The track was just the first of what promises to be a steady stream throughout the summer, and now Tough Old Bird have returned with its successor, ‘Shape of Our Love’. Continuing to display the newly electrified version of the project, the track sees the Corrigans and co. straddle the traditional and the contemporary, maintaining the narrative and emotional heft of classic folk while always striding forwards. With a central protagonist reflecting on their life, the mood is at once poignant and affirming, seeming to possess the kind of wisdom only earned through a life well lived yet in no way insulated from the raw tenderness such existence brings. “I brought a few things from my real life into this song—the moment I met my wife, the old house we live in and the little traces of everyone who inhabited the space before us,” Nathan Corrigan explains. “I think the character in the song is looking back over their life without judgment. It’s as if you could speak to the people who live in your house after you’re gone and say, ‘this is what I did and didn’t accomplish, here’s what I thought was important at the time.’”

When I occasionally ventured out
I would tend to avoid the crowds
Mostly sat and watched the clouds floating above
The first time her eyes met mine
I was lifted out of space and time
Try as I may, I could not define the shape of our love

The post Tough Old Bird – Shape Of Our Love appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Opener ‘magnet’ begins with a hesitant wistfulness, unfurling gently and slowly to a warm ambient hum. The mood is crepuscular, late evening or early morning, the air shot pink and dusky and moved by sedate breeze. ‘crying in the carwash’ is altogether darker, though no less colourful, a dream walk through a neon-city, where a persistent sense of sadness follows at arm length. With it’s empathetic take on melancholy, the track conjures Broken Social Scene’s  ‘Anthem for a Seventeen Year-Old’, the sense of loss almost it’s own comfort, a blanket within which to warm before the future rewards you with something better.

‘anthem for healing’ takes a more expansive approach, a song of self-empowerment that rises into great, soaring spikes of sound. “You will not silence me,” Loefke repeats, the synths increasing in pitch as her vocals disintegrate into wordless yelps and guitars cut across the noise. ‘we have a dream’ picks up with a more restrained tone, a hushed strangeness cloaking the track before the final third reaches something warmer, before the lush swathes of synths that herald closer ‘beginning’. Loefke’s vocals emerge within pockets of space that mark the almost sci-fi futurism off this noise, before both aspects unite for the transcendental finale.

heart demos is out now and you can get it from the Pendulum Girl Bandcamp page.

The post Pendulum Girl – heart demos appeared first on Various Small Flames.

There are three covers on the release; a stirring rendition of Motor Away by Guided By Voices, a lovely version of I Think We’re Alone Now by Tommy James & The Shondelles, and a cover of Sam Cooke’s Bring It On Home To Me which signs off the album perfectly.

Their sound is lo-fi but not scuzzy, with Liz Brown’s vocals nice and clear rather than the aural blur that many bands of this genre opt for. Fans of Screaming Females, Sleater-Kinney, Shellshag, etc. should find a new favourite in Bill Times a Billion.

Say It Nicer is available for free over at Bandcamp.

The post Bill Times a Billion – Say It Nicer appeared first on Various Small Flames.