It has been going on eleven years since Anglo-Australian indie pop outfit Allo Darlin’ released their previous full-length We Come From The Same Place, but next month will see the wait ended with new album, Bright Nights. A joint release between Fika Recordings (UK) and Slumberland Records (US), the album has roots in the height of the pandemic, when the band members gathered online to reminisce and reflect on the music they made together, and ultimately vow to revive Allo Darlin’ once conditions allowed. The resulting collection is understandably bittersweet, marked by the passing of time and the increasing weight of themes like love, birth and death, yet always newly aware of the blessing it is to make music and share it with an audience. Latest single ‘Cologne’ typifies the tone, a song full of the kind of tender joy earned through a life well-lived.

Bright Nights will be released in July via Fika Recordings (UK) and Slumberland Records (US).

Constellation Myths – Shadows on the Wall

“A series of vignettes and character sketches that examine agency, belief, and the tensions between the natural and the human-built environment.” That’s how Massachusetts trio Constellation Myths describe their forthcoming album The Cost of Living, an album preoccupied with all the injustices, cruelties and resentments which have come to mark our age. Latest track ‘Shadows on the Wall’ is cuttingly relevant in this regard, detailing the corrosive impact of our continued slide into the digital, and the resulting isolated, individualistic existence can dislocate a person from reality itself. Taking over lead vocal duties, Andy Arch communicates such themes with a suitably jaded air, and as the sound rises with something like brightness, the effect is that of a man cut off and drifting, slowly slipping away from the world.

Dead Slow Hoot – Satellite

“Despite the careful intricacy of the track, the emotion at its core is delivered with unguarded sincerity, Hugo Lynch’s vocals confronting love and love with direct candour to paint a picture wistful and romantic and wise.” So we wrote of ‘All My Love Remains‘, a recent single from Dead Slow Hoot‘s new album, Orbits Intervened. Such earnestness marks the record, though, as singles like ‘Take It Or Leave It‘ and ‘Sleeping Before The Big Day‘ show, it is a release sprawling in style and scope. With the album now out, Dead Slow Hoot have shared final single ‘Satellite’ to further highlight this fact. An introspective song which starts out as a pleasantly upbeat slice of folk rock but eventually rises towards a cathartic crescendo, before clearing again as though with the newfound clarity of sudden epiphany.

The Duke of Norfolk – I Have Never Seen Volcanoes

The recording project of Oklahoma-born songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Adam Thomas Howard, The Duke of Norfolk has made a name blurring the divide between reality and mythology, offering a brand of folk capable of both intimate detail and sweeping grandeur. Howard’s latest work sees him join forces with Ben Lanz (The National/Beirut/Sufjan Stevens), and new single ‘I Have Never Seen Volcanoes’ shows the fruits of the collaboration. Drawing on the Emily Dickinson poem of the same name, the track evokes the unfolding climate catastrophe in all of its sublime violence. “I have never seen / fire and dust spit / down the hillside, / smoke and choke the machine— / Ashen faces, ashen cowhide,” as the track opens. “Trace a line in the dirt; / cut it deeper, carve a border. / See the blood of the earth, / pump it then, play the driller.” The rest of the song fires forward as though charged by such imagery, finding a fervid rhythm and revelatory foreboding.

Till suspension morn
’Till suspension morn
‘Till the angel’s horn

When the break in the churning,
when the sleeping rise up like rosebay,
and the key starts to turn
like the dagger twist’d in the ribcage.

‘I Have Never Seen Volcanoes’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Editrix – The Big E

Not content to rest on their laurels after last year’s superb full-length Viewfinder (an album which made our favourites of 2024) and more recent single ‘I Don’t Miss You‘, Wendy Eisenberg has reunited with Steve Cameron and Josh Daniel and turned their attention back to Editrix. The band’s first new release since 2022, new album The Big E promises to be every bit as ambitious and intense as previous releases, finding the trio further apart geographically, but tight knit in their vision and execution. The title track and lead single gives an idea of what to expect, a song charged with energy yet slightly unnerved in tone, playing like the chaotic, frantic internal landscape of someone gripped by neurotic concerns. “This song is about alien visitors: hoping they’re friendly and curious like the best of us humans,” the band explain. “It’s also about aging, which feels like you’re an alien to certain generations including your younger selves, and the impossibility of being understood.”

