“As inventive as it is relaxed, the whole thing buoyed by a sense of patience and curiosity as it explores whatever avenue seems appropriate.” So we wrote of Open Door Policy, the recent release by Brooklyn songwriter Alexei Shishkin, back in June. If the album typified Shishkin’s sense of invention, then it is fitting that new release Greenwich Mean EP is something different altogether. A collection of jazz-adjacent (mostly) instrumentals which takes the patience and curiosity of ODP and applies them in another manner. Only opener and title track ‘Greenwich Mean’ has vocals. The portal through which listeners are invited into the album. The abstract lyrics might sound foreboding on first listen, but take the time to listen and you come to realise there’s no substance behind the mood. As though Shiskin is working to prove how even the most nonsensical strings of words might come to take on a certain feel if presented with a particular soundscape.

Casper Skulls – Spindletop

New single ‘Spindletop’ represents something of a fresh start for indie rock band Casper Skulls. It is the first taste of the band in their new three-piece setup, and also sees guitarist Neil Bednis take on vocal duties for the first time since the band’s debut record. The song explores the Texas oil boom of the early 20th Century, and Bednis describes how he “tried to capture the ominous atmosphere and avarice” of Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood while writing it. In contrast, the music video is a lighthearted one, what guitarist and vocalist Melanie St-Pierre calls “a funny lil take on me being annoying and late to jam,” following her journey to band practice through the local Sudbury scene, amp in tow.

‘Spindletop’ is out now and available from the Casper Skulls Bandcamp page.

Casual Technicians – This Emotion

Catching “the ache and yearn of a lonesome night under the stars” as we described in a preview, single ‘Midnight Moon’ by Casual Technicians introduced their new album, Deeply Unworthy on Repeating Cloud. The record “sees the three songwriters cross the beams of their creativity once more and embrace the loveable strangeness of the result,” we continued, with everything from Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch to Smile-era Beach Boys and Steely Dan listed as influences. With the album now out, the trio have shared single ‘This Emotion’, the album’s closing track which at least partially turns away from the overtly western sensibilities of the previous songs but lacks none of the heartfelt reflection or idiosyncratic charm.

Ciao Malz – Two Feet Tall

Having caught the attention of Audio Antihero with a cover of Frog’s ‘You Know I’m Down‘, Connecticut-born, Brooklyn-based Filipino-American Ciao Malz (Malia DelaCruz) is teaming up with the label to release their debut EP, Safe Then Sorry. The Ciao Malz sound pairs equal parts upbeat energy and probing introspection to explore themes of identity and love in young life. “These stories and characters came to me subconsciously and asked to be spoken into existence,” DelaCruz explains. “These songs are about the unlikely connections we make, how they’re simultaneously inexplicable and meaningful.” Lead single ‘Two Feet Tall’ introduces the project to the uninitiated, embodying the release’s unguarded nature with lush textures and a binding sense of forward motion.

I’ve been feeling two, two feet tall
I’ve already heard, heard it all
I’ve been meaning to, call your bluff
But I can never tell, quite tell you stuff

Clover County – Under These Conditions

Growing up in Florida and now based in Athens, Georgia, Clover County is a songwriter inspired by the greats in the genre—from Stevie Nicks and Carol King to Ella Fitzgerald and Dolly Parton. With new EP Porch Lights out now via Thirty Tigers, new single ‘Under These Conditions’ introduces the artist as a continuation of this lineage, with vulnerability and strength marbling into something as assured as it is heartfelt. “[The single] was the ‘kick-in-the-ass-come-to-Jesus’ talk I needed to have with myself,” she explains. “A reminder not to sacrifice the life I wanted while people pleasing the generational expectations placed on me by the town I was living in, the church I grew up in, or the people I was raised by.”

Porch Lights is out now via Thirty Tigers and available from the usual places.

