Unveiling an upcoming EP of the same name on Future Gods, Anni Rossi‘s ‘Wild West‘ established the artistic vision of the Brooklyn-based songwriter, performer and multi-instrumentalist. The EP, collaboration with cinematographer Sarah Tricker, sits “at the intersection of various modes of expression,” we wrote, “ideally placed to draw from [audio-visual] fields to create singular and inventive pieces of work.” New single ‘Chasing the Tiger’ follows with another evocative sound, the piano helping find a delicate balance between the ethereal and the human and emerging with something both sensual and reflective.

Wild West is out now via Future Gods.

Apollo Ghosts – Spilling Yr Guts

Vancouver‘s Apollo Ghosts made a splash in 2010 with their Polaris-nominated record, Mount Benson, though seemingly disbanded in 2013 as lead Adrian Teacher moved on to found COOL TV and other projects. But stories of their demise turned out to be exaggerated as Apollo Ghosts returned in 2019 with Living Memory, and the comeback appears to be a lasting one as this month saw the release of brand new album Pink Tiger on You’ve Changed Records. Single ‘Spilling Yr Guts’ is just one of twenty-two bright and inventive tracks, but its fresh, buoyant rhythm serves as the perfect point of entry for those looking to be swept away.

Spilling your guts on the sidelines
Spilling your guts on the stage
When you’ve got fuck all inside you
You’ll finally have something to say

A Starving Viking – Leaves

The moniker of Connecticut-based songwriter Matt Jarrett, A Starving Viking is a folk project which primarily relies on an intimately simple balance of guitar and vocals. His debut record Semblance was released in 2019 via Resonating Wood Recordings, though in anticipation of a new EP the label has released an amended version, now titled reSemblance. Single ‘Leaves’ is a great introduction to A Starving Viking‘s patient and kind-hearted sound, the melancholy of its murmured style counterbalanced by an ever-present compassion.

Fake Fruit – No Mutuas

Just over a year ago, Oakland, California indie rock band Fake Fruit released a self-titled album on Rocks In Your Head Records. Lead by guitarist/vocalist Hannah D’Amato, the band draw on classic post-punk to create something fresh and often acerbic, drawing on the frustration and general weirdness of 21st century living. A standout was single ‘No Mutuals’, a song that rallies against empty, point-scoring social interactions (what they call “Cool Guy Syndrome”) and now Fake Fruit have returned with a reworking of the track that adds an extra layer of attitude and translates the lyrics into Spanish. “This recording feels true to the original, but it’s sporting new haircut energy, an extra spring in its step and feels more aligned with how it sounds when played live,” D’Amato explains. “Plus it just feels good to scream in Spanish.” Check it out below:

Greet Death – Panic Song

Following on from 2019’s majestic New Hell, Flint’s Greet Death have spent the past few months unveiling a series of new singles. The subdued ‘I Hate Everything’ drew the listener into reserved yet resentful frame of mind, the familiar Greet Death weight hovering just out of view. ‘You Love is Alcohol’ introduced a woozy country vibe, ‘Punishment Existence’ simmered with latent intensity too. So the manner in which ‘Panic Song’ bathes the listener in its gauzy textures and insistent energy feels something like the deferred release promised on the previous tracks. Even if the release is excessive and all-consuming with its adrenaline-filled shakes.

Got onto something new
To repossess your blues
Another panic song
And sirens all night long

Jack Keyes – Gray Balloons

Last year we wrote about Kentucky artist Jack Keyes and his upcoming record, Dissolving in Dusk. Single ‘Nowhere’ introduced a sound “wrapped in an easy-going sincerity that holds both melancholy and fondness,” and latest track ‘Gray Balloons’ is similarly conflicted. Again based around the simplicity of acoustic guitar, the single confronts a difficult situation with tender charm. “This song was written after my girlfriend had her visa revoked,” Keyes explains. “She had to very suddenly leave our town in Kentucky to go back to her family nearly 10,000 miles away. In our last days together, I wanted to be happy and celebrate the good times, while also mourning a future loss.”

