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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.

Various Swell Sounds is a collaborative playlist series from Shana Hartzel of Swell Tone, Jon Chin of Cereal and Sounds, and myself. Instead of constantly exchanging tracks amongst each other, we have decided to work together to bring them to more ears. Every month, we will match a selection of our old and brand new favourites to a specific theme, as decided on a revolving basis month by month.

2018 Warped: the final Various Swell Sounds offering of the year, and perhaps of all time. Here, all constraints go out of the window, and instead we present a collection of songs from all styles, sounds and eras that have been with us this year.

If you enjoy 2018 Warped, be sure to check out the other instalments of Various Swell Sounds. You can find those we hosted here, and the others on Swell Tone and Cereal + Sounds.

The post Various Swell Sounds #11: 2018 Warped appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Tracklisting:

Mike Pace and the Child Actors – Everyone Out of the Car
Miranda Winters – The Futuristic District
Exam Season – Strawberry Milk
Saccharine – Pumpkin Guts
Tuvaband – Wolfpack
Devon Welsh – Dreams Have Pushed You Around
Mending – Alan after the Fire
Reddening West – Even If
Valley Maker – Light on the Ground
The Washboard Abs – Return to You
Manatree – Brushfire
Miserable Chillers – Horse Opera
Saint Charles – She Don’t Wanna Know
new casino – going for a walk*
Frankie Valet – Why Blue
Goodbye Max – Old Photos
Adeline Hotel – Habits
Joe Kaplow – I Said I Was Going and I Went
Pecas – Tuesdays
Sun Kin – Neglect
Baby Cages – flowers
Crooked Spine – Skinned Knees
Lauren O’Connell – Out of Focus
Mount Goldie – Summer
Harvey Trisdale – Baby
american poetry club – the sum of your parts
Babehoven – Out of the Country
Adam Arcuragi – Low Parade Rain
Jason Bemis Lawrence – Southern Midwest
Campdogzz – Sorceress
Barfoot – A Thin Place Between Worlds

* not on Playmoss

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

As we described in a preview last month, In Rounds took shape when Price and guitarist Mike Russell traveled around southern deserts in a school bus, and the harsh beauty and wide open spaces of the landscape, as well as the starkness of Price’s home state, shape the sound. Although never mentioned explicitly, the album invokes the atmosphere of a storm. As label 15 Passenger put it “There’s a feeling of electricity, of winds shifting, a magical mix of both comfort and unease.”

After the tentative intro of ‘Bobbing on the Plains Pt. 1’, the first of several instrumental interludes, lead single ‘Souvenir’ comes crashing to life in all its intense indie rock goodness. The song feels somehow scorched and dangerous, big crunchy guitar and pummeling drums supporting expressive vocals, delivering opaque lines that seem to withhold more than they reveal.

“Hold the wheel
Feel my head
Probably should have stayed in bed
Souvenir
Come right here
I’ll be yours a little bit
Did you want to get me gone
Did you want to get me
Well that train is going by”

Things are more slow burning on ‘Run Wild’, a tense and humid song in which Price gets to display her emotional range, from near-whispers to passionate snarls, her voice like the crackles of lightning precipitated by dense thunderheads of guitar and subtle percussion. ‘Batshit’ follows a similar pattern, marching drums and whirring violin conjuring images of leaden grey skies tinged green in portent of an oncoming tornado, as dust begins to lift and stands of crops lay flat against the wind.

The tensely succinct ‘Rawbone Ring’ and taut title track are followed by the lush and spacious ‘Dry Heat’, a track which ebbs and flows like turbulent air pressures, aching with sincere yearning as Price sings “I need you now.” ‘On My Own’ emerges from the song’s remains, quickly evolving into a driving indie rocker, while ‘Royal Rye’ strains with unreleased energy, Price’s vocals taking centre stage as the song continually threatens to overspill into unmitigated catharsis.

Closer ‘Sorceress’ sees Russell take over vocal duties for a rambling folk rock epic that channels Molina in its intensity and semi-mystical writing. What 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. Telling the story of an encounter with a lupine deity, all paws and fangs and restorative venom, the track is a fevered vision of healing magic and symbolistic fervour, propelled not just by the Campdogzz sound but language itself.