Watch the video by Ryan Hover below:

The Big E will be released on the 25th July via Joyful Noise Recordings and you can pre-order it now.

MacGregor Burns – I’m Not Supposed To Be Here Anymore

Through a number of singles in recent months, LA songwriter MacGregor Burns has established a style at once emotionally resonant and idiosyncratic, with songs like ‘Silent Answers‘ and ‘Can’t Go Back‘ reaching between slacker rock and something more folk-adjacent. Latest single ‘I’m Not Supposed To Be Here Anymore’ continues this style, albeit leaning further than ever towards the latter, its stripped back style removing all distractions from Burns’s distinctively nuanced vocals. A voice straining with the accumulated hopes and regrets of a life well lived, relatively plain in its unguarded tone yet stretched by a certain sense of desperation. As though there’s a fire at his back which is creeping closer, or else a train to somewhere better in the distance and just about to leave.

‘I’m Not Supposed To Be Here Anymore’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Ohly – If I Go

Detroit‘s Christian Ohly, recording as straight Ohly, makes what we’ve called “a rich and heartfelt brand of folk rock that manag[es] to pair intimate emotion with cathartic energy,” not to mention a strong narrative throughline to further ground the songs within the nuances of the intricacies of the human condition. Produced by Jr Jr’s Dan Zott, new single ‘If I Go’ is what Ohly describes as his magnum opus. The embodiment of the project, as though everything which has come before has coalesced into a single song. A track full of tiny details and huge themes, zooming into the smallest moments of life in order to evoke the intangible joy of existence.

‘If I Go’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Pickle Darling – Massive Everything

Described by Lukas Mayo as “maybe the first kind of ‘pop’ song I’ve ever made,” ‘Massive Everything’ is not just a new song from Pickle Darling, but an introduction to a new stage in the evolution of the project. Out now via Father/Daughter Records, the single sees the New Zealand-based producer and multi-instrumentalist drop some of the playfulness and poetry of previous releases to instead embrace the exhilaration of being wholly direct. Mayo cites the likes of Robyn, Cher and Ray of Light-era Madonna as inspiration for this style, channelling such pop royalty in how they manage to conjure the entire topography of a person’s emotional landscape within a bold, vivid sound. The result is a love song with all the complications left in. Moreover, one not attenuated by the attached pain and personal baggage but conversely made larger. A picture of a love substantial enough to bear the weight accumulated through living.

Watch the video by Christiane Shortal below:

‘Massive Everything’ is out now via Father/Daughter Records.

Ryan Cassata – a Knack for Overthinking

As a singer-songwriter, actor, performer, writer, activist and motivational speaker, Ryan Cassata is well-versed in sharing his thoughts and ideas with the world, putting himself forward as a proud trans-person in an increasingly hostile world. His debut album with Kill Rock Stars, Greetings from Echo Park,is every bit as open and cathartic as you might expect, Cassata delving into both the wonders and tribulations he has faced, be those stemming from his trans identity, experiences of chronic illness or else the inherently anxious process of growing up. Focus track ‘a Knack for Overthinking’ embodies the spirit of the release. One unapologetic in its unguarded confessionalism. “Queer love songs are protest songs,” as he explains. “Whenever we’re loud about it, it’s a protest to me.”

I’m looking, at bare skin
In the smell of cigarettes
We hard kiss, my head spins
I want your confidence

I’ve got a knack for overthinking
And saying too much
I’ve got a knack for overthinking

Watch the video directed by Alla Arutcheva below:

Greetings from Echo Park is out now via Kill Rock Stars and you can get it from Bandcamp.

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Released to introduce forthcoming full-length Orbits Intervened, follow-up single ‘Sleeping Before The Big Day‘ took this ambitious style further still. A fitting preview for what proves to be “a collection of sprawling songs large and detailed enough to carry a range of narratives and thematic concerns,” as we described, “touching on everything from personal heartbreak and grief to the cultural trauma of things like the Magdalene laundries scandal.”

