“In my body / On my skin / In the cool October wind / You’re there.” So sings country girl on ‘miracle’, a brand new single out now via FADER Label. Following on from debut EP meet me at the fountain, a richly nostalgic release we described as “reflecting on the joys of a rose-tinted past, looking to preserve that sense of possibility and fun in the face of life’s inevitable progression,” the new track again offers an earnest if dusky sound which presents the on-set of autumn as something to be celebrated. As though, having been battered by a summer heat for months, the October winds promise to arrive as something of a balm, country girl’s trademark fondness transforming what might normally be considered a melancholic time into something to be savoured.

‘miracle’ is out now via FADER Label and available from the usual places.

Greg Freeman – Salesman

The word-of-mouth success of 2022 debut I Looked Out earned Burlington, Vermont-based artist Greg Freeman something of a cult following. His twangy style of indie rock, evocative songwriting and strong sense of place that reflects his home of the northeastern US won lots of fans, and expectations for his sophomore album Burnover, released last week via Canvasback Music and Transgressive Records have been sky high. A steady stream of solid singles, like the “assured and surprising verbose” ‘Curtain’ allayed any concerns of a sophomore slump, and final single ‘Salesman’ is further proof that Freeman is firing on all cylinders. What he describes as “technically a serious song about something sad,” it’s actually one of the record’s livelier tracks, recorded almost entirely live with Freeman’s touring band to capture a sense of immediate energy.

Home Videos – the devil’s credit score

Described as “a tape obsessed band of slackers,” Rochester’s Home Videos has evolved across its lifetime. Debut EP (the fittingly titled EP) featured nothing but two acoustic guitars, a four track recorder and a whole lot of tape hiss, though the project has gradually blossomed into a full band. New album Home Taping is Killing Music, recently released via Raincoated Records, shows just what this change means, Home Videos retaining the intimacy that marked their early material but now capable of far greater depth. A reimagining of a track from the prior EP, single ‘the devil’s credit score’ offers the perfect comparison. None of the texture or tenderness is lost, but where the original never puntured its fuzzy wrappings, this version of the song carries a tangible weight, the emo underpinnings of the Home Videos sound fully apparent as the song rises towards its big, cathartic climax.

Jacob Faurholt – Painfully Alone

The first single from his forthcoming self-titled new album, ‘Painfully Alone’ finds Danish songwriter Jacob Faurholt stripping things back to the bare bones. Ever prolific, Faurholt has been making music for decades, releasing twelve records under his own name alongside work with experimental project Crystal Shipsss and Danish language outlet Statisk Støj. But the new album sees him breaking new ground. Recorded in “the quiet corners of his home studio,” it finds him at his most restrained and vulnerable, resulting in what he describes as “an intimate portrait of existential dread, inner turmoil, and fragile love.” ‘Painfully Alone’ proves the perfect introduction, a stark and intimate affair that builds from plucked guitar and Faurholt’s solitary vocals into something almost romantic, as his wife adds her voice too and they sing together “Alone, with you.”

Jacob Faurholt will be released later this year. Keep an eye on his Bandcamp page for updates.

Lydia Luce – Quiet

Born in Fort Lauderdale and now based in Nashville via Boston and LA, Lydia Luce has been on something of a journey in life, though her forthcoming full-length Mammoth centres on a journey of a different kind. One, that is, out of suffering, charting the path of recovery from chronic pain and the hard-won bonds which came with it. Lead single ‘Quiet’ embodies the tenderness with which Luce takes on this challenge. A song all about the slow process of learning to not only tolerate silence but embrace its power within a noisy world. Be that finding healing in the stillness of nature or coming to appreciate the beauty of sitting in quiet with the people you love. Watch a performance of the track below, with Luce supported by Lockeland Strings to bring the track’s subtle power to life.

Mammoth will be released on the 30th October and you can pre-order it now.

Mappe Of – Terraforming Moons

We are inching closer to the release of Afterglades, the new record from Mappe Of (the project of Toronto singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Tom Meikle). Following the weighty ‘A Scourge Laid Upon The Earth’, which we wrote about back in June, Meikle has unveiled another single ahead of the record’s September release date. Titled ‘Terraforming Moons’, it’s a song that takes very personal difficulties and sends them spinning into the cosmos, a gentle, folk-inflected indie pop song with an almost sci-fi twist. “A few years ago my partner got really sick,” Meikle explains. “I felt helpless, despite doing everything I could to make things better. I thought there was something romantic and terrifying about the idea of going as far as terraforming a planet to create the right conditions for a person you love to live.”

