I wrote a brief piece about Josh Scott’s Aero Flynn a few weeks back after reading some words by Field Report’s Chris Porterfield. The letter/essay (which you can read here) painted Scott as a supremely talented musician and songwriter and spoke of the self-titled Aero Flynn album as “quite seriously a life-or-death record” which should be heard as “a spit in the fucking face of the symptoms of disease, like rot and destruction and apathy and cynicism”. Given how much I respect Porterfield’s work, this sort of language got me excited.

The album begins with ‘Plates2’, a restrained track of gentle synths and countrified electric guitars, not a million miles away from Porterfield’s Field Report, while ‘Twist’, which brings to mind Radiohead, solidifies Scott’s subdued vocal delivery. ‘Dk/Pi’ opens with electronics backed by an ambient hum, the spacey bleeps and bloops of Spencer Krug’s Moonface layered on top of something older and less clear. Shambling drums kick in to create a sound akin to The War on Drugs, Scott’s dreamy vocals drifting through the nebulous arrangement with a delicacy that suggests impermanence, as if the sonic environment threatens to consume him. As the song progresses the instrumentation disintegrates, distorting into reverby fuzz and then a confused white noise before blinking out to leave a large cosmic swelling. This is an electrical anxiety, a malfunction in which communication is lost and isolation complete, Scott a lone astronaut surrounded by planetary screams and an airless dark.

The beginning of ‘Crisp’ is gentler but not without threat, an acoustic strum peppered with glitches which suggest the calm is a façade, a veil under which reside wrung hands and sharp edges. “Can I feel you?” Scott inquires over and over, one of many pleas for connection on the album, leaving the listener to wonder if he’s speaking to an individual or humankind as a whole. Or perhaps it’s just to himself in the mirror. Again the track unravels, the introduction of more prominent synths morphing in the final minutes into another hostile environment, a tumultuous sea or some geomagnetic storm that swallows Scott and drags him further from whatever he is trying to find.

Aero Flynn is at once urgent and suspended, trapped between fight and flight in anxiety’s masterful double bind. “I’m so afraid of everybody else” he sings on ‘Tree’, a stuttering electro-pop song, while even ‘Floating’, a soaring track that’s all blue skies and wide open vistas, is permeated with a sense of dislocation, as if the freedom is not his to own. ‘Maker’ sounds like a Broken Social Scene track where lonely sadness is presented as matter-of-fact, at least until the end where Scott utters a single word (a word I can’t quite make out – Home? Whole?) in a way which sounds like the genuine emotion breaking through, a yelp of helplessness or cry for mercy held back or choked out after the first syllable.

‘Brand New’ feels like a crescendo of sorts, a move away from the futuristic electronics that bring to mind space’s dark void in favour of something more organic, a swelling Precambrian atmosphere where conditions are harsh and life is scarce but maybe not for long. Closer ‘Moonbeams’, a piano led track with elements of The National’s slower work, provides no such epiphany. Slow and nervous and sorrowful, the last track again casts Scott as the outlying astronaut looking back at Earth, the final waves of instrumentation mimicking the beautiful, heart-breaking joy of realising you are but the tiniest of specks subject to the largest of forces beyond your control.

This is not an album in which the emotional arc is self-contained and easily mappable. Instead the record feels like a part of a wider narrative, Scott’s story, the illness and suffering and terror that Porterfield alludes to in his piece. The redemption does not begin with an epiphany on track seven and end with clear-eyed certainty. The redemption is the very fact that Scott is creating words and sounds, that he is letting others know where he is and how he is and why he is. The album is the flare of hope hanging in the night sky, burning bright and incandescent.

Aero Flynn is out now on Ooh La La Records (and Dine Alone Records in Canada).

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“The songs were better. The ideas were grander. The subject matter weirder. The narrators more honest and articulate. The frontman more compelling. The potential greater. Amateur Love were and remain the best band I have ever seen.”

Indeed, Justin Vernon re-released the Amateur Love record It’s All Aquatic on his label Chigliak, and in his description of the album he writes about Scott and himself occupying the Eau Claire scene and admiring one another’s music. “It was obvious to both of us, however,” he says, “who the better writer was.”

