Hailing from Montana and now based in Nashville, songwriter Ava Swan combines pop and country sensibilities into something capable of elucidating personal feelings while capturing the alarming state of the world. Latest single ‘Oh My’ focuses on a more hopeful side of this style, exploring how good things can and do happen no matter how bleak the wider picture. It’s song written after a period of depression during the first years of the pandemic which learns to appreciate the small joys amid fear and monotony, ultimately embracing the notion that the worst is not always going to happen.

The mineral mother of all that we know
Covers everything in sight
And quietly she whispers in an ancient voice
“Anyone can fall in love at any time”

‘Oh My’ is out now and available via Spotify.

The Burning Hell – All I Need

Back in June we mention Garbage Island, the latest album from Mathias Kom’s The Burning Hell on BB*Island. Making “everything from tongue-in-cheek anti-folk to racing indie rock,” Kom and co. offered what we described as “a bright and mischievous ode to a pre-apocalyptic world.” Now the outfit has teamed up with Joe Nicolosi for a brand new video for the track ‘All I Need’ to further develop these themes, producing what’s been described as “a cross between WALL-E, Blade Runner and The Brave Little Toaster.” And if that sounds like a bizarre blend of the playful and dystopian, then Nicolosi has done his job. Welcome to The Burning Hell.

All that I need is just you and the sea
And some food and fresh water and something to read,
An endless vista, the fancy pen I got for my bar mitzvah
And a semi-decent pair of water skis:
That’s all I need

Garbage Island is out now and available from The Burning Hell Bandcamp page.

Cinder Well – Two Heads, Grey Mare

This coming April sees the release of Cadence, the new album by Amelia Baker’s Cinder Well. The record promises to build on Baker’s signature stark and doom-laden experimental folk, leavened with more expansive arrangements that evoke the early 70s heyday of LA’s Laurel Canyon. Indeed, California, where Baker grew up, is one of two coastal focal points of the record. The other is her adopted home of Country Clare in Western Ireland, a region whose folklore inspires lead single ‘Two Heads, Grey Mare’. It’s a song about the shape-shifting selkie (a seal able to shed its skin to become human) and the mysterious ancient power of the moon and the tides. Watch the video, made by Jordan Carroll in the Peak District, below:

Cadence will be released via Free Dirt Records on 21^st April. Pre-order it now from the Cinder Well Bandcamp page.

DM Stith – Doomed!

Taken from forthcoming LP Fata Morgana on Historical Fiction Records, ‘Doomed!’ is the latest single from DM Stith, a track which finds the singer-songwriter in new terrain. Written after moving from Brooklyn to Rochester on the shore of Lake Ontario, the song feels suffused with fresh perspective and creative clarity. “Where am I?” he asks in the delicate opening line, before answering himself, “I wandered upstate rising up / evaporating out of my life.” Stith’s music has always held a diaphanous quality, but here the airiness feels more effortless than melancholy, Thomas Bartlett’s production adding an impressionistic elegance. That said, as the title suggests, ‘Doomed!’ is not without anxiety. It’s symptomatic of a record that, despite its lighter tone and subtle pop sensibilities, is ultimately a deep and candid exercise in self exploration.

I shed my skin all over again
All my memories and
All they represent
They hug me like a hurricane wheel
Exploring every inch of me
Hug me like I’m doomed

Esther Rose – Chet Baker

Following recent albums on Full Time Hobby and Father/Daughter Records, country singer-songwriter Esther Rose has announced Safe to Run, her fourth LP, on New West Records. Created in the last two years following a move from New Orleans to Santa Fe, the record promises to be yet another advance on Rose’s already impressive catalogue, introducing pop hooks and a newfound sense of confidence, even as it continues to narrate the messily graceful stories of a life in progress. Lead single ‘Chet Baker’ shows this off expertly—a song written from the depths of a memory rabbit hole induced by a random DM on social media, telling the story of a decade old dive bar and car crash in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Watch the video by Joshua Shoemaker below:

New West Records will release Safe to Run on 21st April and you can order it now form the Esther Rose Bandcamp page.

Floodlights – Lessons Learnt

We’ve been fans of Melbourne‘s Floodlights for a couple of years now, taken by their evocative writing and fusion of post-punk, indie rock and a subtle dusty twang. The band have recently announced a brand new record, Painting of My Time, an album which promises to be both a continuation and an evolution of their signature sound. Latest single ‘Lessons Learnt’ is the perfect illustration, adding layers of additional instrumentation to combine cathartic rock ‘n roll directness with post-punk atmosphere and the creative flair of art pop. As usual, the lyrics are both conscientious and furious, exploring themes of empty promises and recurrent mistakes that can be read at the personal level or as a commentary on Australia (or indeed the world) as a whole.