Ny Oh – Aperture

It is fair to say UK-born, NZ-raised and LA-based songwriter Ny Oh has travelled a lot across her life and career. Be it fronting jazz outfit Neon Gru, collaborating with the likes of Margo Price and Madison Cunningham or performing as part of Harry Styles’s band across stadium tours. But her new single ‘Aperture’ is all about coming home. Written in Aotearoa and developed with producer Jonathan Wilson (Father John Misty, Angel Olsen, Conor Oberst), the song unfurls with the distinctive mix of dreaminess and clarity that any place dear to the heart comes to possess. “I deserved a glove touch / Softness played it school yard rough,” Oh sings in one verse, balancing the allure of the familiar in all of its soft comfort and with a tactile level of detail. “Light flooded in / Gentle and warm / Reveal where I came from.” Watch the video by Victor Grossling and Anna Anderson below:

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

Patrick Shiroishi – Mountains that take wing

“An attempt to wrestle with [racism] as both a historical fact and contemporary shame, and furthermore one which confronts the impossibility of living in this world without participating in its ongoing function. Acknowledging that if the desire to eradicate another is something allowed into the world, then no aspect of a culture can be said to exist above or beyond it.” So we wrote of Forgetting is Violent, the new album from Patrick Shiroishi forthcoming next month via American Dreams Records. Lead single ‘There is no moment in my life in which this is not happening’ offered what we described as “a window into the poignant and evocative sound which results,” and new single ‘Mountains that take wing’ is every bit as striking as its predecessor, as Gemma Thompson (Savages) and Aaron Turner (SUMAC, ISIS) join Shiroishi to conjure a sound which ebbs and flows between fierce intensity and elegiac quiet.

Forgetting is Violent is out on the 19th September via American Dreams Records and you can pre-order it now from the Patrick Shiroishi Bandcamp page.

Pickle Darling – Congratulations Champion

We have written about Pickle Darling a couple of times in recent months, songs which heralded a new era for Aotearoa/New Zealand-based producer and multi-instrumentalist Lukas Mayo. First the Robyn, Cher and Madonna-inspired pop gem ‘Massive Everything’, what we called “a love song with all the complications left in,” then the sprawling ‘Human Bean Instruction Manual‘. “A track perhaps not direct in terms of style,” we wrote, “but every bit as forthright as its predecessor when it comes to the message it carries,” urging us to stand together against the multitude of threats which haunt our present moment. With the album’s release via Father/Daughter Records a matter of weeks away, Pickle Darling is back with ‘Congratulations Champion’, a sub-ninety-second single which might sit at the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of runtime yet nevertheless packs an equal emotional punch. A collage of lines collected from Mayo’s phone, the song pieces together incomplete, ostensibly mismatched thoughts into a satisfying whole. “An Oscar for Jane Campion / I found a note written in crumbs inside a biscuit tin,” as one couplet goes. Or the final verse, which sums up the strange, playful and completely sincere style of Bots as a whole:

You know i’m gonna love you still
Like black mould loves the window sill
Like oceans love an oil spill
Like ducks towards an air rifle

Shabason, Krgovich, Tenniscoats – Departed Bird

“A snapshot of a group of musicians pitched together for a short window of time, subject to the small moments of chance and happenstance and all the more special for it.” That’s how we described Wao, the forthcoming album by Shabason, Krgovich, Tenniscoats back in July, writing of how the outfit—Joseph Shabason, Nicholas Krgovich and Saya and Takashi Ueno of Tenniscoats—embrace ephemerality and imperfection. With the album set for release at the end of the week via Western Vinyl, the quartet have shared new single ‘Departed Bird’. The opening track of the record which highlights the mix of melancholy and magic which marks a release able to conjure wonder at the simplest of things.

Watch the visualizer below, shot at at Guggenheim House in Kobe, Japan:

Wao will be released on the 29th August via Western Vinyl and you can pre-order it now.

Silver Synthetic – Happy Ever After

Back in March, Silver Synthetic released their second full-length Rosalie on Curation Records, an album which saw the New Orleans outfit push the self-described ‘Home Fi’ style of their debut (a self-titled LP released with Third Man Records in 2021) towards the full richness and confidence of classic indie rock. The label had wanted the specific song ‘Happy Ever After’ to be the lead single, though the band themselves feared the track was something of an outlier and ended up not featuring it on the record at all. Whether or not that was an error, you can now decide for yourself, because fast forward several months Silver Synthetic have released the track as part of a double single, Happy Ever After / Say The Wrong Word. Charged with the same sunny swagger that marked Rosalie, ‘Happy Ever After’ couldn’t have been timed better, the peppy rhythms, smooth delivery and slight pysch wooze combining into the ideal soundtrack to which to milk these last weeks of summer.

