Dead Skin Cells is Efinger’s attempt to deal with a move to New York, an event which offered her first chance to meditate on the dark things in her life whilst being physically removed from them. This caused a lot of rumination on the importance of the familiar, and whether geographic location alone can have an effect on a person. In place of the regular bio or blurb, the album is introduced by a poem by Efinger’s friend Becca Uliasz, which captures this feeling far better than I can:

“maybe the places we are in change what we are
maybe context rubs off on us the way we leave dead skin cells in the places we frequent
maybe it leaves its cells on us the same way
and we just trade back and forth
until we aren’t us or here or there but a new thing altogether” – becca uliasz

Like most of the songs on Dead Skin Cells, opening track ‘mother’ is short and sparse and deceptively dark, just simple ukulele and Efinger’s soft and almost child-like vocals delivering lyrics darkly surreal. “in a dream me’s (?) were crying black blood and water / my mom didn’t see me floating like a sheet of paper.” ‘projection’ doesn’t even break the minute barrier, a sweet song about sending thoughts back home, and the personal stand-out ‘dark hearts’ sounds like its drifting from a quiet bedroom window, a feeling increased by the distant sounds of sirens, and has a chorus that is eerily resonant with the book I’m reading at the moment.

“We break our little hearts
you broke my little heart
when thunder struck your little life
when we were apart”

‘cereal box’ is a song about personal habits and (wrongly) feeling sad and stupid for being the person you are, opening with the perfect lines “he caught you in a cereal box said why do you eat so much? / said why you wasting my money a battle cries a crutch / he caught you in your room at two watching pokemon / said you’ll never do anything why you wasting your day off?” ‘sundrops’ feels reflective and somehow more hopeful, conjuring that golden feeling of watching a sunset and being aware of all your problems but not overwhelmed by them, of feeling like one little person in a very big world and being okay with that. All that’s left then is ‘will you’, which is about missing someone dearly, about sending letters and the solace in looking at the same moon.

The tapes have already sold out, but you can get ratbath’s Dead Skin Cells right now as a name-your-price digital download via the Fox Food Records Bandcamp page or the ratbath Bandcamp page.

The post ratbath – dead skin cells appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Human Behavior are an experimental, genre-bending band from Tucson, Arizona, led by chief songwriter Andres Parada. Following 2013′s Golgotha, Bethphage is the second album in a trilogy which combines classical folk music with drone and spoken word and Bibilical imagery to explore dark themes like death and unhappiness. In an interview with Valley Hype Parada was asked how Bethphage differs from his previous work:

Long answer: This album was written in sequence, a technique we’ve never done. It is two long tracks, split up by chapters. We tried to make this album a cinematic experience. It is also our first studio album, which allowed us to experiment in ways we haven’t before.

Short answer: It’s weirder.

Weird is a good word to describe Bethphage, with each of the various ‘Chapters’ flitting between styles and genres at will. For example ‘Chapter 2′ begins as a traditional folk song before morphing into a spoken word poem that itself gradual changes into a hymn. ‘Chapter 3′ is a western soundtrack akin to Ry Cooder which is peppered with abstract samples, from a man yelling “hey!” to a strange droney conversation between an adult and an upset child. The use of white noise over a classic folk sound is unsettling, a weird modern confusion against the comfortable nostalgia that folk music offers, changing a romantic lonliness to a sharp a threat of isolation, a seething radio silence. ‘Chapter 5′ is minimal yet expansive, bringing to mind vast empty spaces with nothing but dust, and ‘Chapter 6′ grows out of this, beginning with gentle vocals before becoming a ramshackled punk-folk song with the repeated refrain: “The end is nigh.”

Bethphage does not sit comfortably but its purpose is not to comfort, at least not explicitly. That said, the use of folk music as a medium to explore things such as depression and suicide and Catholic guilt suggests that Human Behavior are not nihilists. If they wanted to convince us all that everything is worthless and stupid and fucked then there are plently of other more suitable genres. Instead they attempt something more constructive, something that pulls no punches while criticising traditions while also acknowledging that they can form part of the solution. Bethphage is too honest to take a distinct and definite view of anything.

You can buy Bethphage from the Human Behavior Bandcamp page, grab a CD through Diet Pop Records, or a vinyl from Folktale Records.

The post Human Behavior – Bethphage appeared first on Various Small Flames.