“Highlights how grand need not equate to ostentatious.” So we wrote of ‘Cartwheels For Coins‘, a recent single from Way Through by Cici Arthur, the new collaboration between Toronto artists Joseph Shabason, Chris A. Cummings and Thom Gill. “Because for all of the richness of the [project’s] sound, there’s a grounded quality to it too. A kind of attention to detail which allows each track to become its own little slice of life.” With the album out now via Western Vinyl, Cici Arthur are back with the opener and title track as a final single. The perfect encapsulation of the record’s ability to exist as something both cinematic Technicolor and drably human. “What good are dead ends when I’m looking for a way through?” as Cummings sings. ““When the miracle you’d hoped for never comes it’s hard to take, but it’s your fault for hoping.”

Way Through is out now via Western Vinyl and you can get it from Bandcamp.

Dusty Lucite – Old Feelings (feat. D. Crane)

Led by H.L Stratton-Kuhta, Portland, Oregon-based indie outfit Dusty Lucite reach across a whole myriad of genres to bring to life a sound as colourful and idiosyncratic as it is fun. Latest album Normal Harder serves as the ideal introduction for the uninitiated, pitching the listener into a singular world carved from psych-inflected pop and folk. The album is something of a grab bag, mixing raucous garage rock numbers with sedate, dreamy croons, and thus no one single can quite capture the experience, but standout ‘Old Feelings’ is perhaps the best place to dive in. It’s a song which embodies both the playful spirit and emotional depth of the Dusty Lucite sound, enlisting D. Crane (of BOAT, Unlikely Friends) to add to the swirl of melancholic contemplation.

Normal Harder is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Dwi Riana x Julie Meunier – Elsewhere

Back in 2023, songwriters Dwi Riana and Julie Meunier teamed up for single ‘World War X‘. “An exchange between lovers which begins as a seemingly innocuous conversation but ratchets up with every sentence,” as we wrote, “soon precipitating into an argument which draws the relationship’s tensions out into the open.” Now the pair have reunited for brand new track ‘Elsewhere’. What they describe as “a love song for winter,” the single celebrates those cold days that send you into cosy refuge, as well as the self-reflective peace which descends along with the snow. “When it snows here in Toronto, I can’t help but think of where I come from,” Dwi Riana explains. “As each snowflake chaotically float along in the air, I think about all the little choices I’ve made in life to end up here.”

‘Elsewhere’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Eli Carvajal – Fear of Love

Across a number of albums, London-based songwriter Eli Carvajal has made a name with a markedly unguarded, earnest style, combining folk and pop sensibilities into something at once playful, curious and heartfelt. Following on from 2024 release Eat Shiitake Now, Carvajal is kicking off 2025 with a new single ‘Fear of Love’. It’s a song of two halves which emerged from a period of transition which in turn suggests his next direction. “The first [half] came in March 2022, isolated at home in Watford, aching to start a new life in Japan,” as Carvajal explains. “The second came a year later in Higashikitazawa, Tokyo, surfacing for air after a year afraid. This is a bridge between my last life and this one, my last album and the next. Hydrangeas were harmed.”

Fime – Better Half of a Dollar

Having made waves with 2019 EP Sprawl, the rise of Fime was in many ways derailed just as it was beginning, the LA outfit suffering the consequences of 2020 and everything that time brought with it. A period of mourning and self-reflection followed, before they teamed up with Melina Duterte (Jay Som) to record full-length Sweeter Memory, an album which grappled with nostalgia as the bittersweet, counterproductive force it can so often be. With this context in mind, new single ‘Better Half of a Dollar’ feels like the dawning of a new era. One which has decided to lift itself from beneath the past and all of its unrealised dreams to contend with the present on its own terms. A song as searing and intense as anything Fime have written to date, with lead Beto Brakmo declining the temptation to retreat into nostalgia, instead staring the precarious, volatile present dead in the eye and refusing to blink.