For whatever reason, Scott did not experience the same success that was bestowed on Vernon and the others. While Bon Iver, Megafaun, Peter Wolf Crier and Field Report have all achieved some degree of exposure and acclaim, things did not work out for Scott:

“Josh watched it all from Chicago and did nothing. Everyone tried to encourage him… He had opportunities for record deals. He had another supergroup of who’s-who indie rock royalty assembled for him… He got spooked again and went underground.”

You can read the rest of Porterfield’s piece here (and I suggest you do. It’s powerful, candid and sincere) but the important part is the conclusion that Scott wrote and recorded an album as Aero Flynn. While, as ever in life, things have not gone swimmingly since, Porterfield is convinced that the record is important:

“I believe that this record, this long-awaited record, is quite seriously a life-or-death record. Josh had to make it to stay alive. And it must be heard in the context of deferred health, deferred relationships, deferred dreams, deferred healing. As spit in the fucking face of the symptoms of disease, like rot and destruction and apathy and cynicism.”

This is something I feel strongly about. Many of the attempts to conquer the resulting apathy/cynicism in art come off as frilly and saccharine and vapid, avalanches of pure, distilled sincerity that are nothing more than irony in a different guise, a well cloaked nudge in the ribs (see: some of the Alt Lit guys). A “spit in the fucking face” sounds clear. If Aero Flynn sees Scott stand his ground and face things head on, this could be one special record.

The self-titled album will be released on the 10th March by Ooh La La Records. You can download ‘Dk/Pi’ now via the Aero Flynn website.

EDIT: You can now read our review of Aero Flynn here.

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I’ve reproduced all of this from his Bandcamp page because it feels a suitable way to convey my thoughts on the album. Much of the garage/indie rock on Bandcamp is quick and loose, glorious in it’s sloppiness, the transient goodtime of a laidback slacker summer encapsulated in lo-fi music. The name (vaguely summer-y) and artwork (quite summer-y) meant that I judged this as another of those albums. What I found was something different. Something tighter, more careful. Something that seems a labour of love rather than a throwaway let’s-have-a-good-time-while-we-are-alive pop-punk record.

The result is what I’d imagine a genetic experiment involving Justin Vernon and Josh Arnoudse (of You Won’t) might produce. Heartfelt lo-fi rock with a folky edge, songs simple enough to sing along to but nuanced enough to demand you return.

(If I sound like I’m waxing lyrical then I don’t much care).

The album was released on tape via Thundercloud Records, although that was back in April and they have all been sold. Blame us for being so late. You can instead pick up a digital copy for whatever you can afford right here.

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Opener ‘Seasons (Waiting On You)’ is the lead single from the album, and has a nice video courtesy of director Jay Buim –  a visual slice of modern day Americana, shot on location in the Great Plains. It’s a really great track, the band’s trademark heartfelt new-wave with a belter of a chorus. I’m no tastemaker, but I can’t help but feel it could prove a popular hit, particularly as summer (and festival season) comes calling.

A second track has also been given the video treatment, this time album closer ‘A Dream Of You And Me’, which has this amazing stop-motion video courtesy of Elena Johnston and William Cashion.

Singles is out on the 25th of March, pre-order it now via 4AD.

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The album opens with the brief ‘A Fog’ in which Lacey declares, “Your hearts a strong thing / That you’ve learned nothing about”. This line proves an early taste of the lyrical nature of the album, which comes across as Lacey’s latenight thoughts, vague questions and accusations, pleas and promises and confessions.

‘Home’ opens with a music-box melody and blossoms into a beautiful slice of dream pop. The beat picks up and adds an urgency to the chorus line of, “They see their father’s eyes / When the sun comes up he promises that they’ll be alright”. As I said last time, the horns during the finale seem to herald bigger things, a jump in scope and ambition, the product of an extremely talented musician hitting his stride. This is also apparent in the instrumentation elsewhere on the album, for example, the instrumental ‘Heart//What if This Were It?’ sounds cinematic, like the soundtrack to a tragic finale of a movie.

