Under the Miserable Chillers moniker, Gallego has just released Adoration Room, a split album with Kabir Kumar’s Sun Kin. The pair began as digital-age pen pals, connecting over a love of music and a shared appreciation of the American experience for immigrants and first generation kids. The latter is more than a bio-ready factoid, because conversations about such topics shaped the music the pair made once they started collaborating, the synth-pop sound a sparkly vehicle in which they can explore the pressing concerns of the contemporary age.  “Anxieties induced by social media,” play a role, explains Gallego, as do “misgivings and fears about making art in a time where a tidal wave of history seems poised to crash down on us,” with the final purpose of the music geared around “the need to hold on to faith that another future is possible.”

Conversation has a thematic resonance on Adoration Room too. The split sees an alternation between Miserable Chillers and Sun Kin, with neither taking the baton for more than two songs before passing on to the other, and as such the the album forms something of a dialogue. Sun Kin opens proceedings with ‘Veena’, an archetypal example of his polished pop sound, before Miserable Chillers responds with ‘Un canto a Galicia’, a track pitched halfway between surf rock and synth pop that conjures long Mediterranean days as seen in dreams.

“what’s the sun feel like in Spain?
we’re in a cafe, it’s afternoon
i smell fish and lemon.
we can sit in the shade!

Suppose our hearts are unblossomed flowers
and when they bloom what color do
you think we’ll see?”

After the deep tropical shimmer of Sun Kin’s ‘Teri Ankhen’, Miserable Chillers follow with two tracks. ‘Natural History’ maintains the dreamy aesthetic through natural imagery, though frames it firmly in the modern age, as seen in museum collections, while ‘Adoration’ slows the tempo into a late-night crawl, like floating on your back in the pool of a cheap motel at 2AM. This is something of a theme on the record, the intangible or transcendental instrumentation always balanced by something more real and banal—be it mention of Bitcoin exchanges or, as in Sun Kin’s ‘Neglect’, the trappings of social media.

The track feels an important one for the album, suggesting the paradisaical pop might be nothing but artifice, a simulated landscape beneath which a search for meaning and connection continues. There’s something of an unease here, one not assuaged by the bright music but accentuated, the sonic veneer that merely masks what lies beneath, and one which might evaporate at any moment to reveal the true nature of things.

‘Ringing’ follows in a similar vein, mapping the ghost of a relationship as seen on Facebook, accidental invites and conspicuously absent likes serving to make clear what is no longer present. The track is less a technophobic comment on social media and more an agitated view of the world as it now exists, what has been preventing what might be, the past displayed alongside the present to prevent any view of the future. A similarly anxious state exists on Miserable Chillers’ ‘Horse Opera’, though this time the scope widens, the political crashing into the personal whether invited or not.

“This big city
isn’t so big at all!
if you trace the train,
our paths stay small.
this city ain’t so big at all!

little by little
we’ll all disappear
they’ll pull you by the toes
they’ll pull you by the ears
Born in the USA
But we won’t die in it.”

There might appear to be a difference in scale or focus between heartsick hating on Facebook and the chronic unease of immigrant life in the US, though in presenting them side by side, Sun Kin and Miserable Chillers tease out links. Something about a lack of privacy, a lack of grace, an inability to unplug from the system and live your own life. The low-level awareness that the system could turn on you at any moment, information barrelling through its synapses with your number, operating according to rules set by people far richer and more powerful than is imaginable.

Miserable Chillers and Sun Kin put a human face to these ideas, blending the big issues of our time with small personal vignettes and touches of emotion to reframe the narrative. To discuss such conceptual themes directly is to risk sounding like the synopsis of an overly familiar sci-fi film, but Gallego and Kumar circumvent this and instead paint a world very much in the realist style. And, if it sounds too fantastic or futuristic to be realism, then perhaps that is the whole point. Welcome to the contemporary world.