Lessons learnt, lessons forgot
How can history repeat so often?

Painting of My Time will be released on 21st April. Pre-order a copy now from the Floodlights Bandcamp page.

Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys – Heaving

A self-described “art pop ambient noise band” based in Berlin, Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys make music that’s full of dramatic atmosphere and enigmatic mystery. Following a trilogy of albums released over the last few years (which you can find on Bandcamp), the band have announced a new LP, titled Heaving, which promises to bring a new physicality to their sound. “I wanted this album to be less ethereal somehow,” Kruger describes. “Rooted in the depths, of my body, of my lover’s body, of the earth, where it is dark and wet […] a lot of the lyrics deal with touch, smell, taste. The body, and all it holds, imagined intimately, almost as landscape, but also for what it is.” The single and title track is a great example, a dark and magnetic piece full of disembodied sighs and distorted guitars. Watch the surreal video by Lena Nerinckx below:

Heaving releases on 7th April and you can order it now from the Lucy Kruger Bandcamp page.

Public Interest – Undone

Led by Chris Natividad (also of Marbled Eye), Public Interest are a post-punk band from Oakland, CA. Although they operate at the dense and gloomy end of the spectrum, their music has a dark and driving pop momentum that brings a glorious anarchic energy. Later this spring the band will release a new record Spiritual Pollution on German label Erste Theke Tontraeger and lead single ‘Undone’ gives a taste of what to expect. A dingy and sinuous slice of post-punk that’s full of razor-sharp guitars and pounding percussion.

Westmoreland – If It’s Over

With full-length album Latino Ballroom on the verge of release, Westmoreland (AKA Seattle-by-way-of-Texas‘s Zach Alva) has unveiled new single, ‘If It’s Over’. Written in the aftermath of losing a parent, the record is one born of grief and the long process of dealing with bereavement, and the new track highlights the grace and heart with which Alva approaches such themes. A slow, lush song of patient richness, coloured by the assured certainty of love but a sense of searching too. As though working through the maddening ambiguity of loss in all of its guises, demanding an answer one way or another.

The post Weekly Listening: February 2023 #3 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

To celebrate the arrival of their brand new record, Embody, Hamilton’s Basement Revolver have unveiled the final single, ‘Dissolve’. We previously described how the album displays a “willingness to confront the intricacies of modern life with a newfound steel and depth,” and the new single is full of the compassion and solidarity which makes this possible. An ode to figuring things out together.

Carli & The Dark – Voicemail

Carli & The Dark is the folk rock project of Phoenix-born, Brooklyn-based songwriter Carli Naff. Latest single ‘Voicemail’ concerns losing a parent, specifically that strange half second when the urge to contact them arises out of well-worn habit, a wish to share a simple moment of a day. The song emerges from this brief period where they are still alive, still waiting, and follows it through the renewed sense of loss before culminating in a compassionate group refrain which features Naff’s mother and siblings among other loved ones. “All my peeps who grieved together,” as she puts it. “It’s a little detail that really brings me a sense of safety at the end, of being held.”

Saying my nickname in a voicemail from your car
You were there, there you are
And though you are not around,
You would love this song I found

Cinder Well x Jim Ghedi – I Am a Youth That’s Inclined to Ramble

Cinder Well and Jim Ghedi have teamed up for a new two-song single, reinterpreting traditional folk ballads. ‘I Am a Youth That’s Inclined to Rambled’ highlights how the pair accentuate the stark loneliness of the material with sparse arrangements haunted by foreboding drone. A song of vast distances and separation, sung into a soundscape as empty and inscrutable as the ocean itself.

I Am a Youth That’s Inclined to Ramble is out now via Free Dirt Records and is available from the Cinder Well Bandcamp page.

hemlock – to carry (feat. Laith)

Described as an “interstate phone-fi bedroom folk saga of sorts,” talk soon is the full-band Chicago-based project hemlock. Latest single invites long-time friend and collaborator Laith Scherer and explores the nuances of a relationship as it changes over time and distance. A song of hushed yet heartfelt vignettes which rises toward an impassioned finale, providing snapshots of love in its various guises.

it’s okay
we carry our pain
in separate ways
on different days
but I’ll be there for you

Jeremy Squires – Drift

We’ve written about North Carolina native Jeremy Squires numerous times, an artist working in the American songwriting tradition of sharing heart and soul with generous helpings of grit and honesty. Ahead of a new album, slated for release later this year on Blackbird Record Label, Squires has unveiled a new single, ‘Drift’. It’s a song that finds him at his devastating best, built on just acoustic guitar, harmonica and vocals that quaver with both exhausted despondency and a steely inner strength. “I was sad,” he sings, “Now I’m lost / I forgot where I belong.”