SQORE – INTERNAL///VS.EXTERNAL[forces]

Recording under the moniker SQORE, New York-based producer, multi-instrumentalist and sound artist Em Sgouros blends field recordings with synthesized sounds to create small worlds of their own. Last week saw the release of reGENERATION, the sophomore SQORE EP, via Ambient Pasta, a collection of three tracks they say “explore the struggle of generating a new reality within yourself in the midst of fear and anger and ask as humans, ‘what are we capable of?'” Centrepiece ‘INTERNAL///VS.EXTERNAL[forces]’ is a good place to start, a song which sees field samples and drones play across waves of digital strings and flourishing arpeggios, resulting in something that feels part organic and part virtual. The track confronts fear and the strangling grip it can hold on both a personal and societal level, offering a sense of meditative understanding as a path towards joy and the regeneration of the record’s title.

The post Weekly Listening: August 2025 #4 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Gathering momentum after a string of appearances at some of the biggest festivals in the UK (Glastonbury, Reading and Leeds among them), songwriter cathy kio has released a brand new single ‘Last Goodbye’ to reinforce her burgeoning reputation. Crafted with a spare acoustic arrangement and kio’s signature heartfelt vocals, the song digs deep into the aftermath of a relationship in all of its tenderness and longing. A track poignant, aching and not entirely without fondness, looking to salvage all the good from the time now gone while recognising the need to walk away.

‘Last Goodbye’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Clutter – Jesus

Consisting of Hilda Ander, Emma French, Ove Jerndal and Ville Scott, Clutter is a new project out of Stockholm who cut their teeth in the underground Swedish scene but now look set to make waves further afield. Their debut 7″ single, Jesus/Holy Brother, out via via PNKSLM Recordings, underscores exactly why the band have risen to prominence so quickly, offering a noughties-inflected shoegaze style that’s able to sound heavy and playful simultaneously. ‘Jesus’ is a great example of the aesthetic, pairing existential lyrics and grungy guitar with an infectious sense of forward motion, showing Clutter’s ability to pack a punch while still having fun.

Watch the video shot and edited by Majken Bergman with animations by Henry Ander below:

Jesus/Holy Brother is out now via PNKSLM Recordings and available from Bandcamp.

The Convenience – I Got Exactly What I Wanted

The Convenience‘s 2021 debut Accelerator introduced a colourful, endlessly inventive brand of funk-inflected pop, but while follow-up Like Cartoon Vampires continues the imaginative style, the sound is very different. Because, following their artistic intuition, songwriters and multi-instrumentalists Nick Corson and Duncan Troast have pivoted towards new genres, the album reaching out towards post-punk, noise rock and drone in its search for something different. Single ‘I Got Exactly What I Wanted’ shows the wiry menace of this version of The Convenience, though beneath the shadowy mood lies something just as curiosity and playful in its craft as anything the duo have released to date.

Like Cartoon Vampires is out on the 18th April via Winspear and you can pre-order it now.

country girl – field day

Back in September we wrote about country girl, describing how single ‘i like that’ tapped into a nostalgic vibe to paint a picture of real fondness. “The nineties aesthetic adds a fresh, wide-eyed quality to the sound,” we wrote, “creating an ode to a significant other as voiced from the heady early days.” With debut EP out now via FADER Label, country girl is back with the equally warm and affectionate ‘field day’. Another song which finds itself reflecting on the joys of a rose-tinted past, looking to preserve that sense of possibility and fun in the face of life’s inevitable progression. Watch the video directed and edited by Emma Callahan below:

meet me at the fountain is out now via FADER Label.

Gum Parker – Two Subarus

Gum Parker is a new project out of Portland, Maine who are preparing to release their debut album The Brakes this spring on Repeating Cloud. Playing what they describe as “jangly songs” about “small disappointments and occasional wins,” the outfit draw on the considerable DIY history of its members to create good old-fashioned indie rock. Lead single ‘Two Subarus’ embodies this spirit both in style and theme, combining unapologetic nostalgic with a sense of momentous immediacy. “This one is thinking back on my first serious band, which would have been in the early 2000s,” songwriter Galen Richmond explains. “Everything was always just teetering on the edge of falling completely apart and it was the most exciting thing ever. It’s easy to be sorta rose-colored thinking back on that time so I’m making fun of myself for it while I totally indulge it.”

