY

Haley Heynderickx – I Need to Start a Garden

Mama Bird Recording Co.

“I Need To Start a Garden is the perfect album for the onset of spring. It’s all about growth and the hope of new beginnings, but also doesn’t shy away from the necessary hard work that makes such growth possible. It’s a reminder that plants are not the only things that need to be tended and cared for, but also that they’re not the only things that can flourish and bloom either.”

REVIEW / BUY

Lisa/Liza – Momentary Glance

Orindal Records

“The context [of bereavement] is important not because we wish to suggest some ‘romantic’ mythology behind the record (indeed, the songs were written before the tragedy occurred), or that there is magical healing power in the making/consumption of art. Rather, Momentary Glance is a symbol of the power of community, generosity in the face of grief, and the album’s use of placidity over bombastic melodrama is indicative of such an authentic spirit.”

REVIEW / BUY

Long Neck – Will This Do?

Tiny Engines

“Despite the difficult circumstances, there is also a sense that things will be okay, that our narrator has gained the sense of strength and self-reliance necessary to move on. Or rather, is working toward being strong enough and self-reliant enough, with this album being the furthest possible reach forward toward that place. Of course, it’s likely full strength and self-reliance will never be achieved, but it’s the strive toward those ideas that is the most important. Of course this will do.”

REVIEW / BUY

Lung Cycles – S/T

Lily Tapes & Discs

“The placid natural flow continues whether we voice our concerns or not, and nothing in this external sphere is working to exacerbate our feelings. In this way, Lung Cycles reveals anxiety and melancholy to be no more than parasites of the human psyche, forces all too willing to consume us should we centre our existence within our own heads, but soon found dead in the vacuum of natural quiet.”

REVIEW / BUY

Monarch Mtn – days of sleepwater

Self-released

“Darkness breeds darkness, and allowed to fester can become a self-perpetuating thing that metastazises unto ubiquity. Here, Monarch Mtn do not pretend that suffering is abating, or can be dispelled by a mere shift in perspective, but rather choose to fight the phenomenon. days of sleepwater exists to fight the creeping dark, and not embrace it.”

REVIEW / BUY

Naps Eyes – I’m Bad Now

Paradise of Bachelors

“Behind the heavy-lidded blasé exterior lies a rich and tangled inner life, an invitation to fall into the folds of Chapman’s brain and watch his thoughts pass by […] Those with enough curiosity or desire can try to arrange the Nap Eyes lines into a magical formation, wrestling with the existential questions in the hope that they will be the first to figure it all out. The rest can take a back seat and let the Big Stuff drift around them, finding comfort in the fact that there are things bigger than us, and beauty in the understanding that they are beyond our grasp.”

REVIEW / BUY

Remember Sports – Slow Buzz

Father/Daughter Records

“Sincerity could be said to represent Slow Buzz as a whole, though sincerity not as some sentimental force rather a commitment to what feels true, no matter how messy and conflicting. There’s something in the Remember Sports story at the heart of this earnestness, the possibility of progressing without sacrificing an entire ideal, of reincarnation where one returns not as some different creature entirely, but a new version of oneself. A truer version, at least for now.”

REVIEW / BUY

Sun June – Years

Keeled Scales

“Years is a record shaped and propelled by the gentle forces of the world, currents in the substrates of the earth and life itself, invisible yet profound, capable of changes both minor and major […] a number of the tracks returning to a repeated phrase, cyclical patterns that rise in intensity like incantations, or else echo out into the fabric of the sound.”

REVIEW / BUY

Swearin’ – Fall Into the Sun

Merge Records

“We live in a time obsessed with the past. Our dreams now look backwards instead of forward, our deepest wish not for some utopian future but rather a return to an unreal past, one sanded of all trials and troubles by nostalgia and the constant passing of time. With Fall Into the Sun, Swearin’ rebel against such a mindset, redirecting our hopes toward the future once more, and compelling us to pay attention to the present while we still can.”

BUY

Talons’ – After Talons

Self-released

“Talons’ capture the futility and hopelessness of a content life in a creaking hyper-capitalist society, an existence often devoid of meaning and full of shame at the hypocrisy in caring about the world but doing little to change it. But it’s also kind-hearted too, its glowing core of humanity somehow comforting despite the heavy subject matter. In other words, there’s no optimism here, but there is hope.”