Knuckle Pups – Soft Attraction

Ahead of their upcoming album, TV Ready, Denver “soda punk” outfit Knuckle Pups have unveiled single ‘Soft Attraction’. The track is an encapsulation of what such a genre entails, taking the fizzy energy of indie and adding an anarchic punk edge, though the songs are far from one-dimensional sugar rushes. Principle songwriter Oliver Holloway writes songs spread across the gamut of moods and tones, making room for earnest emotion and ironic playfulness within the same track, and as the new single shows, this often builds into triumphantly cathartic crescendos.

TV Ready is set for release sometime later this year.

Mouse – Pinned To An Avalanche

Based between Sunshine Coast and Brisbane, Mouse formed over a mutual appreciation of noisy DIY music, and thus set about making it themselves. The first single from forthcoming debut Here Was Then on Kitty Records, ‘Pinned to an Avalanche’ is all about escaping worry and doubt through some larger, consuming present, and Mouse oblige by recreating the descending wall of snow with their dense and hefty sound. Check out the video directed by the band and shot by Harley Jones:

Here Was Then will be released by Kitty Records later this year.

nudista – inasmuch

Next month sees the release of nudista’s Halfway Here EP on Sad Club Records, but in the meantime they have unveiled a new standalone single, ‘inasmuch’. The song is a great introduction to Pilar Matji Cabello and Robbie Carman’s work, a clarified dream pop which seeks to communicate directly and honestly. “It is a message to say that we are capable of evolving and moving forward even when it is scary,” as Cabello puts it, the gentle rhythmic pull drawing the listener close and compelling them onward.

Oceanator – Bad Brain Daze

April sees the return of Oceanator with Nothing’s Ever Fine, a brand new album on Polyvinyl Records and Big Scary Monsters which looks to build upon the apocalyptic themes of 2020’s Things I Never Said. Lead single ‘Bad Brain Daze’ typifies the duality of tenuous optimism and crushing pessimism which marks the record. The sound of existing within an unfolding disaster where the conclusion is still unclear, and nevertheless delivered with Elise Okusami’s characteristically triumphant energy. Check out the video directed by Chris Farren below:

Nothing’s Ever Fine is out on the 8th April via Polyvinyl Records and Big Scary Monsters and you can pre-order it now from the Oceanator Bandcamp page.

Sonic Løland – Up to You

Norwegian musician Anders Løland spent much of 2020 experimenting with styles and sounds, building up a library of ideas and demos which would form the basis of And Then The Sun Came Up, the debut album of his Sonic Løland project. Due for release this autumn via Koke Plate, the album shows off the full spectrum of Løland’s inspiration, creating a new brand of indie folk with ambient styles, electronic drums and rich 60s sensibilities, as shown by lead single, ‘Up to You’.

And Then The Sun Came Up will be released by Koke Plate this coming autumn.

Stephen Durkan – Prayer

Combining spoken word with electronic and ambient styles, Glasgow’s Stephen Durkan seems the latest in a long line of cynical Scottish preachers, bitter and sardonic yet bursting with a verbal energy. Written in collaboration with multi-instrumentalist/producer Niko O’Brien and released via Upcycled Sounds Records, his debut EP The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Ourselves both confirms and subverts this label. The anger and frustration are palpable, but beneath this lies something else. A flimsy belief in the continued value of critiquing the society in which we find ourselves, in imagining something new. Check out the first single ‘Prayer’ below:

Teen Idle – Burning

The music of Teen Idle might be an almost entirely solo endeavour recorded in a New Jersey basement, but you’d never guess it from the sound. For Sara Abdelbarry rejects the lo-fi aesthetics of many garage and bedroom acts for something more full-bodied. Take latest single, ‘Burning’, its rich sound featuring electric guitar, bass guitar, keys, synth, shaker, maracas, claps, lighter and sound effects all played by Abdelbarry, with only the drums delegated to Danny Murray. What emerges is an examination of unrequited love in all of its vivid detail, hope, bitterness and unabashed emotion rising into a huge climax.

I climbed up to the top alone
And watch the city burn below
If you won’t help me put her to rest
I’ll dig the hole by myself

The post Weekly Listening: Feb 2022 #3 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Here is a list of songs from 2020 that we liked but didn’t get around to writing about.

If you find something you like, follow the link in the embed to support the artists and labels on Bandcamp. And of course, there is a whole year’s worth of pieces on releases we did manage to write about, so have an explore through our reviews, previews and interviews from 2020.

The post Music We Missed in 2020 appeared first on Various Small Flames.