I was spending my time in the world, when I saw a great wolf dance towards me. I saw her eyes flash across the night, I saw her black fur in the cold sky. I saw her claws dog the earth, as she moved with effortless grace, like a thousand tiny leaves on a blanket of winds, like the sea.

I saw her fangs as she spoke to me. You have no reasons to be afraid. I am the one that they have told you about, I am the great love you have been without. I will sink my teeth into your heart, you will feel my venom in your veins, as my universes spin inside your blood, you will end and begin again.

In Rounds is out now and you can get it on LP, CD or digital download from 15 Passenger.

The post Campdogzz – In Rounds appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Featuring:

Petal – I’m Sorry
Wild Pink – The Seance On St. Augustine St
Big Thing – Spin
Bombshell Nightlight – Death Day
Mount Goldie – Summer
Elsa Lester – Pretty Bad, Man
Why Bonnie – Gold Rush
Devon Welsh – Vampires
Max García Conover – Another Travelling Man
Floating Room – Dog
Izaak Opatz – Bathing in the Ganges
Free Cake For Every Creature – Around You
Indigo De Souza – Home Team
Museum Food Court – bad song
Crisco Dreams – I Like Your Bed
You’re Sister – I Think About You
Russel the Leaf – Let ‘Em Run
Fresh – Daytime
Stevhen Peters – Phone Talk
Tender Age – Don’t Mind
Lord Youth – Do You Have Anything To Add?
Quiet Hollers – Addicted
Blue J – Hard to Know
Post Moves – The Arc of Life
Angus & Julia Stone – Nothing Else
Gia Margaret – Birthday
Sun June – Discotheque
Campdogzz – Souvenir
Field Report – Every Time

*(Due to various issues of availability and licensing, neither playlist has the complete quota of acts, but welcome to the modern age).

You can find all of the previous instalments of Bright Sparks here, and be sure to check back in a few weeks to see what makes the next edition.

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

Mount Goldie – Summer

There’s very little information available about Mount Goldie, other than they are a duo based in Portland, Oregon and have a new album, All My Friends Are Mothers coming out this August. In a world of gimmicks and EPKs, there’s something refreshing about letting the music do the talking, which is exactly what Mount Goldie do with ‘Summer’. Building slowly with a sense of weight, the track has sense of stifling summer stillness, a lack of movement that becomes oppressive, as though rising toward some sudden break, though never quite coming to anything. Clint Snow’s vocals rise through this heavy air, conjuring the likes of Dusted in his ability to draw emotion from straight delivery.

All My Friends Are Mothers is set for release on the 3rd August and you can pre-order in now from Bandcamp.

Devon Welsh – Vampires

Best known as the frontman of electronic duo Majical Cloudz, Montreal’s Devon Welsh began pursuing a solo career after the natural end of the band in 2016. Following a collection of older songs titled Down the Mountain, Welsh has been unveiling new material in the last few months. After the meditative ‘I’ll Be Your Ladder’, which came out this spring, Welsh has unveiled a brand new single, ‘Vampires’, complete with a video directed by Christopher Honeywell.

The track is stripped back to a lonely minimum, a kind of late-night absence across which Welsh’s distinctive vocals can move, the introduction of small notes acting like sparks and streetlamps in the gloom, building slowly into an incandescent glow as Welsh rises from from baritone into near devotional warmth.

“What are we doing here hanging on a dark night?
What are we doing here this town’s a vampire
Ducking our silhouettes waiting for the cop’s light
This town’s gonna eat us alive

So we’re moving on”

You can find all of Devon Welsh’s music on his Bandcamp page.

Floating Room – Dog

Led by Maya Stoner and Kyle Bates, Floating Room are a Portland band who last month put out a new release, False Baptism, via Good Cheer Records. The record is something of a follow-up to 2016’s Sunless, which explored the consequences of an emotional relationship. The new album is still centred on this subject, though there is a greater degree of clarity here, as though pulling away from the scene to better take in its dimensions.