Watch the video directed by Hailey Ruffner below:

‘Better Half of a Dollar’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Leoblu – livingroomfloor

“An indie pop song filtered through a digital prism, it combines synths, beats and Carlsson’s signature vocals to create something at once emotional and oddly mesmerising.” So we wrote of ‘PEACHES’ by Åland-born, Berlin-based producer Leoblu last year, the song continuing the artist’s willingness to test genre expectations to reach new ground. Latest single ‘livingroomfloor’ is no different, evoking the intimate space of its title to explore the immediate experience of love, Leoblu creating a beguiling pop soundscape which is at once grounded and ethereal, alluring and strange. “Love is full of contradictions,” as Leoblu puts it. “It can be overwhelming yet fragile, euphoric yet filled with doubt. ‘livingroomfloor’ is about letting yourself feel it all, and trying to stay present in these feelings.”

‘livingroomfloor’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Mumble Tide – Pea Soup

“Grounds both the style and theme of the album, offering a sound undeniably sad yet reaching towards something more uplifting.” That’s how we described ‘Mawpao’ from Mumble Tide‘s forthcoming full-length Might As Well Play Another One on Breakfast Records. The song typified a release written as duo Gina Leonard and Ryan Rogers moved through a break-up to genuine friendship. Latest single ‘Pea Soup’ embraces this space in all of its contradictions, juxtaposing bright power pop tones with morose bedroom pop reflection to emerge with a picture of a moment with all the dark, light and undecided future left intact. “‘Pea Soup’ is one big lumpy splurge, Leonard explains, “scribbled down on a hot day hiding away in my bedroom. It’s a bit of throwback to OG Mumble Tide with a chorus too big to slurp in one go.”

Watch the video by Mumble Tide, with colour and title card by Steph Dutton, below:

Might As Well Play Another One will be released via Breakfast Records on the 1st May and you can pre-order it now from the Mumble Tide Bandcamp page.

naya mö – reverb boy

We’ve featured a number of singles from naya mö‘s forthcoming debut EP Dealing With Ghosts in recent months, with ‘wanderlust‘ “draw[ing] on the grunge and alt-pop of the nineties and the soaring indie rock of the mid 00s [to create] something that sparkles with possibility despite being coated in gritty fuzz and shadowy reverb” and ‘outsider‘ “tap[ping] into a gauzy shoegaze style to create an enveloping sense of loneliness, though [one] charged with enough energy to face this darkness with a steely defiance.” Latest track ‘reverb boy’ continues the dreamy aesthetic to offer a picture of the titular character—a figure adrift from everything yet able to make his voice heard around the world. “The EP is about the ghosts that haunt my mind and body—good and bad, dark and light, love and fear,” Mö explains. “Shadows of memories, ideas, regret, and people linger in my head. I wrote songs about them and drenched them in distortion, reverb, and fuzz.”

‘reverb boy’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Palmyra – Arizona

Emerging from the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, Palmyra is a folk rock outfit consisting of trio Teddy Chipouras, Mānoa Bell and Sasha Landon. Next month sees the release of new full-length album Restless on Hey Boy Records, and the band have shared new single ‘Arizona’. Described as “a little dose of summer in the dead of winter,” the song evokes the affirming joy of a road trip with a fresh, vivid Americana style, where everyday worries seem to evaporate within the languid rhythms of easy forward motion. “I was in a haze in Arizona come back won’t it come back,” as the opening lines detail:

Hours felt like days and I was happy for the first time in a while
I was at a payphone in Sedona calling someone falling
Up over my head and back to Boston leave me in the desert please

Leave me open
Arizona

Restless is out on the 28th March via Hey Boy Records and you can pre-order it now.