Dissolving in Dusk will be released later this year.

Kelly Hoppenjans – Stain

We’ve previously described the work of Nashville singer-songwriter Kelly Hoppenjans as “Channeling the spirit of riot grrrl while maintaining a folk sensibility,” with debut OK, I Feel Better representing “music of empowerment, facing up to expectations and staring them down.” Taken from new EP, Can’t Get the Dark Out, latest single ‘Stain’ is a direct follow-up to a single from that record, a kind of antidote to the toxic headspace ‘Band-Aid Girl’ asked Hoppenjans to re-enter every time she played it. As she puts it: “I decided to write a song, inspired by the same relationship, that I could perform after ‘Band-Aid Girl’ to lift me out of that funk.”

But I didn’t think to say that to you in the moment
I guess I only come up with the good stuff once you walk away
My mistake

I think it’s your fault

Check out the video directed by Crystal Bowersox below:

Can’t Get the Dark Out will be released on the 22nd May and you can get it from Bandcamp.

Kraków Loves Adana – Open The Door

Last year Hamburg‘s dream pop duo Kraków Loves Adana released Follow the Voice, a record which “in which the boundaries between physical reality, virtual reality and dreams began to merge and blur.” However the sometimes there is more to a song than the single take which makes it to the record, and new EP Swim in the Blue reimagines three tracks to allow them to exist in a different form. “I wanted to revisit these three pieces from a different perspective,” Deniz Çiçek explains, “never imagining that the songs would develop a whole new life of their own as a result.” A reworking of ‘Dream House’, ‘Open The Door’ is a perfect example of how these different spins manifest, with the sparkling synths toned down in favour of a fuller bodied sound.

Swim in the Blue is out now and you can get it from the Kraków Loves Adana Bandcamp page.

Laura Loriga – Passes the Flame

Born in Bologna and now based in Brooklyn, songwriter and pianist Laura Loriga has spent the last ten years honing her craft between Italy and the US, a geographic diversity which mimics the layered and shifting style of her work. Recording as both Mimes of Wine and now under her own name, Loriga has slowly veered away from an abstract classical sound toward something more immediate and intuitive, a move facilitated by a switch from acoustic piano to organ. Latest album Vever, out via ears&eyes Records, utilises this along with a variety of acoustic and electric elements, with single ‘Passes the Flame’ highlighting the shadowy, nuanced sound.

Max García Conover – Mud

Back in 2018, Max García Conover released Among Horses III, a superb collaboration with Haley Heynderickx on Barcelona label Son Canciones. Following on from a series of singles, this spring sees return Conover return with Deer, a brand new album on the same label which again leans into collaborative work. Take lead single ‘Mud’, written and recorded with Massachusetts folk trio The Ballroom Thieves. A song every bit as sincere and searching as anything in Conover catalogue, looking for substance in a strange world. “I don’t need to find the centre, I just need another song,” he sings. “So what if I write it wrong?”

Proper. – The Great American Novel

“This record is a concept album that’s meant to read like a book,” explains Proper. vocalist Erik Garlington of new record The Great American Novel. “Every song is a chapter following the protagonist through their 20s. Imagine a queer, Black Holden Caufield-type coming up in the 2010s.” Produced by Bartees Strange and released via Father/Daughter (US) and Big Scary Monsters (UK), the record is a searing critique of a society dedicated to and built upon denying Black genius. One which refuses to extend a hand to those who uphold this system of violence, deciding that for once it must be them who do the work to meet the album on its own terms.

The Great American Novel is out now via Father/Daughter (US) and Big Scary Monsters (UK).

Slow Down Molasses – Street Haunting (Vator Sessions)

Back in 2021 Saskatoon‘s Slow Down Molasses released their latest record, Minor Deaths. What we called ” a committed decision to embrace the energies of the contemporary moment in all of their frustrations, aggressions, vulnerabilities and dread.” Ahead of a UK tour this May, the band have unveiled a live version of single ‘Street Haunting‘ recorded with Vator Sessions. A take which encapsulates the bristling intensity of a SDM live show.