Grandmas House – Screw It Up

Following last year’s EP Who I Am, which garnered attention from all corners with its anarchic energy, Bristol post-punks Grandmas House are back with new single, ‘Screw It Up’. The band say the song is about “having to walk on eggshells in a relationship and feeling like you have to keep you emotions bottled up in order to be liked,” but there’s nothing held back in the sound that twitches and snarls with furious frustration. It’s a loud one, even from a band who have made a name for it, moody guitars and stomping percussion jostle for space behind brash and cathartic vocals. Watch the video by the band themselves below:

‘Screw It Up’ is out now via streaming services.

mary in the junkyard – this is my california

Back in May, London group mary in the junkyard released their debut EP, this old house, to much fanfare and critical acclaim. The record’s unique style of experimental rock and unsettling visual imagery saw the trio’s (that’s Clari Freeman-Taylor, Saya Barbaglia and David Addison) reputation skyrocket. Now the band have returned with a new single, ‘this is my california’. What Freeman-Taylor describes as “a nostalgic song about finding my own dreams,” the song dials back the unpredictability and intensity that made the EP so startling, opting instead for a laidback vibe that lands somewhere between Sun June’s twilit dreamy grooves and the knotty emotion of Big Thief.

naya mö – wanderlust

Recorded in Baltimore with help from Bartees Strange, ‘wanderlust’ is the new single from French alternative artist naya mö. The song draws on the grunge and alt-pop of the nineties and the soaring indie rock of the mid 00s, resulting in something that sparkles with possibility despite being coated in gritty fuzz and shadowy reverb. “The lyrics explore the bittersweet journey of longing and letting go,” naya mö describes. “It captures the feeling of being caught in a loop of memories while hoping to find a way forward.” With a new EP scheduled for release early in 2025, the single marks mö as an artist to keep an eye on moving into 2025 and beyond.

‘wanderlust’ is out now via streaming services.

Niall Summerton – No One

When we last featured Yorkshire artist Niall Summerton back in September, we mentioned he had a new EP, Tread Water, on the way via Tiny Library Records. The title track represented both “an ode to friendship and an antidote to our busy world,” we wrote, “brought to life by the patient guitar and soothing delivery, a spacious arrangement which allows the surrounding world to bleeds into the gaps.” Latest single ‘No One’ is no less unhurried in style, though here the languid rhythm brings to life a different shade of character. An almost slacker-style sound which lands somewhere between downbeat lethargy and calming respite. “No one’s coming in,” Summerton repeats to capture this mood, a statement which carries inherent loneliness but also a clear thread of relief.

Tread Water is out now on Tiny Library Records and available via streaming services.

Sunny War – Walking Contradiction

After releasing critically acclaimed record Anarchist Gospel in early 2023, Sunny War moved into her late father’s Chattanooga home and began obsessively working on new material save she slip back into the substance abuse that almost killed her in the past. These long hours of crafting elaborate demos allowed her to experiment, trading her acoustic guitar for an electric one. “I definitely wanted to make this album for a badass five-piece band,” she says of the resulting record, Armageddon In A Summer Dress, which comes out next year on New West Records. Our first glimpse of this new, louder direction is ‘Walking Contradiction’, a duet with Crass’s Steve Ignorant which brings elements of punk rock into her usual folk and Blues stylings, a blend which actually makes a lot of sense. As Sunny War explains “Folk used to be very anti-establishment. Pete Seeger, union songs, Woody Guthrie—that’s punk rock shit. It’s all about being an outsider.”

The post Weekly Listening: November 2024 #3 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The arrangement might not be typical for an indie rock band, but then there’s little typical about Casual Technicians. “[A] playful sound that’s not only willing to experiment between genres but to meld them together seamlessly,” was how we described their work back in 2023, and their self-titled album—released earlier this year on Repeating Cloud—was a grab bag of idiosyncratic songs. Be it oddball lo-fi pop on songs like ‘Lucy in the Dark’, or swampy acoustic tones on ‘Homecoming’. “It’s just as strange, but in a different way,” as we wrote of the latter in March, “possessing a homebrew folk style that centres around the signature deadpan delivery.”

Not wasting any time, Casual Technicians are now preparing to put out their second album of the year, Deeply Unworthy. To again be released by Repeating Cloud, the record sees the three songwriters cross the beams of their creativity once more and embrace the loveable strangeness of the result. The label cites Steely Dan, Smile-era Beach Boys, Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch as touchstones, though to try to tame the sound which such references kind of feels besides the point. Better instead to dive right in with latest single ‘Midnight Moon’, another off-kilter folk song which catches the ache and yearn of a lonesome night under the stars. It clocks in at less than two minutes but manages to evoke a small world with its own history attached.

The post Casual Technicians – Midnight Moon appeared first on Various Small Flames.