Triathalon – RIP

It is not every day you come across an album built around the maxim ‘play this at my funeral,’ but Triathalon’s forthcoming full-length Funeral Music is exactly that. The New York trio (Adam Intrator, Chad Chilton and Hunter Jayne) thought long and hard about what might soundtrack their respective requiems when writing their fifth record, and the result is perhaps their darkest and most unguarded collection of songs to date. Ahead of its release in May on Lex Records, Triathlon have shared single ‘RIP’ to give an indication of the mood. A song so shadowy and dramatic is sounds almost sublime. “The aim for ‘RIP’ was to kick start feelings on what it felt like to listen to a late 90s rock song for the first time as a kid in your parents car in the backseat and asking to hear it louder,” as Intrator explains. “‘RIP’ has a double meaning; it’s about both dying and being reborn.”

Wishy – Fly

Back in January we featured ‘Planet Popstar’, a single by Wishy from the Triple Seven sessions which saw Kevin Krauter’s vocals “[land] somewhere between impassioned and laconic, while supporting harmonies from Nina Pitchkites work to leaven the heavy thicket of guitar to create something almost ethereal,” as we wrote. “And this otherworldly tone is a fitting match for the track’s themes, something of a message beamed into space into the hope it might be received, no matter how far away from earth the recipient might be.” The Indianapolis outfit have now announced the Planet Popstar EP, coming this spring on Winspear, and latest single ‘Fly’ is everything fans of the band have come to love. This time Pitchkites takes lead vocals for a song that looks to move beyond heartbreak with a mix of affirming energy and wistful longing.

Someday, babe, I don’t wanna feel the way
I don’t need to know the taste
Of not being with you

Watch the video below, filmed by Wishy themselves with editing, color grading and title card by Bobby Sheppard:

Planet Popstar is out on the 25th April via Winspear and you can pre-order it now.

The post Weekly Listening: February 2025 #4 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

January was a bit of a scrappy month in terms of regular posts, but we still managed to cover some excellent artists. Why not catch up with any you missed with this tailor-made mixtape? Click the artist names in the tracklist to be whisked off to the review.

Tracklist:

1. Jesus in the 70s – Siskiyou
2. 2 Broke 2 Old – Gorgeous Bully
3. Another Way To Go – Adeline Hotel
4. Scene Sick – Diet Cig
5. Dog Burial Theme – Dicktations
6. Up the Academy – Mike Pace and the Child Actors
7. Con/ A Sewer/A Cat – Amateur Love
8. The End is a Vicious Thing – Puzzlecuts
9. Manic Pixie Dream Girl – Furnsss
10. Party Girls – Gleemer
11. Soft Reputation – Unlikely Friends
12. Passing Through – Harley Alexander
13. Coward’s Luck – Hip Hatchet
14. Memphis – The Wandering Lake
15. How a Resurrection Really Feels – The Hold Steady
16. Fire in My Eyes – Yours Are The Only Ears
17. Traffic is Okay – Sitcom
18. Gold & Rose – Dear Sister

Also make sure you check out our mammoth collection of our Favourite ‘Free’ Music of 2014. Finally, if you enjoy long, rambling pieces that try and draw connections between my favourite music and my favourite books, check out this piece on The Hold Steady’s Separation Sunday (Craig Finn said he enjoyed it, so it carries his stamp of approval).

January 2015 Roundup from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

The post January 2015 Roundup – A Mixtape appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“We are trying to make the ultimate pop album….Charles has got a really good voice…and I sound like a muppet….so it is kind of a Paul Simon and Kermit the Frog-funkel feel. We each wrote half of the 13 songs for SOLID GOLD COWBOYS. 6.5 for each of us…he wrote lyrics on one of my songs, and I on one his.”

In a way, Solid Gold Cowboys deals with the same sort of issues that Mike Pace described on his recent album Best Boy, comparing golden dreams with the insipid reality. But whereas Pace was singing with a longing for the promises of the 80s/90s, Unlikely Friends are more concerned with the present, singing about the banality of modern existence in a land where the Good Ol’ American Dream is a plastic model of an empty smile. This is captured perfectly in the first song, ‘Ride off into the Sunset’, where a normal man harbours dreams of cowboy freedom:

“I’m a twenty-first century American male,
I make a wheezing sound when I exhale,
I’ve got a supercharged chevy that I built myself,
it sits in my garage and has a musty smell.”