Minor Deaths is available from the Slow Down Molasses Bandcamp page, and you can find the full performance on the Vator Sessions Youtube page. Details of the tour are available here.

Uma Bloo – Strange Actress

The recording project of Molly Madden, Uma Bloo came into being when Madden left behind a strict conservative background and headed to Chicago. Among other artforms, songwriting soon became a way to express the dimensions of her personality that had otherwise been repressed. “Once I accepted the fact that I wanted to create my own music, these songs started pouring out of me in an effort to unpack the life I had and what I thought I wanted to build,” Madden explains. “In a lot of ways this album has been in process since I was eight years old without me fully knowing it.” Latest single ‘Strange Actress’ carries all the ferocity and feeling you might expect from such a process, holding desire, desperation and defiance in its hands and refusing to apologise for any contradiction.

You think I’m very strange
But the way I live makes sense to me
I think I’ll stay the same

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To celebrate the arrival of their brand new record, Embody, Hamilton’s Basement Revolver have unveiled the final single, ‘Dissolve’. We previously described how the album displays a “willingness to confront the intricacies of modern life with a newfound steel and depth,” and the new single is full of the compassion and solidarity which makes this possible. An ode to figuring things out together.

Carli & The Dark – Voicemail

Carli & The Dark is the folk rock project of Phoenix-born, Brooklyn-based songwriter Carli Naff. Latest single ‘Voicemail’ concerns losing a parent, specifically that strange half second when the urge to contact them arises out of well-worn habit, a wish to share a simple moment of a day. The song emerges from this brief period where they are still alive, still waiting, and follows it through the renewed sense of loss before culminating in a compassionate group refrain which features Naff’s mother and siblings among other loved ones. “All my peeps who grieved together,” as she puts it. “It’s a little detail that really brings me a sense of safety at the end, of being held.”

Saying my nickname in a voicemail from your car
You were there, there you are
And though you are not around,
You would love this song I found

Cinder Well x Jim Ghedi – I Am a Youth That’s Inclined to Ramble

Cinder Well and Jim Ghedi have teamed up for a new two-song single, reinterpreting traditional folk ballads. ‘I Am a Youth That’s Inclined to Rambled’ highlights how the pair accentuate the stark loneliness of the material with sparse arrangements haunted by foreboding drone. A song of vast distances and separation, sung into a soundscape as empty and inscrutable as the ocean itself.

I Am a Youth That’s Inclined to Ramble is out now via Free Dirt Records and is available from the Cinder Well Bandcamp page.

hemlock – to carry (feat. Laith)

Described as an “interstate phone-fi bedroom folk saga of sorts,” talk soon is the full-band Chicago-based project hemlock. Latest single invites long-time friend and collaborator Laith Scherer and explores the nuances of a relationship as it changes over time and distance. A song of hushed yet heartfelt vignettes which rises toward an impassioned finale, providing snapshots of love in its various guises.

it’s okay
we carry our pain
in separate ways
on different days
but I’ll be there for you

Jeremy Squires – Drift

We’ve written about North Carolina native Jeremy Squires numerous times, an artist working in the American songwriting tradition of sharing heart and soul with generous helpings of grit and honesty. Ahead of a new album, slated for release later this year on Blackbird Record Label, Squires has unveiled a new single, ‘Drift’. It’s a song that finds him at his devastating best, built on just acoustic guitar, harmonica and vocals that quaver with both exhausted despondency and a steely inner strength. “I was sad,” he sings, “Now I’m lost / I forgot where I belong.”

Knuckle Pups – Soft Attraction

Ahead of their upcoming album, TV Ready, Denver “soda punk” outfit Knuckle Pups have unveiled single ‘Soft Attraction’. The track is an encapsulation of what such a genre entails, taking the fizzy energy of indie and adding an anarchic punk edge, though the songs are far from one-dimensional sugar rushes. Principle songwriter Oliver Holloway writes songs spread across the gamut of moods and tones, making room for earnest emotion and ironic playfulness within the same track, and as the new single shows, this often builds into triumphantly cathartic crescendos.