We’ve long followed the work of Hamilton’s Basement Revolver, most recently in 2022 with the full-length Embody, which used the band’s signature weight and compassion “to confront the intricacies of modern life with a newfound steel and depth.” This usually involves complicated themes of identity and faith, though latest single ‘Red Light’ offers a picture of a far more specific problem of modern living—the infuriating experience of getting a red light ticket that costs far more than a pay check. But through a blend of pummelling energy, dreamy textures and Chrisy Hurn’s earnest vocals, the song becomes a wider meditation on the inevitable costs of pursuing one’s dreams, and how society can appear to be constructed in opposition to anyone looking to pursue creative ideals.

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

Casual Technicians – Homecoming

Following last year’s Four Corners EP, Portland-centred but now geographically separated indie rock band Casual Technicians have announced their debut full-length record. Self-titled and comprising of 19 tracks, it promises to be a comprehensive introduction to the band’s style, what we described previously as “[a] playful sound that’s not only willing to experiment between genres but to meld them together seamlessly.” Following the oddball lo-fi pop of lead single ‘Lucy in the Dark’, Casual Technicians have now released a second song from the record, ‘Homecoming’. It’s just as strange, but in a different way, possessing a homebrew folk style that centres around the signature deadpan delivery.

clay pigeon – Dark Blue

The new recording project of Canadian songwriter James Clayton, clay pigeon makes songs that combine a laidback, listenable quality with impressive emotional depth. In July, he will release The Aching Taste of Blue, his debut full-length recorded at Hotel2Tango in Montreal with acclaimed engineer Howard Bilerman. In anticipation, he has released lead single ‘Dark Blue’, a song that acts as the perfect calling card for what clay pigeon is all about. “’Dark Blue’ was one of the first songs I wrote for the project and in hindsight, it set the canvas for the rest of the record,” Clayton describes. “The fingerpicking pattern melted the beginning and end of the phrase together and everything became very meditative, yet unresolved, as if to ask a question. Is everything okay?”

Daniel Brouns – Lizard Killer

Described as a concept album about first experiences, Stock Music For The Cosmos sees songwriter Daniel Brouns condense his life into nine seminal moments—including brushes with love, death, pornography. With the album coming this May on Anxiety Blanket Records, Brouns has unveiled single ‘Lizard Killer’. As the title suggests, the song presents an encounter with loss in the form of a class pet, Brouns describing the experience of finding the lizard dead in its cage with the flat, near-spoken despondency of David Bazan. Indeed, the latest Pedro The Lion albums are a good touchstone for the Daniel Brouns sound, where the past is presented as a kind of duality between fond nostalgia and bitter regret. Watch the video by Dalton Pate below:

Stock Music For The Cosmos is out on the 17th May 17th via Anxiety Blanket Records.

DD Island – Runnin’

Originating as a solo project in Nashville, DD Island moved to New York in 2021, where lead Brandon Rhodes recruited an assortment of friends and accomplices to build a fresh line-up capable of bringing a new era of the project to life. Rhodes used live shows as the nursery for this version of the band, so its fitting that the new DD Island EP Runnin’ was recorded live to embrace this spirit. But as the lead single and title track confirms, this immediacy does not preclude a sense of intention, the band tapping into an easy-going rhythm to support the wistful lyrics and warm sound to create something as heartfelt as it is fun.

Runnin’ is out now and available from the usual places.

MVSO – Heaven

An exploration of the “universal themes of life, death and the passing of time through a decidedly personal lens.” That’s how we’ve previously described the work of MVSO (AKA duo Mat Vairo and Saumon Oboudiyat), singing the praises of both ‘Hold Clear’ and ‘Passing Through‘. With the release of EP Proprioception fast approaching, new single ‘Heaven’ follows suit with another sparsely evocative sound, marbling intimate tenderness and haunting space to form something airy yet loaded with unseen weight. The song was inspired by the 2019 film The Specials (originally Hors normes) directed by Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano, which tells the true story of two men who train underprivileged youth to care for young people with autism. It serves as a testament to the compassionate potential of people in a world which can seem determined to prove the opposite.

Oscilla – Tongue-Tied

Back in December, we featured Oscilla, the project of San Francisco‘s Frances England, describing how the quiet sincerity of single ‘Tornado’ “functions something like a plea in the face of elemental danger. An attempt to will oneself onto surer ground.” The song was the first from a forthcoming EP called Drink Up the Sun, which is due for release later in the Spring. Now Oscilla have unveiled the record’s second single, ‘Tongue-Tied’, a nostalgic indie pop song with the warm and oversaturated tones of a photograph from an old summer vacation. England creates this sound with the help of producer Omar Akrouche (who also plays in LA art pop band Worthitpurchase), elevating what would be a pretty and melodic song into something thick with the sweet and hazy poignance of long summertime days.