Adoration Room is out now and you can get it from the Miserable Chillers Bandcamp page.

The post Miserable Chillers / Sun Kin – Adoration Room appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Far from limited to the slacker rock vibe, Gallego also records as Miserable Chillers, a synth pop outfit worlds away from the Dicktations sound. His latest release under that moniker, A Flower You Would Like To Eat, consists of a mix of live instrumentation, MIDI orchestration, samples and found sounds, all culminating in retro hits dragged into the now from a few decades back: songs part glam, part glum, the soundtrack to a heartbroken disco.

Opener ‘Love Theme (For The Wilderness)’ is a slow-burn ballad that starts out with cheap church organ and metamorphosizes into sparkling synths, the whole thing shot through with a keen devotional lilt. ‘An Enchanted World’ is altogether more danceable, Gallego’s conversational verses bookmarked by a catchy chorus and skippy groove, while ‘Gentle’ is laid-back and languid, though the lyrics hide nostalgic sadness and sense of loss.

“I saved the wedding portrait
where you two are forever
young and in each other’s arms
and you look so gentle”

The magical digital interlude of ‘The Children Board The Balloon’ is followed by ‘Habits’, a strange bedroom-pop number that’s at once intimate and odd, a lost love consuming all feeling, leaving the world curiously vacuous. Closer ‘Night Time In The Old Homes’ unfurls with a careful groove, a dream pop track played at half-speed and piped through old speakers, the quivering voice conveying a certain anxious need to communicate that pervades the entire release. As Gallego describes: “This is an album about being scared as a kid and scared as an adult, and discovering your capacity to love and be loved. It’s a record about rare moments when you can taste divinity—and that palpable sense that in trying to cling to those moments you might crush them.”

We’re delighted to share the entire thing for your streaming pleasure. Hit play below and add a bit of feeling to your Friday.

You can explore the Miserable Chillers oeuvre on their Bandcamp page.

Artwork by Styles Munson

The post Premiere: Miserable Chillers – A Flower You Would Like To Eat appeared first on Various Small Flames.

And the usual disclaimer applies, there were too many great tunes to include them all, so treat this more as a selection rather than a comprehensive round-up of the year. Enjoy.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson – Constellation

“You’re used to quiet words
and so am I
so I’ll just whisper“

Tiny Ruins – Dream Wave

“always a dream wave drawing you off track
dream wave, a coast calls you back“

Magana – Get it Right

“You were red but my gold turned you green
So you stood there lying through your teeth“

deer scout – holy ghost

“I could find a new kind of devotion
I could know you by another name“

Hovvdy – Meg

“Speak because i know you feel a certain way
but ill pass it along anyway“

Bedbug – Leaving Town, Moving to a National Park <3

“I’m too young for that anyways
everyone’s just tryna skip town these days“

Soccer Mommy – Skinned Knees

“i left
burning streets in tennessee
for a north east feel“

Mitski – Your Best American Girl

“Your mother wouldn’t approve of how my mother raised me
But I do, I finally do“

LVL UP – Hidden Driver

“God is peeking
softly speaking
fucking everything
until I slowly do see“

Lisa Prank – Starting Again

“You say you’re not still drinking
you just started again
I swear I don’t still miss you
I just started again“

Dicktations – Dicktations Forever

“It’s hard to say when I first figured out something was wrong“

Joyride! – Running on Empty

“Young and running on empty
you said that you thought I looked pretty with my makeup on
so I went home and I took it off“

Sioux Falls (now Stranger Ranger) – Dom

“Spending too much time on the internet
are you ok? you don’t seem very into it“

Camp Cope – Jet Fuel Can’t Melt Steel Beams

“It’s the trophy wives raising trophy wives raising children on TV
Scared of people like you and me
Just don’t ask questions you’ll sleep peacefully
We will not go out in silence and we will not go quietly“