Lead single ‘Dog’ serves as a great example, using the metaphor of pet and owner to explore emotional reliance and obligation. The canine wants to escape the relationship (““I don’t like how weak I am when I’m with you”), and the master is terrified of losing their control, and while both declare their love for the other, the true focus of this love is perhaps not healthy or fair. The result is a situation governed by fear, motivated not by true connection but the dread of being alone.

False Baptism is out now via Good Cheers Records and you can get it from Bandcamp.

Angus & Julia Stone – Nothing Else

Australian brother and sister duo Angus & Julia Stone have been releasing their atmospheric brand of folk music for over a decade now, culminating in 2017 album Snow. With a video directed by Jessie Hill, they have recently released ‘Nothing Else’ as a single. Charting the lonely spaces between connection and empathy, the song probes the repercussions of relationship and their influence on identity, playing as something of a reassurance (or attempt thereof) after some unsaid disturbance. Featuring Julia playing two roles, the video speaks to this too, as though, regardless of outside judgement, we can return to ourselves in confidence.

Snow is out now and you can get it from the Angus & Julia Stone website.

Izaak Opatz – Bathing in the Ganges

LA-based Montana native Izaak Opatz has teamed up with the good people at Mama Bird Recording Co. to re-release his album Mariachi Static. The record is the perfect balance of playful and emotional, classic country heartbreak portrayed through loose-limbed confidence, all the trials of life doing little to extinguish his sense of humour. Complimenting this is Opatz’s knack for writing vivid scenes, evocative slices of life woven from small details, making for an emotive and endearing atmosphere that prevents the ironic elements from undercutting the meaning of each track.

The reissue also sees the addition of three new songs, a cover of ‘Carmelita’ alongside two new originals. One such tune, ‘Bathing in the Ganges’ serves as a neat introduction to Opatz’s sound, emerging with a slow and dusty inevitability, kicking into something of a rhythm across its length, though never quite shaking the languid stretch.

Mariachi Static is being released by Mama Bird Recording Co. on the 20th July and you you can pre-order it through Bandcamp.

Free Cake For Every Creature – Around You / In Your Car

Good news! Free Cake for Every Creature, the project lead by Philadelphia’s Katie Bennett, are back with a new album. Titled The Bluest Star, Bennett has again enlisted the help of Francis Lyons and Heeyoon Won (of Boosegumps) to record the record, which is set for release in August on Double Double Whammy.

The band have released two singles thus far, which seem to confirm that Free Cake aim to continue their signature gentle indie pop. ‘around you’ is sweet and understated nostalgi-pop, Bennett’s lyrics focusing on those simple joyful moments of making a new friend, while ‘in your car’ features Felix Walworth on banjo and Meghan Center with additional vocals, a song about whiling away long summer evenings in a parked car with Pavement on the radio. Again it displays what Bennett does so well, focusing on small details to infer larger feelings, all wrapped up in a transportive atmosphere.

“Windows down in your stopped car
Radio picking up the distant city’s station
You pass me the glass, your lipstick in the rim
“Summer babe” narration, waiting waiting”

The Bluest Star is out on Double Double Whammy on the 3rd of August. Pre-order it now.

Campdogzz – Souvenir

Campdogzz are a five-piece based out of Chicago who, led by the distinctive vocals of Jess Price, create a brooding indie rock that their bio describes as being “dialled into the bleak, spirited heart of the industrial Midwest.” Following 2016 album Riders in the Hills of Dying Heaven, the band have signed to Cursive’s 15 Passenger Records for a brand new record, In Rounds. The release took shape when Price and guitarist Mike Russell travelled around southern deserts in a school bus, and it is promised that the harsh beauty and wide open spaces of the landscape shape the sound. Lead single ‘Souvenir’ is all we have to go on so far, though it promises a sense of danger and rawness that more than lives up to expectations.

In Rounds is set for release on the 3rd August via 15 Passenger Records and you can pre-order it from Bandcamp.