July, cherry juice stains on your chin and fingers
Sweet grass almost knee high
Rolling down the windows past the field and pine trees
Power lines flash by

Razor Braids – It Goes Quiet

Back in November we introduced Brooklyn-based outfit Razor Braids with single ‘She’. A song which typified both the band’s nineties rock aesthetic and the spirit at the heart of their work, “willingly shaking itself from past desires in order to find new hope and joy in desires as of yet unrealised.” The track was taken from upcoming full-length Big Wave, and new single ‘It Goes Quiet’ offers another glimpse at the album’s bittersweet mood. Hesitant uncertainty and cathartic motion collide on the same song, encapsulating an album that promises to explore not only love but the constant process of growth and change which accompanies it.

 Roselove – Marionette

‘Marionette’ is the latest single from Roselove, a musician, photographer, visual artist and writer based between New York and Philadelphia. Taking equal parts London indie sleaze pop and Philly shoegaze, the song draws on personal experience of the difficulty living and working as transgender woman in creative industries to explore loneliness more generally. But while the track comes with an understandable degree of frustration and longing, it is far more than such emotions. Rather, it offers a voice of empathy and solidarity to every person suffering within this contemporary epidemic, as well as a steely intensity to face down those who reinforce the conditions which allow it to fester.

The post Weekly Listening: March 2024 #1 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Working between soul, jazz and R&B, Portland, ME-based artist Angelikah Fahray is a rising star of the New England scene, winning attention with a sound willing to embrace both haunting and sensual styles. Latest single ‘In My Coffin’ is the perfect introduction for those unfamiliar. A slow, sultry croon which envelopes the audience, the song occupies an ambiguous tone which never quite shows its hand. Is it romantic, bitter, melancholic? Or perhaps all three spun into an enthralling web?

‘In My Coffin’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Casual Technicians – On A Trip To Nowhere

Though now separated by geography, all three members of Casual Technicians have a long history with the music scene in Portland, Oregon. Tyler Keene and Nathan Baumgartner were founding members of And And And while Boone Howard fronted The We Shared Milk and the Boone Howard band. This experience shined through on Four Corners EP, the latest release from Repeating Cloud, where the band offer a confident and playful sound that’s not only willing to experiment between genres but to meld them together seamlessly. Opener and single ‘On a Trip to Nowhere’ plays something like the bummed-out dispatch from contemporary existence a la talons’ as processed through a laidback Steely Dan warmth.

there’s so many times that I’m tired and I’m in the basement
working on stuff and I take a nap
and I go out in the backyard and cut the grass
and shave it down as close as my old head

I feel beefed up but burnt down
burping up bubbles from a weird old beer
that looks like its been open for a half of a year
imagine that

makes me wish it was later in the day

French For Rabbits – Leech

Towards the end of next month, Aotearoa dream pop band French For Rabbits return with a brand new EP In the End I Won’t Be Coming Home. The follow-up to 2021 LP The Overflow, the four song release was recorded this past summer with strings from Auckland’s The Black Quartet and sees an evolution of the French For Rabbits style that we’ve previous described as “translucent and melancholic and alive.” Latest single ‘Leech’ is the perfect introduction, an exploration of “the push and pull of love” suffused with ethereal harmonies and a soaring atmosphere, at once epic and fragile, the lingering melancholy burning away to reveal the rousing chorus.

Cause your love is my only comfort
And your love is my only reward
But if my heart is a leech and you’re still out of reach
All I’m left with is all of my thoughts.

German Error Message & Noah Kittinger – It’s night and you’re alone

The latest release in Furious Hooves‘ Furhoof Halloween Split Series, It’s night and you’re alone offers two ambient instrumental tracks—one by German Error Message and one by Noah Kittinger (of Bedroom)—which live up to the release’s title and offer the ideal Halloween soundtrack for those looking beyond the cliched and the camp. The songs were written six years, eleven months and one day apart from one another, though despite the gap somehow seem to be in conversation. Paul Kintzing’s ‘10.30.16’ plays as a walk down a lonely forest path as night descends, its slowly gathering momentum mimicking the kind of latent dread which comes down with the dark, while Kittinger’s ‘10.1.23’ offers a different sort of night-time passage. A lonely journey through a darkening countryside as viewed from the window of a train, and furthermore one complicated by the liminal strangeness of such an experience. Time both upended and hauntologically conspicuous, your own reflection mirrored back to you in the glass, both part of the view and not.