Lutalo – I Figured

We featured Lutalo‘s album The Academy several times last year, admiring how the Vermont-based singer-songwriter delved into their past with such intention and fearlessness. Released via Winspear ahead of a headline tour, new single ‘I Figured’ might not have quite made the cut to be included on the record, but it again shows how evocative Lutalo’s blend of rock and folk aesthetics can be. “Heard your train just holler / I just cussed your collar,” goes one of the verses, typifying the smouldering mix of drama and romance across the track. “You say I should come through / I know I shouldn’t want to / I know I shouldn’t but I want // You.”

Watch the video by Noah Lenker below:

‘I Figured’ is out now via Winspear and available from Bandcamp.

Molly Ganley – Who Are You

With debut album Eldest Daughter coming this March, songwriter Molly Ganley has unveiled brand new single, ‘Who Are You’. Another example of her warm, heartfelt brand of folk which celebrates the work previous generations have done to create and preserve a more hospitable world. “It asks the fundamental question: ‘Who are you to say?'”—who gets to make the call that women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, and climate action are unimportant, and that millions will suffer due to lack of legislative protection?” Ganley explains. The result is born of both love and defiance, promising to take up the mantle of our forebears to fight for the future we deserve.

naya mö – outsider

“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.” That’s what we wrote of naya mö‘s previous single, ‘wanderlust’, back in November, and the latest track from the French artist is no less atmospheric. The second single from a forthcoming EP, ‘outsider’ again taps into a gauzy shoegaze style to create an enveloping sense of loneliness, though is charged with enough energy to face this darkness with a steely defiance. “The EP is about the ghosts that haunt my mind and body. Good and bad, dark and light, love and fear,” naya mö explains of this duality. “Shadows of memories, ideas, regret, people linger in my head. I wrote songs about them and drench them in distortion, reverb and fuzz.”

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

OHYUNG – no good

You might know Lia Ouyang Rusli as the composer behind soundtracks such at that of Julio Torres’s Problemista (A24), but they also produce what is described as “experimental and political” under the moniker OHYUNG. Taken from the upcoming OHYUNG album You Are Always On My Mind, latest single ‘no good’ is every bit as cinematic as any of LOR’s scores, enlisting director and designer Day to create a video capable of furthering the song’s portrayal of a quest of self-actualisation. The album itself uses a vivid, trip-hop-inspired sound to chart the process of gender transition, and ‘no good’ explores the strange dualities which accompany such a process, where the desire to become the person you are supposed to be is matched by no small sense of fear. How do we feel when we achieve the very thing we want the most?

You Are Always On My Mind is out on the 28th March via NNA Tapes and Phantom Limb and you can pre-order it now.

Pit Pony – Vacancy

With new LP Dead Stars due for release next month via Clue Records and EMI North, Newcastle‘s Pit Pony have returned with ‘Vacancy’, a track full of wry humour and cutting energy which sets its sights on the cultivated perfection of social media. “My news feed is full of suggested videos of people telling me my life will be better if I buy some leggings or get the ‘off menu’ Starbucks drink. I love an iced coffee as much as the next person but there’s a whole culture of people driving in nice cars drinking coffee and sitting making videos in carparks that I can’t get my head around,” explains lead Jackie Purver. “I feel like it’s opening a black hole somewhere that we’re all going to be swallowed into—a vacancy—like a Dorian Gray painting on a mass scale. I want to derail it, to take things in a different direction, to make it messy.” The song makes good on this wish with a building momentum, resulting in a chaotic crescendo that punctures the fictitious illusion through sheer disordered passion.

Dead Stars is out on the 7th February via Clue Records and EMI North and you can pre-order it now.

since torino – transatlantic flight song

Sheffield‘s since torino are preparing to release their debut EP in the coming months, and brand new single ‘transatlantic flight song’ serves as the ideal introduction to the band for anyone unfamiliar with their work. Opening with a restrained hush, the song sets out a quiet, reflective mood, combining organ and murmured vocals to create an easy meandering fondness, and gradually develops to push the mood further. First with glitched guitars and eventually sweeps of violin, all working together to create a song which aches with the fondness of nostalgic contemplation.