‘Stranger’ opens with these lonely, floating atmospherics before the onset of a really nice guitar melody. Yes it’s a sad song, but it’s not a typical syrupy dirge, it has a groove, the sort of hip swaying melancholy of later Bon Iver releases. Again the lyrics offer fragments of isolation and self-doubt.

Another of my favourites is ‘Time’ which opens with a simple mournful piano which repeats and repeats, becoming almost hypnotic by the time it fades out at the end. Lacey delivers the vocals.

It sounds like r&b minus the swagger, the masculine posturing. It’s more concerned with existential angst than beautiful girls and trite professions of love. But that’s not to say that Their Bodies in a Fog is simply cynical and pessimistic navel gazing. Lacey certainly wears his heart on his sleeve, this is one of the most earnest albums I’ve heard for a long time. But it never becomes too much, presumably because, as the listener, we feel that he’s telling the truth. The angst on show is real and sincere, and I think we can all relate to that.

You can get Their Bodies in a Fog as a pay-what-you-like digital download via Bandcamp, or on limited run cassette tape via Orchid Tapes.

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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.

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Light Shadows comprises of four songs that are not direct representations of the event, but rather products of the ruminations and realisations that Samson has faced in the months following his loss. Fans of Ólafur Arnalds or the later Bon Iver stuff will love it.

You can listen to it now at the bottom of the Fluid Radio post I mentioned earlier.

Also, check out the video for ‘Rusting Giants’ below:

Buy Light Shadows via Karaoke Kalk here.

P.S. Samson has also been working in collaboration with producer Tom Demac. Tomorrow (5th Nov), the pair release a double A-side single, It Grows Again. It’s rather different from Samson’s solo work, but very nice all the same. Listen on Soundcloud via AUS Music here.

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Tracklisting:

1. I’m Going Down (Bruce Springsteen Cover) – Vampire Weekend
2. Weird Sisters (Sparklehorse Cover) – LØZNINGER
3. Chiamami Adesso (Paolo Conte Cover) – Julia Holter
4. When Rosa Speaks (Pickwick Cover) – Kevin Long
5. Woody (Hayden Cover) – Winter Makes Sailors
6. Cheers (Blake Mills Cover) – Floating Action
7. The Park (Feist Cover) – Anna Scouten
8. Momma You’ve Been On My Mind (Bob Dylan) – Matthew Ryan
9. Reason To Believe (Tim Hardin Cover) – Horse Feathers
10. You Can Call Me Al (Paul Simon Cover) – Colossal Gospel
11. Kiss Me (Sixpence None The Richer Cover) – Mikal Cronin
12. Holocene (Bon Iver) – Rounak Maiti
13. One Day At a Time (Willie Nelson Cover) – Pure X
14. Back Home Again (John Denver Cover) – Low
15. Ultraviolence (New Order Cover) – Seekae
16. The Eagle And The Hawk (John Denver Cover) – Bonnie “Prince” Billy
17. Asa (Bry Webb Cover) – Denison Witmer
18. Rust or Gold (Jill Andrews Cover) – Jeremy Squires
19. In The Aeroplane Over The Sea (Neutral Milk Hotel Cover) – Clem Snide
20. Thinking About You (Radiohead Cover) – Hezekiah Jones
21. Surrender (Cheap Trick Cover) – Frightened Rabbit
22. The River (Bruce Springsteen Cover) – Josh Ritter

You know the drill, please support these artists. Go and buy some records, see a show, get a t-shirt, anything to enable them to keep making music.

Previous covers mixes: Volume I, II, III, IV, V, VI and VII

The Covers Mix: Volume #8 from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

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Carey’s new EP, entitled Hoyas, is a slight departure from the sound of his debut, feeling a little more experimental and increasing the use of electronics. That isn’t to say it lacks the natural completeness of All We Grow, it’s just a different sonic take on the idea. It’s true that the synths and use of the dreaded auto-tune may put some people off, especially those who dislike Justin Vernon’s transformation from melancholic folky to Kanye-collaborating Grammy winner, but they certainly don’t detract from the EP. It’s a bold move and one which shows an artist unafraid to venture into new sounds. I for one am excited to see where S. Carey goes next.

Hoyas is available now from Jagjaguwar.

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