Fake Boyfriend – BUMTOWN

“Why do I cling to the threads that mean the least?“

Outer Spaces – I Saw You

“I saw you, a shedding snake“

American Enthusiasm – Holy Wow

“Make a note of all the words I cough out on my death bed“

The Hotelier – Soft Animal

“Fawn, doe, light snow
Spots on brown of white 
make me believe that there’s a God sometimes“

Beach Slang – Future Mixtape for the Art Kids

“We’re not lost, we are dying in style
We’re not fucked, we are fucking alive“

CHUCK – Death

“You hold on to whatever kin
that keeps on breathin’ in
that keeps you from driftin’
like paper in the wind“

You Won’t – Ya Ya Ya

“So your daddy was a poltergeist
sent your little sister screaming down the hallway
well I don’t know about the afterlife,
but I can help you to forget about the old days“

Mountain Almanac – Kids Playing Outside

“Saturday morning, cartoon time, let’s go“

Basement Revolver – Johnny

“Please just stay away from Johnny
cos I love him understand“

Boy Scouts – Did You See My Cry

“walking walmart shopping center
i’d never been better
on my own two feet
i guess“

Free Cake For Every Creature – First Summer in a City

“i’ll be singing when i’m 90
climb a tree to see
what tastes to smokey sweet
first summer in a city“

Haley Heynderickx – First I’m Sorry

“Mother knows I drown in my lies
Father knows I learned my lesson the second time.
Ask me where I’ll go I’ll say do not know
No, I do not know“

ARMS – Missing

“I don’t want to force your hand
but wishes disguised as plans will never do
Like the king of deathbed regrets
and the queen of last requests could ever choose“

Naps – Bad Vibrations

“Can’t stand up to the world’s expectations
I’m living on a bad bad vibration“

The Washboard Abs – Day Draws Nearer

“Your backyard
you talked to God
about the heartbreak you forgot“

Trace Mountains – Forgiveness

“old dirt you thrown underneath the stair
is right there
right where you said i’d tremble and stare
at the vast unforgiving spirit lurking there
but it takes time, to realise forgiveness“

Nassau – Desert Blues

“I took a marker and wrote your number on the bathroom stall
That’s just my way of reaching out cos I’m too proud to call“

Adeline Hotel – Near You

“Sleep better tonight
In the heat of red moon light
Whatever we are, whatever we’ll be
I used to live near you, you used to love near me“

Simon Balto – Foothills

“I’ve never been a faithful man
I’ve always been too proud to pray
But won’t you come out to the foothills
And hold me together for one more day“

Cloud Cult – No Hell

“There’s no use in running unless you run like heck
The best things we’ve learned we learned from the wreck
Jesus coming back as a woman this time
Handing out hugs in the clinic line
Someone tell the devil we don’t need no hell
We’re all pretty good at beating up ourselves“

Slingshot Dakota – Break

“And in the end there’s two of us
it was always two of us“

Good Good Blood – No Sadness/Furrowed Brow

“We’ll have no sadness/furrowed brow
There is no shame in dying now
I said from my death bed“

Ben Seretan – Bowl of Plums

“My friends call me when they’re feeling low
We talk quietly for hours and walk the room
Flowers growing in a coffee can
Our lives are wonderful and sad sometimes“

Chris Bathgate – Big Ghost

“I got a Big Ghost
of static in my throat
from coming up too short“

Wintersleep – Metropolis

“The man that you are, the man you were, the man you left
Turn into stars, flowing in through the wilderness“

Mothers – Lockjaw

“I don’t want your kind words
I want your ghost inside a thimble“

Car Seat Headrest – Drunk Driver / Killer Whales

“You build yourself up against others’ feelings
And it left you feeling empty as a car coasting downhill
I have become such a negative person
It was all just an act
It was all so easily stripped away“

Space Mountain – Never Lonely

“Met a friend today
And im feeling okay
She’s in my head
I’m never lonely“

Hallelujah the Hills – What Do the People Want?

