We’ve covered  Bergen-based songwriter Bo Milli several times in recent months. Most recently with ‘Making Friends’, which we described as “a track which charts the rollercoaster ride of young life through the prism of a hectic night out, capturing a sense of both the carefree abandon and creeping loneliness of late nights, new faces and a sense of endless possibility.” Latest track ‘I’m In’ is equally varied in its peaks and troughs, starting out as a wistful pop number but soon morphing into something bigger, charging things with an indie rock momentum reminiscent of The Beths.

C.O.F.F.I.N – Factory Man

When the drummer is the lead vocalist you know things are going to get hectic. Enter Sydney’s C.O.F.F.I.N, a four-piece rock band who’re here to burn through their frustrations with new full-length Australia Stops. A joint release between Damaged Record Co (Australia), Bad Vibrations (Europe) and Goner Records (North America), the album positions C.O.F.F.I.N as another key member of the furious, glorious generation of rockers emerging from Down Under, joining country mates Last Quokka in their twin motivations of castigating the political landscape and driving social change through sheer momentum. Take single ‘Factory Man’, a rock song in the classic sense, looking shake off the shackles and smash some skulls with its heft and energy.

But when the lights went out
With no rest to give us warning
Machinery ran red
I ain’t living
I ain’t loving
Or hearing your humming song oh no
It’s the stabbed silent of the wish you pled

Watch the video edited by Ben Portnoy below, with Gasometer footage filmed by Zoe Mulcahy, Lansdowne footage by Schooner:

Australia Stops is out now and available from the C.O.F.F.I.N Bandcamp page.

Duffy x Uhlmann – Etch

Duffy x Ulhmann, the new project of Meg Duffy (Hand Habits) and Gregory Uhlmann, have recently released their debut album Doubles on Orindal Records. An exercise in improvisation built entirely on trust, the record sees the duo lay down patient yet detailed guitar-based duets, and the result is something organic in the way only true intimacy could manage. Single ‘Etch’ is the perfect example, a track shorn of any ostentation to sound entirely natural, as though its gentle rhythms existed long before Duffy x Uhlmann set them down with their guitars. The result invites the audience not so much into the same room as the musicians as the very relationship between them, offering small glimpses of a mutual exchange perpetually ongoing.

Doubles is out now via Orindal Records and available from Bandcamp.

Gabriel Birnbaum – Above A Forest With A House That’s On Fire

Songwriter, producer and composer Gabriel Birnbaum (of Wilder Maker) is preparing to unveil the latest installation of his solo Nightwater project, All the Dead Do is Dream, on Western Vinyl. Nightwater started as a self-applied antidote to election anxiety, with Birnbaum using a Tascam 4-track as a vehicle of escape from the growing dread of the twenty-four hour news cycle. And just as these long nocturnal hours offered relief from terror to the artist, the resulting art came to take on a similar form too. Ambient soundscapes intended to serve a functional purpose, a space into which the listener can submerge themselves away from the surrounding world. All the Dead Do is Dream continues this practice, a sleep aid which looks to tap into pacifying patterns of breathing, and single ‘Above A Forest With A House That’s On Fire’ typifies the mindful, hypnagogic mood.

Watch the visualiser by Jules Evens below which furthers the therapeutic value of the track by reinforcing the breathing rhythms:

Nightwater | All the Dead Do is Dream is out via Western Vinyl on the 3rd November and you pre-order it now.

Montañera – Tú – El Borde de Mi Arista

Earlier this month we featured ‘Un Día Voy a Ser Mariposa‘, the first single from Montañera‘s new album, A Flor De Piel, coming this November (alaso on Western Vinyl). “A track of layered details and searching emotion which seems to be always reaching for some higher plane,” as we put it, taken from a record “of quasi-dreamscapes which push at the borders of reality, drawing the listener into surreal new worlds.” The London-based Colombian artist has now shared second single ‘Tú – El Borde de Mi Arista’, a song which again pushes into ethereal tones while always remaining anchored in the intimacy of María Mónica Gutiérrez’s vocals.

A Flor De Piel is out on the 17th November and you can pre-order it now from the Montañera Bandcamp page.

Otracami – Fold

The first glimpse her debut full-length touching the stove coil, Otracami‘s new single ‘Fold’ is an examination of the contortions people sometimes put themselves through to try to fit into a relationship. The project of New York-based Camila Ortiz, Otracami is an outlet for personal exploration, its songs delving back into the past and untying its knots, attempting to make peace with the present. ‘Fold’ is the perfect example, an almost time-travel style journey back to a very specific moment (Ortiz leaves a party, rides the bus, climbs the stairs to her partner’s apartment) and the swirling thoughts and anxieties that it held.

Watch the video by Sai Tripathi below:

‘Fold’ is out now and available via the Otracami Bandcamp page.

Pony Girl – Highways

Just over a month out from the release of their new record, Laff It Off, Canadian art pop duo Pony Girl have unveiled new single ‘Highways’. The song uses roads as a metaphor for the sense of endless possibility and interconnection experienced when you fall for someone new, what the band describe as “expanding roads of connection that stretch out through time.” Musically it’s lush and dreamy like a night-time drive at the heart of summer, the smooth and sparkly chorus emphasising the themes of heartsick romanticism.

Check out Stephanie Kuse‘s animated video below:

Laff It Off comes out via Paper Bag Records on 27th October. Pre-order it now from the Pony Girl Bandcamp page.

vireo – Big Elsewhere

How many great works of art have been created in the impatient lull of waiting for a pizza? That’s the origin story of ‘Big Elsewhere’, the latest single from Vireo, which was written as a game during a delayed delivery while lead Chris Beaulieu and Suzanne Gomes were cooped up in quarantine. “We each chose a single note or a small melodic phrase to layer on top of each other,” Beaulieu describes. “Then we added a chord progression on top and took turns writing vocal melodies.” Homemade percussion came next (think wooden spoons and mason jars), followed by lyrics, and finally the whole thing was run through a salvaged reel-to-reel tape recorder for just that little extra DIY character. The result is beautiful, despite (or perhaps because of) its humble beginnings.

‘Big Elsewhere’ is out now via streaming services.

Wurld Series – Lord of Shelves

Later this autumn, Aotearoa/New Zealand indie rockers Wurld Series will release The Giant’s Lawn, a brand new record on Meritorio Records and Melted Ice Cream. The record promises to see the band explore new avenues, adding mystical nods to oddball psych and left-field folk, what the press release calls “earthen psychedelia, off-grid community folk, and highly bookish, antipodean snock.” Opening track ‘The Giant’s Lawn Part I’ embraces this weirdness from the off, a rambling, jazzy folk song that feels like meeting a mysterious stranger on a woodland path. But lead single ‘Lord of the Shelves’ is very much the Wurld Series we’ve come to expect, a Flying Nun-style indie rock song that shows the band haven’t abandoned their core foundations.

The post Weekly Listening: September 2023 #4 appeared first on Various Small Flames.