TV Ready is set for release sometime later this year.

Mouse – Pinned To An Avalanche

Based between Sunshine Coast and Brisbane, Mouse formed over a mutual appreciation of noisy DIY music, and thus set about making it themselves. The first single from forthcoming debut Here Was Then on Kitty Records, ‘Pinned to an Avalanche’ is all about escaping worry and doubt through some larger, consuming present, and Mouse oblige by recreating the descending wall of snow with their dense and hefty sound. Check out the video directed by the band and shot by Harley Jones:

Here Was Then will be released by Kitty Records later this year.

nudista – inasmuch

Next month sees the release of nudista’s Halfway Here EP on Sad Club Records, but in the meantime they have unveiled a new standalone single, ‘inasmuch’. The song is a great introduction to Pilar Matji Cabello and Robbie Carman’s work, a clarified dream pop which seeks to communicate directly and honestly. “It is a message to say that we are capable of evolving and moving forward even when it is scary,” as Cabello puts it, the gentle rhythmic pull drawing the listener close and compelling them onward.

Oceanator – Bad Brain Daze

April sees the return of Oceanator with Nothing’s Ever Fine, a brand new album on Polyvinyl Records and Big Scary Monsters which looks to build upon the apocalyptic themes of 2020’s Things I Never Said. Lead single ‘Bad Brain Daze’ typifies the duality of tenuous optimism and crushing pessimism which marks the record. The sound of existing within an unfolding disaster where the conclusion is still unclear, and nevertheless delivered with Elise Okusami’s characteristically triumphant energy. Check out the video directed by Chris Farren below:

Nothing’s Ever Fine is out on the 8th April via Polyvinyl Records and Big Scary Monsters and you can pre-order it now from the Oceanator Bandcamp page.

Sonic Løland – Up to You

Norwegian musician Anders Løland spent much of 2020 experimenting with styles and sounds, building up a library of ideas and demos which would form the basis of And Then The Sun Came Up, the debut album of his Sonic Løland project. Due for release this autumn via Koke Plate, the album shows off the full spectrum of Løland’s inspiration, creating a new brand of indie folk with ambient styles, electronic drums and rich 60s sensibilities, as shown by lead single, ‘Up to You’.

And Then The Sun Came Up will be released by Koke Plate this coming autumn.

Stephen Durkan – Prayer

Combining spoken word with electronic and ambient styles, Glasgow’s Stephen Durkan seems the latest in a long line of cynical Scottish preachers, bitter and sardonic yet bursting with a verbal energy. Written in collaboration with multi-instrumentalist/producer Niko O’Brien and released via Upcycled Sounds Records, his debut EP The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Ourselves both confirms and subverts this label. The anger and frustration are palpable, but beneath this lies something else. A flimsy belief in the continued value of critiquing the society in which we find ourselves, in imagining something new. Check out the first single ‘Prayer’ below:

Teen Idle – Burning

The music of Teen Idle might be an almost entirely solo endeavour recorded in a New Jersey basement, but you’d never guess it from the sound. For Sara Abdelbarry rejects the lo-fi aesthetics of many garage and bedroom acts for something more full-bodied. Take latest single, ‘Burning’, its rich sound featuring electric guitar, bass guitar, keys, synth, shaker, maracas, claps, lighter and sound effects all played by Abdelbarry, with only the drums delegated to Danny Murray. What emerges is an examination of unrequited love in all of its vivid detail, hope, bitterness and unabashed emotion rising into a huge climax.

I climbed up to the top alone
And watch the city burn below
If you won’t help me put her to rest
I’ll dig the hole by myself

The post Weekly Listening: Feb 2022 #3 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The idea feels pertinent in These Unprecedented Times, especially when faced with the slew of so-called prescient media. Movies about natural disasters and pandemics, TV shows of protest and violence. Music too, the singles from Protomartyr’s Ultimate Success Today emerging as though timed to fit into the news—disease, death, brutality. But to assign these pieces clairvoyance is to miss the point entirely. The end of the world is not some snap cataclysm. The writing has long been on the wall.