‘transatlantic flight song’ is out now, and you can find since torino at the usual places.

william h. travis – unfuck my mind

Described as “a moniker for a person and a group of friends from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania,” william h. travis makes an empathetic brand of folk which walks the line between fondness and disaffection. As such, latest track ‘unfuck my mind’ could be something of a theme tune for the project. A song delivered from a jaded person stuck within the awful present, though nevertheless pining for a return to something more curious and joyful. “Candy cigarettes, big league chew were fantastic / now I can’t even drink water without the microplastic,” as a typical verse goes. “Is it the world or is it me, it’s the two of us probably.”

Zoe Firn – Forever New

The latest single from Brooklyn songwriter Zoe Firn, ‘Forever New’ is a song about the enduring nature of love drawn from an experience of that very thing. The song “is inspired by my grandparents, who were married for over 50 years until my granddad passed last October,” Firn explains. “According to gramgram, she and granddad are together in every life, past, present, and future.” Written from the perspective of her grandmother, the track illuminates this romantic idea further, serving as both a highly personal picture of a treasured relationship and a wider embrace of the hope and joy. “Told the grandkids how we met / in every other past life,” as one verse goes. “Distance never did keep us apart / on earth and I believe / that neither does time.”

The post Weekly Listening: January 2025 #1 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

country girl has now returned with brand new track ‘i like that’, and the same spirit of earnest romance persists. The nineties aesthetic adds a fresh, wide-eyed quality to the sound, creating an ode to a significant other as voiced from the heady early days. “I like it when you smoke / How you breathe out so slow,” as one verse goes. “The way it sticks to my clothes / And drives me crazy.” Stupid tattoos, smells of shampoo, curves of ribs and scars on lips, all the small details get loving mention, as though awash in the novelty of new love, the narrator is drunk on the peculiarities of this miraculous person. “The things that make a person feel intimate to you, unique, true,” as the artist puts it. “I like to notice those things, and this song is about that.”

Watch the visualizer below, directed by Emma Callahan and edited by Maurice Goldberg, with typeface and logo by Alexandre Edenne:

‘i like that’ is out now via FADER Label and available from the usual places.

The post country girl – i like that appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The project of Agriculture’s Leah B Levinson, Cali Bellow makes music concerned with the tension and interplay between the interior and exterior, real and fictional. Thematically, new album Ciao Bella owes as much to Dark Souls and The Muppets as it does Ursula Le Guinn and Joanna Russ, not to mention the environment of Altadena, California. A deep consideration of ideas of artifice and abstraction which always challenges limitations, be they of genre, gender or spirituality. Taking inspiration from songs like ‘Full Of Happiness’ by H.O.T. and ‘I, Me, Mine’ by Godflesh, as well as the hyperactive soundtracks of games like Sonic, new single ‘Goldin Scepter’ is a microcosm of the wider album. A myriad of influences deconstructed and rearranged in order to build a world of its own. “I wanted to pull on the zany character that a lot of ska, funk and pop music teases and push it to a more monstrous effect,” as Levinson explains.

country girl – your favorite girl

Blending an upbringing in classical music with a present love of pop, country girl creates music to bring to life those small personal experiences which make life worth living. Having recently signed with the FADER Label, the project is now back with a new single ‘your favorite girl’, the ideal introduction for anyone unfamiliar with the project. “A song about the movie scenes we film, direct, and act in our heads while in the frenzy of a crush,” as the artist explains. That pressing desire to be a main character in story, however small that story might be. Even if it just means being someone else’s favorite girl.

I wanna look you in the eye
Oh man it gets me every time
I wanna shine inside your world
I wanna be your favorite girl

‘your favorite girl’ is out now via FADER label and available from the usual places.

Death And The Maiden – Waratah

Based in Port Chalmers, Dunedin, Aotearoa/New Zealand trio Death And The Maiden take not only their name from an engraving by Edvard Munch, but their entire atmosphere. A meeting of strength and vulnerability, shadow and light. Moreover, a willingness to embrace ambiguity within a sound which draws upon everything from electronic, folk and psych to house and dance. Released via Fishrider Records (southern hemisphere) and Occultation Recordings (northern hemisphere), new album Uneven Ground is perhaps their most experimental to date, though conversely sees them embrace pop too. Single ‘Waratah’ displays such contradictions in all their alluring layers, allowing freedom and restraint to sit side by side.

dog eyes – drive

“A reach towards an almost cinematic brand of pop that leaves none of the emotion behind,” we wrote of ‘moment’ by dog eyes, “where friendship is at once the most intimate and soaring experiences one might be lucky enough to hold in their life.” The song typified the Oakland band’s new album holy friend, which explores how relationships and connection not only shape us but morph over time. With the record now out via Grand Jury Music, dog eyes have released a new single, ‘drive’. An example of the more folk-adjacent side of the album, the song tells the story of a road trip into the mountains with all the quiet seclusion of the leafy backroads, gentle guitar and ramshackle percussion sparkling sleepily behind sincere vocals. The result feels like a small and sweet moment grasped in its moment of transience and fixed to tape.