With the release of the album coming next month, Dead Slow Hoot have now returned with new single, ‘All My Love Remains’. It’s a window into another dimension of this multi-faceted release, following the pressing brightness of its predecessor with something more considered and patient. Though despite the careful intricacy of the track, the emotion at its core is delivered with unguarded sincerity, Hugo Lynch’s vocals confronting love and love with direct candour to paint a picture wistful and romantic and wise. “Only love remains / As much today as ever,” as he sings at the track’s conclusion. “I wish that I had loved you better.”

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“Specialising in a style of atmospheric alt-rock that’s at once melancholy and anthemic, London outfit Dead Slow Hoot draw on a variety of genres to create something unique.” So we wrote when covering single ‘Take It Or Leave It’ last year, and DSH’s forthcoming new full-length Orbits Intervened takes things even further to become perhaps their most ambitious release to date. A collection of sprawling songs large and detailed enough to carry a range of narratives and thematic concerns, touching on everything from personal heartbreak and grief to the cultural trauma of things like the Magdalene laundries scandal. Lead single ‘Sleeping Before The Big Day’ hints at the release’s nuance and depth, a song full of tension despite its patient rhythm, caught between resistance to change and the desire to surrender to its constant flow.

Orbits Intervened will be released on the 5th June.

eggcorn – Hitler Was a Vegetarian

Last month we introduced Observer Effect, the new album from eggcorn coming soon on Spirit House. “Taking its name from the phenomenon where an observed system is disturbed by the very act of being observed,” we wrote, “[the record] sees songwriter Lara Hoffman explore the ways in which reflecting on one’s life and surroundings can shape our experiences.” After the title track used pop-inflected chamber folk to “bare vulnerabilities and reckon with their implications without sacrificing a certain playfulness,” latest single ‘Hitler Was a Vegetarian’ again finds Hoffman examining her own imperfections with unerring candour. As its title suggests, the song explores the ways in which individuals exist as systems of contradictions, with objectively cruel people still capable of tenderness and vice versa. “I am tender but that doesn’t make me nice,” as Hoffman sings at the climax of the song. “And I’m sorry and I’m sorry and it’s not fair to you.”

Ella Hanshaw – One More Hill

Born in 1934, Ella Hanshaw started playing guitar aged twelve, playing and singing for her family on their farm in Procious, West Virginia. From then until her death in 2020, Hanshaw wrote hundreds of songs, first heartsick ballads inspired by her favourite country singers and later Gospel songs she believed to be sent directly from God. Despite her obvious talents and huge repertoire, Hanshaw’s music was never recorded professionally, or released publicly, at least until now. Gathered from both home and church tape recordings by Hanshaw’s granddaughter, and released by the fine folks at SPINSTER, Ella Hanshaw’s Black Book brings together two distinct collections of her work. Side A features the Gospel songs, while Side B the country ones. Lead single ‘One More Hill’, recorded with Hanshaw’s band the Hallelujah Hill Quartet, opens the collection and is a good example of the its prevailing theme, what the label describe as “love and longing for what we cannot quite touch—not yet, anyway.”

Festiva – Ghosts and Lichens

Carver Arena-Bruce has long released music under the moniker Festiva, with albums like Songs I Don’t Sing for Anyone showing off the Portland, Maine singer and guitarist’s bold, cathartic garage rock style (“If there were a Venn diagram with Sonic Youth in one bubble and CCR in the other, Festiva’s [sound] would be in the middle,” as Arena-Bruce puts it). But the project also has a full-band iteration, with Noah Grenier-Farwell (drums) and Simi Kunin (bass) of Amiright? joining to help realise Festiva’s full noisy potential. Out via Repeating Cloud, new full-length Everything In Moderation shows how powerful this can be, with songs like ‘Ghosts and Lichens’ matching Arena-Bruce’s singular vocal style with a sense of heft and volatility.