“What do the people want?
The people don’t know what they want“

Mount Moriah – Calvander

“Carry on and on and on on
With your cosmic reach
Newport river whispered fate
Spells cast with every crashing wave
Neon lines and a new name“

Frederick Squire – Bike Thief

“The lights are on
And we are sinking way down in our chairs
We don’t say much of anything
Even though there’s still a lot to say“

Kevin Morby – We’ve Been Here Before

“Running my mouth off at the storm
Yelling, “man, what the hell did you do that for?“

Sam Moss – Vertebrae

“Did you watch my vertebrae
Slendering out
Or did you watch your own?
Stretching skin over the bone
I’ve grown
Learning to be proud“

Arlo Aldo – House & Home

“O’er the mountains out past the trees
where the grasslands, meet the sky
you’ll find me singin’ my songs
with my lover in my mind“

Will Johnson – Nervousness Fangs

“Jesus what a mess
what they’re all selling
and what’s being sold“

Jeremy Squires – After All

“There’s an old painting of Jesus on a wall
and a tapestry that hangs by a cross
that weighs heavy on my shoulders now and then
I get caught up with why the things we love ain’t never last“

The Dead Tongues – Stained Glass Eyes

“Fifth wind brought a howl got me in a storm
I saw a lighthouse spinning at the edge of the world
like looking through a window to the day
I was born“

Kyle Morton – Automatic

“It’s my head, it’s my head
breaking itself to make a thought but instead
Just some pornographic images to stave off my death
It’s all automatic“

Keaton Henson – Alright

“Obviously
My wounds are open to see
But don’t take them seriously
I’ll be fine“

Talons’ – Work Stories

“Is this what the end of the world looks like?
Or is this just life?“

Jordan O’Jordan – A Lonely Road

“There are truths we may or may never know friend
and that is the point“

Mal Devisa – Sea of Limbs

“Honey-lover
keeper of the bees
Soft-spoken
seldom-seen“

Young Jesus – Hinges

“I’m pretty sure I’m a kind of collection of things
scattered throughout the backyard
under the moon
pulling weirdo slow dance moves
maybe always losing it a little
i am ashamed to believe in myself!“

Lung Cycles – For a While

“I feel like sharing
so I’ll press record
and I’ll tell you that I had a vision“

Sister Grotto – UNCANNY

“When we go, we go alone“

John K. Samson – Virtute At Rest

“You should know I am with you, know I forgive you
Know I am proud of the steps that you’ve made
Know it will never be easy or simple
Know I will dig in my claws when you stray“

If you missed it, you can see the list of our favourite albums of 2016 here, and stay tuned for our collection of the best name-your-price releases on Bandcamp next week.

The post Wake the Deaf’s Favourite Songs of 2016 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“For all the woe and doubt, the record never deviates from its primary message – each and every moment is a law unto itself, be sure to live in it and for it because, be it good or bad, it will not last forever”

To explore the record a little further, we put some questions to the faces behind Dicktations and received some rather interesting answers. Dig in below!

Hi Dicktations, thanks for speaking with us. How is life at this time of year in NYC?

Miguel: It’s just now starting to become very cold. The heat in our building is finally on and it gurgles in the manner of a large beast with Troubled Bowels. The leaves are half gone, and it is all very pretty. I find myself compulsively listening to Yo La Tengo, Nico, and Joni Mitchell. The fall is a special time—I always feel completely awful. Maybe recent L.A. transplants Brian and Torsten can offer their thoughts on the west coast’s take on this season.

Brian: LA is its usual sunny self but we actually got some decent rain this past weekend, which I loved. I’m troubled at how cold 60 degrees feels to me now. It was funny watching the debut of Jared Goff, the no. 1 pick of the Rams, playing at home in the pouring rain.