Indigo De Souza – Home Team

Taken from I Love My Mom, their debut album released last month on Sub-Fi Records, Indigo De Souza’s ‘Home Team’ shows off the North Carolinian songwriter’s wry yet impassioned voice. Simultaneously bitingly honest and guarded, the song toes the line between cutting and pleading, as though seeking to clear up ambiguity in others while stewing in a confusion of its own, a need for reassurance that peaks from behind the bleachers despite the confident front. The result is fiery and at-times genuinely funny, the scope in tone matched by De Souza’s vocal range, as confident in conversational intimacy as big, broadcasted refrains.

“Don’t you blame me
if I don’t answer my phone.
I don’t like fucking boys who need to know
what to do when there’s no-one else home.

We’re all pining for that modern day girl
she’s really a star
got the crowd just jumping for joy
on a Saturday night at the home field.”

I Love My Mom is out now via Sub-Fi Records and you can get it from Bandcamp.

You’re Sister – I Think About You

The recording project of New York’s Megan Braaten, You’re Sister put out a new full-length, Keepsake, this past May. Drawing spirit from its title, the album is a comforting brand of bedroom pop that’s shot through with a sense of distant regret, as though there is something inherently sad within the things we treasure most. Single ‘I Think About You’ serves as the perfect example of this, the warm atmosphere nurturing a keen melancholia, an immersive emotion that’s something to do with memories, something to do with the passing of time.

You can get Keepsake now from the You’re Sister Bandcamp page.

Fresh – Daytime

Fresh are a pop-punk four-piece from London who last year put out a self-titled album with Specialist Subject Records. Channelling the likes of Camp Cope, the record is fine balance between thoughtful, personal lyrics and a sense of carefree abandon, painting a picture of the volatile rollercoaster ride that is life as a young person in contemporary society.

A year later, the band are back with a brand new 7″, Daytime/Nightime, and have unveiled a video for lead track ‘Daytime’. Again, the track’s infectious sense of energy buoys what is an impassioned and empathetic lyrical side, Fresh railing against the debilitating search for perfection. As lead Kathryn Woods explains, “[‘Daytime’ is] about how in our culture there’s this myth of constant happiness or the idea that you always have to be thriving and successful, when actually, a lot of the time, you just have to get through whatever’s going on.”

Daytime/Nightime will be released on the 31st August via Specialist Subject Records (UK) and Discos Finu (Spain).

Tender Age – Don’t Mind

Portland punk outfit Tender Age are putting out a new album, Becoming Real Forever, on the 9th of July, and have unveiled a video for the lead single ‘Don’t Mind’ to set the tone. The press release describes the band’s sound as like “being pulled into an automatic car wash,” and while the experience is not nearly as painful as that sounds, the image does capture the whirlwind of activity, a series of disparate elements pulling together toward a cohesive whole. Add in a the retro-tinged vocals that bring to mind Sonic Youth or The Breeders, and you have a confident, moody track unafraid of exploring light and dark within the same space.

Becoming Real Forever is set for release on the 9th July via SINIS Recordings and you can pre-order it now from Bandcamp.

Blue J – Hard to Know

Vancouver’s Blue J have a big summer ahead, with their debut EP coming out in August and a tour with SALES and Dave Monks (from Tokyo Police Club). So far, the quartet have released a number of singles, and the latest ‘Hard To Know’ demonstrates their ability to weave nuanced lyrics into affecting music. Indeed, the blend of motion and emotion in the instrumentation brings to mind Big Thief‘s Capacity, as the lyrics deal with loss and grief from the perspective of someone outside of the immediate situation, trying to comfort the mourning.

“The way that you looked on that day
I knew that I could not relate
to the shock that showed up on your face
the look of loss you wore with grace
staring at cracks on the ground
your call ended without a sound
no ‘goodbye or see you later’
your breath was getting deeper”

You can get ‘Hard to Know’ and the previous singles from the Blue J Bandcamp page, and be sure to keep an eye out for more news on the EP.

You can find all of the previous instalments of Bright Sparks here, and be sure to check back in a few weeks to see what makes the next edition.

The post Bright Sparks: Vol. 14 appeared first on Various Small Flames.