Florry – First it was a movie, then it was a book

Philadelphia‘s DIY country superstars Florry have a new record on the way via Dear Life Records. It’s their second effort since bandleader Francie Medosch transformed what was once a solo project into a bona fide folk rock band, and early signs suggest it could see Florry hit yet another level. “A portrait of a ripping band cresting towards the height of their powers,” as the label describe it, “uniquely equipped to capture a wildly loving, barn-burning camcorder clip of a turbulent trip with your best friends, without dipping into nostalgia bait.” Released a couple weeks ago, single ‘First it was a movie, then it was a book’ confirms this hype, a freewheeling country-fried rocker that kicks off the album with limitless energy and dedication to the vision of what Florry means both to Medosch and the community that has formed around her.

First it was a movie, then it was a book
They chopped my life up, put it on tv so I had to take a look
Well that Holly Hunter is so relatable, when she screamed I cried
if I wasn’t feeling so empty baby Id give that movie five out of five

Watch the video directed and edited by Jon Cox below:

Sounds Like… is out on the 23rd May via Dear Life Records and you can pre-order it now.

Laila Smith – Diorama

Something Dreadful’s Going To Happen, the upcoming release from musician and artist Laila Smith, is more than your average EP. Not only are the songs themselves experimental in their own right, adding avant garde noise sensibilities to what are ostensibly folk arrangements, they are also accompanied by an immersive video game available on Smith’s website. Lead single ‘Diorama’ introduces the project, matching an interactive experience to the song to further its explorations of trauma and the power dynamics which shape us on both personal and societal levels. “I’ve created a digital twin of the physical diorama featured in my album art,” Smith explains, “an explorable environment where fans manipulate a miniature version of me through rooms filled with objects from my personal history.” Taking inspiration from the art style of 90s era internet, the work takes on a strangely retrofuturist vibe, harkening back to a time where the online space felt like fertile ground for a better, more creative future. As Smith puts it: “it’s an attempt to reclaim digital space as somewhere strange and sacred rather than optimized and consumable.”

‘Diorama’ is out now via streaming services.

Rival Consoles – Known Shape

“Might be the project’s most impressive [record] to date, focusing in on small details while retaining the grand sweeps of melancholy and euphoria too.” So we wrote of Landscape from Memory, the upcoming from Rival Consoles on Erased Tapes. The release sees Ryan Lee West delve into what he calls “a scrapbook of discarded audio snippets,” building from the flashes of memory and inspiration found within. Embodying the spirit of the release, latest single ‘Known Shape’ shows how Rival Consoles retains a sense of humanity within its digital sound. “I’ve always been obsessed by controls on machines because they produce beautiful sounds and they have their own rhythms,” West explains. “The drums are made from rotating switches and the synths are set in motion by invisible mechanical rhythms. Machines have a special connection to the human spirit, which is both good and bad but above all restless. There is a constant searching in ‘Known Shape’ for some kind of answer or emotion.”

Sally Anne Morgan – I Saw a Heron

The music of North Carolina artist and naturalist Sally Anne Morgan is inextricable from the landscape in which she creates it. Her blend of traditional instrumentation and more modern composition is an exploration of the people, places and nature that surround her home at the edge of North Carolina’s Pisgah National Forest. Morgan’s forthcoming record, Second Circle The Horizon, is a direct example, an attempt to translate both the rhythm and randomness of the natural world into a language more musical. “I wanted to capture the feeling of walking outside and encountering organic nature sounds,” she describes, “some with patterns, some with a randomness that also verges on its own kind of pattern.” Our first taste is ‘I Saw a Heron’, a piece built of fiddle, violin and piano that feels as fresh and lush as a spring morning walk through a sunlit valley.

Slow Mass – Freeze Frame

Next month sees the release of Low On Foot, the new album from Slow Mass on Landland Corportage. Their first since 2018, the record finds the Chicago outfit bigger and bolder than ever, their line-up increasing to six members (and subsequently seven after recording) and their sound pushing in all directions. Single ‘Freeze Frame’ bears the fruits of this evolution, a sound at once weightier than anything they released previously yet also more tender and heartfelt. Because Slow Mass haven’t merely taken their work down one specific road but added depth to everything, meaning their current iteration can be heavier and more delicate all at once. The juxtaposition is fitting for ‘Freeze Frame’, a song all about the tension between who you are and who you might have been, holding space for those desires to change as a person while learning to embrace one’s own identity.