‘Soft Reputation’, the lead single, continues this trend with a video that manages to capture the essence of America with a compilation of baseball clips and adverts, a mixture of silly details and the very real glory of victory. This focus on silly but relatable details is a feature of the album (e.g. ‘Pizza Crust Trust’ – “you ate all of the pizza, except for the crust”), as are comments on the unsatisfying freedom felt by middle-class Americans (e.g. ‘Golden Telephone’ – “You can go anywhere that you want, there’s nothing here you really need”).

Of course, with this type of music the lyrics are only there for those who really want to listen. Others will sit back and bathe in the feel-good vibes. ‘Satellite Station’ and ‘Golden Telephone’ are breezy summer hits, shoegaze numbers with the fuzz removed, ‘Please Lorraine’ a big catchy love song with the melodramatic power-pop refrain, “Please Lorraine, pick up the pieces, make them whole again”. ‘Gold Hills Theme’ adds a spaghetti Western jangle (a hole in the pop market, I believe) and closer ‘Gold Coat Marauders’ again pines for a vision of America that has disappeared or maybe never existed. “Pull me up, dust me down and take me to the place where I thought I was from”.

You can grab the the cassette from Mirror Universe Tapes, the CD from Jigsaw Records or download a digital copy from the Unlikely Friends Bandcamp page.

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Dawn and Armando are now married and play together in a band called The Tallest Tree. You can hear their first single, ‘Tree’ right now.

youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qbjWpXgty8

The post The Tallest Tree – Boat appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The title is taken from The Pharmacist’s Mate by Amy Fusselman, where she is describing that almost miraculous nature of music. She sums up by saying:

“And how even though the vibrations are invisible, I can feel them in the air. I can feel them, they are there, they are as there as I am.”

A song is a strange thing. The way in which the writer captures it and builds it up to what we find on our records and CDs is unique to each artist. A whole host of changes are possible from that first spark of inspiration, be it a certain lyric or series of notes. What we hear on studio albums may be an evolved version of the original. It may have been sped up or toned down, altered to sit with the other nine or ten songs with which it shares the album. Conversely, what we hear during live performance may itself be the evolved state, an shift of empahsis or tone to better suit the context.

Whatever changes occur, live songs are different to their recorded counterparts, and this mix contains songs that are different and/or special when performed live. Sometimes there are obvious differences from the recorded track (such as the frenzied ending to ‘Wolves’ by Phosphorescent) and other times it is subtler, increased emphasis on just a word or two. Sometimes there is nothing obviously different apart from some sense of  purity, something organic in the single take delivery.

I’m sure even the most seasoned concert goer will be able to point to two or three moments where a live song somehow transcended normal experience, becoming something so inherently personal it’s hard to believe others were in the room. For me, great art is about the trading of emotions to some empathetic goal, the artist allowing the listener/viewer into themselves to see something pure, something to which everyday labels and descriptions do an injustice. In truly great art, seeing inside another is not fascinating in a some voyeuristic way but instead because it stirs a recognition in the listener. The indescribable feelings within us are given voice, they are painted for us by the artist and shared so that others can see. In this way, the song becomes as much about us as it is about the artist (something which much prove difficult for musicians, which is another debate entirely).

Adam wrote about his choices for the mix in his own blog post, so be sure to go and check that out too.

Hopefully the tracks below contain some sort of spark, that indesribable magic that Fusselman describes.