I would not say words if I did not mean them
Tired of monotony
Just drive this Sequoia please
To some distance where I cannot see
Where I’ll forget how to tell where I am

Dogwood Tales – driver’s side fantasy

Based in Harrisonburg, Virginia, Dogwood Tales originated in 2016 with Ben Ryan and Kyle Grim and soon expanded to become a full band with the addition of Danny Gibney (bass), Stephen Kuester (pedal steel) and Jake Golibart (drums). Working within a country-inflected rock style, the project has released a number of albums and EPs, most recently Rodeo via WarHen Records, and is putting out a brand new tape later this summer. Latest single ‘driver’s side fantasy’ introduces the sound, occupying that post-Drive-By Trucker’s sphere alongside the likes of MJ Lenderman. Watch the video filmed by Travis Legg below:

‘driver’s side fantasy’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Dwi Riana x Orkes Garasi – Ku Bisa

Indonesian-Canadian artist Dwi Riana has made a name for working across genres, finding inspiration in everything from folk, hip hop and traditional music to bossa nova and jazz, and new single ‘Ku Bisa’ is the project of yet another direction. “I had the amazing opportunity of composing for an Indonesian short film titled A Day Apart on the Seventeenth, directed by Noel Pendawa,” they explain, a process which saw them team up with Toronto-based Indonesian Keroncong band, Orkes Garasi. Channelling the themes of Pendawa’s film, the song explores ideas of homesickness by melding Keroncong and folk styles, and the result sees the narrator turning to dreams as their only mode of escape.

‘Ku Bisa’ is out now via streaming services.

Mother Sun – Giant Bog

“I think with these songs we wanted to create a record that sonically speaks to the magic that is constantly unfolding all around in the natural world.” That’s how lead Jared Doherty describes Mother Sun’s latest album, Meadow 6, which is coming soon via Earth Libraries. Fittingly, many of the songs originated when playing guitar outside in the garden, with the Kamloops, BC outfit not only exploring the diversity of nature but humanity’s relationship with it. Something to escape into, to explore and study, cultivate and exploit. Crafted from a vivid psych-rock sound that reaches towards jazz, krautrock and retro folk, the album comes to form an environment of its own, as captured by new single and closer, ‘Giant Bog’. A sprawling track which serves as a kind of retro-futurist hothouse within which all manner of things can sprout and grow wild.

Stephen Becker – I Held An Echo

This October, Stephen Becker is releasing his new full-length Middle Child Syndrome via Record Euphoria. The album sees the LA-born, Brooklyn-based songwriter work in the indie-psych tradition of the late noughties/early 2010s, adding jazz and baroque pop sensibilities to a more traditional singer-songwriter style. An effort, at least in part, to rise above the mundane present, as though to be trapped within conventions is to be restricted by the same inability to communicate effectively that haunts our everyday lives. Single ‘I Held An Echo’ hints at the widescreen scope of the resulting sound, though the glitch and shimmer of the dreamlike arrangement hints at the precarity of any attempt to escape our usual constraints.

Middle Child Syndrome is out on the 25th October via Record Euphoria and you can pre-order it from Bandcamp.

Yammerer – ESZ – Erth Station Zebra

How do you convince people to engage with album-length work in this age of streaming and algorithmic playlists? Liverpool’s Yammerer have one potential solution. Erth Station Zebra might be packaged as an album on Bandcamp and the like, but the release is intended as a single composition. Or as the band put it, “a transcendent odyssey” which runs through six movements across its forty-four minutes. Previous releases like Reality Escape Resort might have positioned them in the contemporary post-punk revival, but there was always something different about the outfit. An extra level of ambition and invention. Erth Station Zebra sees them embrace this side of their work wholeheartedly, leaning into transportive psych to not only revitalise the appetite for in-depth pieces of work, but position themselves as one of the UK’s most interesting projects to keep an eye on moving into the future.

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