Watch

Low On Foot is out on the 16th May via Landland Colportage and you can pre-order it now.

Symbol Soup – Miniatures

Back in 2023 Symbol Soup released full-length Slow Puncture via Sad Club Records, an album “brought to life with a decidedly American aesthetic, following a lineage rising in the 90s from songwriters like Mark Linkous and persisting through a myriad of contemporaries,” as we described in our review, “but one which draws parallels between the US and Rea’s hometown of Milton Keynes. A city with a short history inside a country with a long one, designed purely for modern living and possessing the strange balance between potential and hollowness of any ahistorical space.” New single ‘Miniatures’ is again concerned with place and a person’s identity within it, specifically how overly familiar surroundings can come to make a life seem rote and insignificant. But with Symbol Soup’s signature blend of melancholy and warmth, the song manages to reposition such feelings into something like relief. Perhaps being small isn’t the worst thing in the world?

Watch the video by Hello Mary below:

‘Miniatures’ is out now via Sad Club Records and available from Bandcamp.

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

“Has it been a year or two? Will it be cotton or leather?” asks Abigail Lapell in new single ‘Anniversary Song’. “Mercury and iron, carbon, silver / bind us together.” Taken from the Toronto singer-songwriter’s forthcoming album Anniversary on Outside Music, the song encapsulates the marriage of symbolism and tangibility used across the record. Romantic chemistry as both otherworldly magic and physical reaction. Not that the love on the album is merely of the romantic sort, with a series of personal milestones prompting Lapell to contemplate the phenomenon in all its guises, offering a picture of relationships and commitment with all the complexities left intact.

Agent blå – Rain To You

Last month we wrote about ‘Discount’, the lead single from the upcoming album Stab! by Gothenburg‘s Agent blå on VÅRØ Records (Sweden) and Kanine Records (US). What we described as a song “simmering with eerie menace and charged with forward motion, splitting the difference between familiarity and strangeness.” With the album coming later this spring, Agent blå have returned with second single ‘Rain To You’ to build upon these beginnings. Squally and loaded with momentum, it looks to small details as sources of comfort within an otherwise overwhelming world, and submits itself fully to forces large and mysterious.

Never spoke it with a sober mouth
I’m drawn to the chaos, my sanity grown shy
Keep clinging to no time
You’re the moon to me
I was rain to you

Al Harper – Plaster of Paris

Later this month, San Francisco-based songwriter Al Harper will release album The Analemma Observation League via Take a Turn Records. An album which draws upon the solar phenomenon of its title to explore themes of change and growth. Analemma refers to the figure of eight plot made if one was to chart the sun’s position in the sky from the same position at the same time of day across an entire year, rendering what might otherwise seem a linear process into an infinite loop. Working in such a spirit, Al Harper draws on a variety of memories and experiences to offer the past not as some line trailing ever further into the distance, but rather something forever orbiting around us. Lessons to learn from, patterns to take comfort in. The suitably sunny sound of latest single ‘Plaster of Paris’ is the perfect introduction, and comes complete with a video shot by Harper and Craig Barclift and edited by Simon Linsteadt:

The Analemma Observation League is out on the 23rd February via Take A Turn Records and you can pre-order it now.

bedbug – postcard

We’ve long followed the work of bedbug, charting how Dylan Gamez Citron has taken the project through a trilogy of acclaimed bedroom pop albums before metamorphosing into a full band for a self-titled EP in 2022. This year sees bedbug return with pack your bags the sun is growing, a full-length album which builds more fully upon this change of direction to push the project closer to Cap’n Jazz than the hushed aesthetic from which they originated. A style which only furthers Citron’s ability to weave the personal and the political into a seamless whole. Vitally none of the heart or intimacy is lost in this transformation, as single ‘postcard’ attests, and while any project inevitably passes through various life stages as time goes on, you get the sense Citron and co. are rising towards their fullest potential. The first bedbug to ever sprout wings.