With its apocalyptic imagery and sense of lurking doom, Things I Never Said by Oceanator is another such example. The debut full-length of Elise Okusami, released by Plastic Miracles and Big Scary Monsters, is all the stranger for the fact it was recorded two years ago, delayed by label issues and other problems to eventually be released into a reality as close to its imagined world as we’ve ever witnessed. “There’s a crack in the world,” Okusami sings on a song of the same name. “and we’re all hanging on, hanging on trying not to fall through the void.”

Like the aforementioned Protomartyr record, Things I Never Said is album of endings. It’s there from the opening track, suitably titled ‘Goodbye, Goodnight’. The sense that a chance has been missed, the time for repairs and atonement somewhere in the rear-view. The presiding emotion of ‘A Crack in the World’ is the desertion of tangible answers. “It’s all as confusing as ever,” Okusami sings, “and every day adds something new.” That sense of progression has been lost, things are not destined to improve.

And I’m still trying my best
you know it keeps getting harder and harder every day
when you see the news on the TV, on the radio
but i’ll keep trying to keep the skies blue anyway

Where Oceanator stand apart is in how they choose to direct the energies of this dread. Protomartyr’s Joe Casey, the patron saint of us wry pessimists, finds no way out, but Okusami at least tries, if only to use the approaching dark to accentuate the remaining glimmers of light.  The chaotic rumble of ‘Hide Away’ retreats from the climate’s breakdown, but finds catharsis in the numbered days too. The runaway rhythm of ‘Heartbeat’ finds solace, even joy, in the presence of cherished relationships. As though in returning to the personal there might be some respite.

The cool taut motion of ‘I Would Find You’ goes further still, rising to the challenge of the end to promise compassion and unity in the face of the very worst. This spirit follows through the back half of the album with tracks like ‘Walk With You’, and culminates in ‘Sunshine’, the most positive and determined song on the record. Oceanator suggest that, though there may be no hope in the future, there can be hope in other things. In solidarity, in the present. In dreams if nothing else. And, like Baudrillard’s nightmares made real, who is to say that a strong enough dream, envisioned by enough people, might not come down to us?

Things I Never Said is out now via Plastic Miracles and Big Scary Monsters and is available from the Oceanator Bandcamp page in a variety of formats.

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Weakened Friends – Blue Again

Weakened Friends are a trio—Sonia Sturino, Annie Hoffman, and Cam Jones—from Portland, Maine. The band are readying their debut LP, Common Blah, a record that promises to deal with the Millennial despair that label Don Giovanni Records describe as “the feeling of being young, stuck, and settling for less,” through sheer catharsis. The outlet comes via heavy instrumentation and Sturino’s intense vocals, the band looking back at a whole host of bad feelings with the force of a hurricane.

Sturino says lead single ‘Blue Again’ is a song about “how tempting it can be to just follow suit and do what you think others would want from you, in art, life, careers, politics, etc., and all the insecurities, anxiety and feelings of worthlessness that can come with that.” It’s an angry yell in the face of expectations, and one that leaves us the listener feeling empowered, a determination to follow our own path, whatever that might be.

Common Blah is set fro release on the 19th October via Don Giovanni Records and you cab pre-order it from Bandcamp.

Primo! – You’ve Got a Million

Hailing from Melbourne, Primo! are a band who this summer put out a new full-length album, Amici. The trio favour a short, sharp brand of pop punk that nonetheless allows the vocals room to breathe. The result is a sound that dripping in attitude and energy that retains a lyrical clarity, an intersection between pop and punk that focuses not merely on making a racket or melodramatic sincerity, but rather something more interesting and sardonic and strange. Take ‘You’ve Got a Million’ as an example, fizzing into life and kicking into rhythm, the vocals having something of a mantra-like quality.

Primo Amici is out now via Upset the Rhythm an you can get it from Bandcamp.