I Can Feel Them In The Air (Wake The Deaf Side):

1. A Few Kind Words (Live at the Queen’s Hall) – Meursault
2. Tapes (Live at WMSE) – Conrad Plymouth
3. When My Time Comes (Live at the R&R) – Dawes
4. Dead Letter & the Infnite Yes (iTunes Session) – Wintersleep
5. Lately (Live on KEXP) – BOAT
6. Something, Somewhere, Sometime (Daytrotter Session) – Ben Sollee
7. Last to Swim (Weekender Session) – Strand of Oaks
8. Medication – Damien Jurado
9. Mountain Song (Live in Munich) – Evening Hymns
10. Red (Live at Schubas) – Okkervil River
11. Allahu Akbar (Daytrotter Session) – Emperor X
12. The Twist (Quietly Now) – Frightened Rabbit
13. Wolves – Phosphorescent
14. Blood Bank (Live at Glastonbury) – Bon Iver
15. Wasp Nest (Black Session) – The National
16. Jeanne, If You’re Ever in Portland (Daytrotter Session) – Casiotone for the Painfully Alone
17. Down in the Valley (Live on KEXP) – The Head and the Heart
18. Wake (Live at the Bowery Ballroom) – The Antlers
19. First Night (A Positive Rage) – The Hold Steady
20. Robots (Live at Shorefest) – Dan Mangan

I Can Feel Them In The Air (Songsfortheday side):

1. Years/Cleo’s Song (Daytrotter Session) – JBM
2. Grown Ocean – Fleet Foxes
3. Ghost of the Beast – Kelli Schaefer
4. Ocean Open Wide – Hoots & Hellmouth
5. First Sight – These United States
6. Nobody But You – Langhorne Slim
7. Yellow (Piano Version) – Coldplay
8. Blackout (a capella) – Pickwick
9. Everything Trying (Fuel/Friends Chapel Session) – Night Beds
10. I Won’t Be Found – The Tallest Man on Earth
11. To Sing For You/Brand New Colony – Ben Gibbard
12. Kathleen (Live from Dublin Castle) – Josh Ritter
13. Outfit – Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit
14. Acuff-Rose – Jeff Tweedy
15. Catapult – Counting Crows
16. Evening Kitchen – Band of Horses
17. Always on My Mind – Iron & Wine/Calexico
18. Born to Run – Bruce Springsteen
19. Since I Fell For You (ft. Mike Noyce & Justin Vernon) – Eau Claire Memorial Jazz I
20. I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me) – Jay-Z

You can find both mixes here as a collection.

The post Wake The Deaf & Songsfortheday Present: I Can Feel Them In The Air appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The lyrics often deal with real life issues but in a real real life way (if that makes any sense). Most artists dealing with ‘real life’ focus on the dark and painful bits, which is all well and good, but there is another side to ‘real life’ that is usually ignored, a sense of humour in the ordinary. For me, the songs and stories that BOAT’s D. Crane shares in his music explore this side of life in the way certain indie film directors would, a picture of normal people going about normal lives, something that I find very effective. For example, in ‘Lately’ from 2009’s Setting The Paces he sings: ’I was eating nachos, sitting with my mother, talking about nothing, talking about growing up in New Jersey.’ You can just imagine this being a scene in a Phil Morrison or crazier Aaron Katz movie.

Their new album, Pretend To Be Brave, looks to continue this style, at least superficially. The familiar bounce and carefree delivery is still apparent, but the lyrics are often deceptively morose. The first single ‘Inside an Aquarium’, a song about traffic accidents, reads: ’You cried when you realised it was good just to be alive.’ It’s weird, because even writing the words ‘a song about traffic accidents’ makes me think of melodrama and overwrought lyrics but this is the opposite. It’s the thoughts of a generally optimistic person singing about all of life, the good bits, the bad bits and everything in between. It’s the middle ground between ‘life-as-a-party’ and ‘life-as-a-struggle’ pop music (otherwise known as ‘reality’). It’s sloppy fun that is anything but whimsical. It’s brilliant.

You can pre-order the new album on Magic Marker Records.

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