Dead Slow Hoot – Take It Or Leave It

Specialising in a style of atmospheric alt-rock that’s at once melancholy and anthemic, Sheffield/London outfit Dead Slow Hoot draw on a variety of genres to create something unique. Previous releases have drawn on poetic folk, shadowy post-punk and epic post-rock, sometimes within the same song, and new single ‘Take It Or Leave It’ is no different. Opening with just pared-back guitar and banjo, it eventually builds to a dramatic crescendo of wailing guitar and crashing percussion, straddling the line between an intimate acoustic ballad and a monumental rock song. The song is about “making necessary compromises for the good of your partner and growing together through that,” the band explain, “[and also] a more general realism, accepting the ‘competing intentions’ that you might have with another person… and actively engaging with them to make something better.”

‘Take It Or Leave It’ is out now via streaming services.

Emma Geiger – Reverse Bloom

We’ve featured Durham, North Carolina-based songwriter Emma Geiger several times over the last year or so. First with 2022 EP Haven, and then with several stellar singles. Excitingly, Geiger is now putting the finishing touches to her debut full-length, Reverse Bloom, which features those singles alongside four brand new tracks. To further whet anticipation, she has released the title track, a song which moves its focus away from romantic relationships towards the difficult loss of a friendship. Someone Geiger was formerly close to wrote a song detailing the dissolution of their friendship, and this is an exploration of the following emotions. “When I first heard it, I felt her anger, frustration and bitterness,” she describes. “That friendship meant a lot to me, and losing it really shook me. It brought up a lot of questions about who I am, and who I was in that relationship.” Watch the video filmed by Archer Boyette and directed by Boyette and Geiger herself below:

Reverse Bloom is out on 26th April. ‘Reverse Bloom’ the single is available now via the Emma Geiger Bandcamp page.

Eyesore & The Jinx – Float Like a Jellyfish (Sting Like a Subtweet)

“[A song which presents] the gym as the encapsulation of the country,” we wrote of Eyesore & The Jinx‘s ‘Nocturnal Athletes (Ode To Bruno)’ by back in September when previewing their debut album, Jitterbug, “where an assortment of lonely and overworked people run without going anywhere, lift with no purpose beyond some abstract penance, and stare at screens playing Top 40 videos on a loop.” With the record’s release fast approaching, the Liverpool-based outfit have shared final single ‘Float Like a Jellyfish (Sting Like a Subtweet)’, and fans will be reassured to learn it is every bit as twitchy and cutting as we’ve come to expect. Light-hearted, mischievous and a little hyperactive, winding taut with anxious energy to evoke a decidedly contemporary unease.

Jordan Whitlock & Memory Spells – Take My Hand

Memory Spells is the new project of songwriter Matt Bauer which takes the orchestral indie folk he puts out under his own name further towards “his love of contemporary TV, film and video game scores, cinematic post rock, early post punk, and 80s film music.” His latest collaboration is with San Diego songwriter and producer Jordan Whitlock, whose intimate writing and impressive soulful vocals have been wining fans all over. Suffused with the lush, shadowy grandeur of Lynch at his most romantic, latest single ‘Take My Hand’ is what the duo describe as “Emmylou Harris meets Cigarettes after Sex,” not only offering a new dimension to Bauer’s work but opening up a whole world of its own.

You can find out more on the Memory Spells website.

The Lostines – Full Moon Night

The recording project of New Orleans-based songwriters Casey Jane Reece-Kaigler and Camille Wind Weatherford, The Lostines are preparing to release their debut full-length Meet The Lostines this spring on Gar Hole Records. The album draws plenty from the Louisiana landscape, but ultimately conjures a world of its own. One in which time and space has gone a little strange, and a whole host of periods and places layer atop of one another to form something larger than the sum of its parts. Lead single ‘Full Moon Night’ typifies the result, where retro folk harmonies and spectral synths bring to life a languid longing for a love now past.

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