HALEY –  Infinite Pleasure Part 2

HALEY is the new moniker of the artist you probably know as Haley Bonar. After 15 years of recording, Haley decided to drop her paternal surname (and legally change her name to Haley McCallum, her maternal family name). The decision was explained in detail in a post on Stereogum, but the important thing is that HALEY has a brand new album on the way. Pleasureland promises to be something of a change of direction, a stark and minimal album that features no vocals whatsoever.

Our first taste of the record is ‘Infinite Pleasure Part 2’, what Haley describes as “a requiem for a beautiful world. It represents death, chaos, capitalism, self-imprisonment, and the realization of the self through outer and inner turmoil.” If all that sounds rather grand then wait until you hear the song. HALEY proving that you don’t need a human voice to convey emotion as fuzzed-out guitar burns across the track’s shadowy background like a beacon, creating something as rich and epic as life itself.

Pleasureland is to be released via Memphis Industries on the 12th October, and you can pre-order it now via the HALEY Bandcamp page.

Doe – Heated

This autumn sees London three-piece Doe follow up their previous record, Some Things Last Longer than You, with a brand new full-length, Grow into It. So far we only have one single to go on, though all evidence points to another exercise in ultimately optimistic chaose. Indeed, the record itself aims to be the “antithesis of the overdone trope of male bands singing about rejecting adulthood and wanting to stay young and get wasted with their friends forever.” Instead, Doe confront aging with a sense of hope, what lead Nicola Leel describes as “finding light and freedom in age and finding autonomy in death.”

‘Heated’, the album’s first single, starts poised and tense, but eventually hits periods of pure unrestrained pop punk joy. Talking of which, the accompanying video, directed by Jack Barraclough , sees the band have lots of fun with paint and houseplants and lots of orange.

Grow into It will be released on Topshelf Records (US) and Big Scary Monsters (UK/EU). Pre-order it now via the Topshelf Bandcamp or BSM webstore!

internet boy crush – ghost friend

internet boy crush is a collaboration between Hector from Texas and Carlos from Caracas. Taking inspiration from the bedroom pop classics, the pair make an intimate sound shrouded in melancholy, late-night elegies for what is now lost. ‘ghost friend’ makes this clear, as lonely and intimate a song as you could ever wish to hear, taking on something of a lullabic quality, a hypnotic murmur in the dark.

‘ghost friend’ is available to download via Bandcamp now, and more material is due to be unveiled soon.

Kin Hana – You

Kin Hana is the solo recording project of Aaron Carroll Hodges. After ten years of recording under his own name and the moniker Longshoreman, Hodges has adopted Kin Hana, the name of his Japanese grandfather, a sailor who came to the US in the early 1900s. Hodges recently released a new album, Au Sable, via his own Black Meadow imprint, and ‘You’ is the record’s closing track. Fragile but strangely elemental, it sounds like soundtrack to shifting weather patterns, the ominous sense of an approaching storm. It’s not all gloom though, as Hodges’s vocals glimmering within the murk, lighting it up from the inside.

Au Sable is out now on Black Meadow and you can get it from Bandcamp.

Bodega – The Truth is Not Punishment

Bodega are a post-punk band from New York who, as the title of their latest album Endless Scroll might suggest, are keyed into the peculiar, soul-destroying world that is our own. Rather than facing this with hopelessness or sorrow, Bodega channel all of their fury and dissatisfaction into a frenetic flow, taking shots at anything and everyone who might deserve it, from the obviously soulless bodies of late-capitalism to the banal attempts at protest that end up forming just another boneless arm of the many-tentacled beast. Closing track ‘The Truth is Not Punishment’ is a perfect example of the playful and cutting style, the tone falling somewhere between furious, bemused and sarcastic.

“I visited my mother in a Tampa Bay complex
Klonopin and vodka all day
She was pulling on bottles
No pull to eat
Strapped inside of cathode rays
What was most sad of all is that you didn’t want to leave your imprisonment
You said that ‘I’m happy’
I was arrogant I said that you weren’t”

Endless Scroll is out now and you can get it from the Bodega Bandcamp page.