REVIEW / BUY

Valley Maker – Rhododendron

Frenchkiss Records

“Built upon a thematic bedrock of faith and religion, but anyone who baulks at the R-word need not worry, [Valley Maker] is uninterested in creeds and doctrine, instead exploring metaphysical mysteries that we can all wonder about […] Crane is not foolish enough to offer answers, though his words and voice work as a reassuring balm, even while acknowledging the ambiguity and turmoil that surely awaits. ”

REVIEW / BUY

The Washboard Abs – Lowlight Visions

Antiquated Future

“Clarke Sondermann’s music has always been intimate, but this album treads deeper into this ideal than any of his previous work. In the circumstances, it would be relatively easy to make an album of sad songs, but it’s a brave artist who takes the very personal worry and suffering and uses it to build something that’s this complex and multifaceted, vulnerable but not hopeless, forgoing nihilistic dejection in favour of a strange kind of love, an appreciation of what stands to be lost.”

REVIEW / BUY

The World Without Parking Lots – Seventh Song Counts the Engines

Self-released

“Seemingly simple but rendered dense and cryptic with the addition of Parcell’s poetry […] Seventh Song Counts the Engines is a beautiful collection of songs, one which somehow makes a bold statement in a circuitous whisper, deceptively complex instrumentation and ambiguous lyrics capturing decidedly unambiguous emotion.”

REVIEW / BUY

Young Jesus – The Whole Thing is Just There

Saddle Creek

“How do you adopt a more sincere, hopeful position without becoming a flat Sincere, Hopeful Person, and everything that image entails? Young Jesus have put their hope in a spontaneous, endlessly recursive form of questioning, where every hard fought answer only exists to be questioned further. The endeavour might well take a life time, but the prospect of circling closer to the truth is something of a solution in its own right. So, while it’s tempting to think that the true message or meaning of the songs on The Whole Thing Is Just There is always just out of frame, the reality is in fact the other way around. The message of the songs is that meaning is always just out of frame, and that there is no more valuable an enterprise than the constant search outside and beyond.”

REVIEW / BUY

Yowler – Black Dog in My Path

Double Double Whammy

“The writing is vague and affecting, words imbued with an esoteric power that fuses intimate internal thoughts from the corporeal world with something altogether more supernatural. “I bear the mark, I am sigil,” Jones sings, “to the spirits and the sprites, but I promised not to listen and stay in my life.” The natural and supernatural converge on Black Dog In My Path, and Jones has re-purposed Yowler as the conduit between these two dimensions.”

REVIEW / BUY

We’re be sharing our favourite songs, books and Bandcamp name-your-price releases in good time, so keep an eye on the ‘Lists‘ category for those.

The post Favourite Albums of 2018 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Song list:

Options – Waiting
2nd Grade – Favorite Song
Alexander – Going to Sleep
Ryan Van Gonten – Fabrique
Haunted Continents – What Were You Born For?
Weakened Friends – Blue Again
Shybaby – Lazy Hazy
Frankie Valet – April
Primo! – You’ve Got a Million
Hypoluxo – Kentucky Smooth
Basement Revolver – Knocking
Dead Painters – Output
HALEY – Infinite Pleasure Part 2
Doe – Heated
Ing – Dust
Benjamin Shaw – Terrible Feelings!
internet boy crush – ghost friend
lowly loverboi – Dumb Phone
Dead Tooth – Liars
Kin Hana – You
Bodega – The Truth is Not Punishment
The Cordial Sins – Not Enough
Indoor Cats – Fun 2
Upstairs – Trust the Process
Sabriel’s Orb – Holding
John Atkinson – Bakwaves // Rye
Fanclub – Leaves
The Chairman Dances – Acme Parking Garage
Con Davison – Talk
Ivy Dye – Diminish
Elizabeth Owens – I Long
The Last Bison – Don’t Look Away
Our Fastest Typist – It’s Nice Outside, but My Head is Killing Me

You can find all of our monthly round-up posts here, and our complete array of mixtapes here.

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