Swim Camp – Pretty Bird
Black Belt Eagle Scout – Indian Never Die
Pedro The Lion – Quietest Friend
Cat Clyde – Anymore
She Keeps Bees – Coyote
Cartwheel – Nothing
Tempertwig – Comfort Blanket
Downhaul – Wires / Enough
Witching Waves – Eye 2 Eye
LISA – Primitive Us
Yamachan – Rose Gold Blue
Spelling Reform – The Second Coming
Faith & Majesty – Summer Fling
Caroline Lazar – Georgia
Jeffrey Silverstein – Easy Rider
Ronnie Rogers – Leaning On
Nanami Ozone – Alone Too
Fresh – Willa
Perfume V – Perfume Homes Movies
Hand Habits – Can’t Calm Down
MUNYA – Benjamin
LUNCH – Forget Everything
Control Top – Chain Reaction
Prudence – Euphoria
Cult Film – Bored to Death
Walking Bicycles – Fat Cat
Lost Dog – DFT
Sharkmuffin – Serpentina
Bandy – Trying to Reach You
Gold Connections – Like a Shadow
AllegrA – Spoon or Fork
Parkway & Columbia – Wondering and Wandering
la loye – to live underwater
Kitchen – Claws
Spectator – Waves
Sailor Boyfriend – The Battle of Sugarhill
Ladada – My Van
The Exbats – 2027
Adir L.C. – Reacting
minihorse – Drink You Dry
Trevor Stott – Halfway in the Night
Tyler Burkhart – Waiting For You
Or Sobre Blau – Mártires

Like what you hear? Catch up with the rest of our Monthly Mixes!

The post March 2019 Roundup Mix appeared first on Various Small Flames.

We’re thrilled to be able to share the record, which is also the debut release of Bournemouth-based cassette label Devil Town Tapes, a few days before it comes out later this week. Opener ‘Bored To Death’ introduces Lee’s distinctive vocal delivery, drawing from the disaffected drawl of Will Toledo to produce a sound that’s at once emotive and ironic. There’s a confrontational tone too, a generalised anger that’s long since been unhooked from any one cause and left to wash of the ways of life itself.

This world is chemicals 
and violence, 
I don’t want to sound like 
apathetic, but it all feels so indifferent 

I wasn’t born in the 80’s 
I wish I wasn’t born at all 
There’s man crying in the bathroom, 
I say, 
Shut the fuck up! 

‘Fantasies’ follows a similar vibe, personal worries combining with those of the wider world, or else hiding behind them so as to excuse their existence. The falseness of the situation lends an air of isolation, loneliness cutting through the charade. With a significant difference in sound, leaning more toward the tenderness of Hovvdy, the title track plays like an acknowledgement of this, the hip detachment dropped in favour of an earnest attempt at communication. And closer ‘Your Thing’ continues the change, a climbing down from the position of apathy, an opening up to something more risky and meaningful.

Because, for all of its bummed out detachment and disillusioned swagger, Mona is a sincere record. The irony is born of self-consciousness rather than silliness—it’s not that Cult Film don’t believe in what they want to say, rather realise how they will sound in saying it. This is cynicism as self-preservation, an attempt to survive the vulnerability and futility of feeling in a world such as our own. But, slowly across the EP, Cult Film appear to suggest that things do not have to be this way. That perhaps futility can be confronted through the act of being vulnerable, of letting things in.

Photo by Bella Alexandrova

The post Cult Film – Mona appeared first on Various Small Flames.