The Cordial Sins – Not Enough

Based out of Columbus, Ohio, The Cordial Sins combine riot grrrl energy with shoegaze soundscapes and 00s indie rock tendencies. Amidst this lay Liz Fisher’s vocals, equally comfortable in nostalgic croon or impassioned yell, as displayed on new single ‘Not Enough’. The track is more atmospheric and grand than much of their previous release, Only Human, forming something of an anthem by the close and forming a considered exploration of human connection and the search thereof. Still, the newly soaring sound does not negate a sense of intimacy and personality, meaning The Cordial Sins achieve the best of both worlds.

‘Not Enough’ is out now and you can find more info from The Cordial Sins webpage.

Upstairs – Trust the Process

Working out of Cincinnati, Upstairs are something akin to what might result if Protomartyr and Parquet Courts were placed in a blender—a verbose brand of indie rock that can’t quite decide between cynical detachment and sincere shouting. Latest album Our Ass is in the Jackpot Now displays an impressive range of styles and sounds, though its closer ‘Trust the Process’ that best captures the Upstairs spirit, a frantically wordy sermon that veers between hip sing-speak and momentous outpouring, all the while weaving a lyrical monologue that is as urgent as it is amusing.

Our Ass is in the Jackpot Now is out now and you can get it from the Upstairs Bandcamp page.

Fanclub – Leaves

Fanclub are a trio from Austin who make music that combines the heartfelt songwriting of Jay Som or Anna Burch and adorns it with dreamily retro electronics, creating pop that sparkles and shimmers like a valentine-pink neon billboard. Their debut single, ‘Leaves’ displays these traits perfectly, Leslie Crunkilton’s vocals the perfect accompaniment to the honey sweet synths and blissful dream pop guitar, creating a song that sounds like a nostalgically fuzzy digital embrace.

You can buy ‘Leaves’ now from the Fanclub Bandcamp page.

Con Davison – Talk

Having been a drummer for various recording projects like Bad Bad Hats and Dreamspook, Minneapolis’ Con Davison has decided to start recording music on his own terms. Set for release this autumn, Far Off Distant Plans is his debut solo EP, wresting back full control and allowing for a process of artistic self-actualisation that has been a long time coming. New single ‘Talk’ gives some idea as to what shape this might take, a half-paced and expressive brand of indie pop that kicks into insistent rhythms, changes of tone that signal the emergence of a sense of earnestness. Therefore, while remaining fun, the Con Davison sound displays a far wider range, ticking all the boxes within a sweet three minute croon.

Far Off Distant Plans will be released on the October 19th so keep an eye on the Con Davison Bandcamp page for more info.

Our Fastest Typist – It’s Nice Outside, but My Head is Killing Me

Our Fastest Typist is an indie rock multi-instrumentalist from Austin, Texas. Their latest album, Group Therapy For Imaginary Monsters was released last month, a collection of songs that draw on influences both classic (see Bowie and The Rolling Stones) and contemporary (fans of Car Seat Headrest will find a lot to like). Ranging from the intimate bedroom pop of ‘The Day Vacation Saved My Life’, to 11+ minute rock epic ‘Imaginary Monsters (Go to Heaven)’.

The standout is second single, ‘It’s Nice Outside, but My Head is Killing Me’, all grainy lo-fi guitar and witty but affecting lyrics. It’s a song about it being sunny outside but feeling cloudy on the inside, and captures nicely how Our Fastest Typist confronts worries and bad feelings with liberating indie rock.

Group Therapy for Imaginary Monsters is out now and you can get it from Bandcamp.

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I don’t know a whole lot more about them apart from the fact that they have an EP coming out, Four Priests, and you can hear the songs on their Soundcloud page. Also BSM are giving away a 6 track smapler featuring the title track of the EP along with a new Kevin Devine song amongst others. Download it here.

The post Algiers – Four Priests appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Pick up the album and a t-shirt here.

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