It’s night and you’re alone is out now via Furious Hooves. Get it via Bandcamp.

Library Card – Cognitive Dissonance

Drawing inspiration from acts like Protomartyr and Life Without Buildings as well as poets such as Anne Clark, Rotterdam’s Library Card are a band of contradictions. Dissonant yet melodious, rambunctious yet taut, volatile yet cool. Lead by Lot van Teylingen and featuring Emre Karayalçin, Kat Kalkman and Mitchell Quitz, the outfit are now preparing to release their new EP Nothing Interesting, and single ‘Cognitive Dissonance’ serves as a encapsulation of this incongruous sound. An examination of the competing forces which coexist within us, an internal struggle between the desire to be selfish and altruistic.

Unspeakable
Unthinkable
Do we simply stare at what’s horrible and forgive it?
Do we simply notice but not see at all?
Truth is a beautiful illusion
Where is your truth now

‘Cognitive Dissonance’ is out now via AT EASE. Get it from the Library Card Bandcamp page.

MVSO – Hold Clear

A collaboration between songwriter/vocalist duo Mat Vairo and Saumon Oboudiyat, MVSO originated as little more than a space for the pair to experiment with music, though soon developed into something more considered and official. The result is Proprioception, an EP pencilled for release in spring 2024 which sees the artists explore universal themes of life, death and the passing of time through a decidedly personal lens. This allows them to take on the biggest ideas while also recording a specific moment in their lives and the position of their friendship within it. Single ‘Hold Clear’ hints at the evocative, simmering style this takes, where the intimacy of the personal opens out into something cryptic and deep.

MX LONELY – Rest In Salt

With their new EP SPIT coming on Candlepin Records early in 2024, Brooklyn‘s MX LONELY have unveiled single ‘Rest In Salt’ to signal their pivot towards a heavier alt rock/shoegaze aesthetic. With Rae Hass taking over lead vocal duties, the song pitches the listener into a shadowy, foreboding world full of needling intensity and crushing weight, the vocals emerging from within this tumult like the helpless cries of the damned. “’Rest In Salt’ is about being trapped in purgatory, pure and simple,” as Hass explains, “about being ridden with anxiety and stuck to the couch. It’s that feeling of jealousy for the dead and the tinge of guilt that follows. When you lie so still you think you can almost remember the freedom of being nothing at all.”

SPIT is out on the 6th February via Candlepin Records and you can pre-order it now.

See Jazz – 1982

Described as a band for “uncool people everywhere scattered to the edges of contemporary anywheres,” See Jazz might be the solo vehicle of Aaron Pfannebecker, though the endeavor is far from a one-person project. Forthcoming album Is This Anything?, out next month via Flower Sounds, sees the likes of Adam Langellotti (Kurt Vile and the Violators), Jed Smith (My Teenage Stride and Jeanines) and Zara Bode (Sweetback Sisters) lend their talents to bring to life a sound at once ethereal and danceable. Take single ‘1982’, so airy if feels on the verge of drifting upwards and away, though all the while anchored by Pfannebecker’s vocals and their exploration of the stubborn nature of human perspective.

Is This Anything? is out on the 10th November via Flower Sounds and you can pre-order it now.

Wet Fruit – Dandelions at the Gate

Hailing from Portland, OR, Wet Fruit take inspiration from a grab bag of genres to create their own singular sound. New album Dandelions at the Gate, out now via Half Shell Records, has indie rock, punk, psych and experimental DNA. But far from an unwieldy mutant, the result is something honed and cohesive. Take opener and title track, its dreamy textures and harmonies cut through with a propulsive energy, giving the sense of escalating towards some moment of chaos or clarity. But as songs like ‘St. Charles’ show, the band are about more than hectic rhythms, stripping away the frenetic elements in favour of something more drifting. Like a late-night drive, sealed into your own little world and estranged from passing cars, left instead to consider the finer textures of solitude.

Dandelions at the Gate is out now via Half Shell Records.

The post Weekly Listening: October 2023 #5 appeared first on Various Small Flames.