In our review of Super Paradise we mentioned how you said the album was “an index of a weird time in our lives” and was created in response to a period of what can only be described as existential crisis. Did the record help you make sense of all of that? Was it a cathartic experience in recording and releasing it to the world?

Miguel: It’s hard to say. The record took forever to make and felt like a sticky thing. Letting go of the record helped me let go of that time. But I don’t know that making music or art, for me at least, is really cathartic, or even a way of processing things. Music-making is like this alien compulsion that the events of my life, at best, furnish. My emotions and experiences are the most readily available material through which to articulate it. The compulsion is indifferent to all of that, though. Most of the time it is hard to express how I’m feeling or where I am through any medium or mode of communication, let alone music. I can’t say I really sit down and make music for the purpose of expressing myself. That being said, making music feels extremely correct, in a way that nothing else does, and in a way that I think is distinct from the classic artistic framework of catharsis and sense-making. It’s probably the only thing I do for the sake of doing it.

Brian: Agree completely with the last line, I think you summed it up really well. As far as the “weird time in our lives,” Miguel and I were both living at home, working mindless if not thankless jobs and wondering what the next step was. I kind of see my last year as a state of limbo – most days I felt like I was just hanging suspended in this reality. For me at least, it was existing, not living. That impulse pushes me to make music.

At twenty tracks, and running through a variety of styles and moods, the album is pretty much a double album in terms of length and scope. How/why did you decide that these songs all belonged on the same release? Was it to do with themes? Or the period of time in which they were written?

Miguel: We were eager to produce as much material as possible. The folder on my hard drive that contains the original demos for this record is titled ‘Dicktations Swan Song.’ It was my understanding that this was the last thing we would make when we started making it—at the time, towards the end of college and the beginning of that summer, I thought I might be moving to L.A., too. ‘Dicktations Forever’ was one of the first songs I wrote for it. The lyrics came to me spontaneously, which is rarely how it works out for me. I was about a month before graduating from school and, maybe I couldn’t recognize it at the time, I was on the cusp of this really difficult reckoning with how the self is constituted and the strangeness of being able to identify all these major, imminent changes in your life but being unable to anticipate how they will feel. That kind of provided a goal post for what the record would be about.

We used every song we recorded on the album. I tried sequencing it as a full twenty track record, and I think, by merit of these songs being written by us throughout this whole period, it felt thematically cohesive and even had a narrative arc. I think by the time I wrote ‘Heather,’ I knew it belonged at the end of the record that charted out this course towards refusing to be defined by history, trauma, and sadness. We talked a little about cutting tracks but decided not to. I have always been drawn to sprawling records that jump across genre. The first quasi-Dicktations record set out to be that way very deliberately. H*CKHOUND is basically the one time we’ve ever engaged in self-editing.

Brian: I also love the sprawlers. I’m really happy with how all the songs ended up fitting together despite the different styles. I love records that flow from song to song and I think we achieved something like that.

Who/what do you consider influences on your work, both sonically and in terms of writing? Are there art forms other than music (literature, movies, visual art etc.) which you consider important in shaping your style?

Miguel: I’ve always seen Dicktations as my dream rock n roll outlet. Something that takes its cues from everything I like from rock. I think the main reference points for my songs on that record—Thin Lizzy, The Replacements, Big Star, The Wrens—were formative for me but not necessarily indicative of what I listen to and resonate with most at this point in my life. Writing lyrics is extraordinarily difficult for me. When I was writing words for my tracks on the record I kept pushing myself to be as direct and frank as possible, which I think all those bands do well. I love the unceremonious nature of Paul Westerberg’s confessions. The way he loses his resolve at the end of ‘Unsatisfied’ or has to work his way up to sing a line like “[a]ll I know is that I’m sick of everything that my money can buy” on Here Comes a Regular. There’s nothing monumental about the way he expresses his feelings. I like to think that for all its length and scope, Super Paradise is ultimately pretty unambitious and understated.

I find literature and critical theory to be really influential on how I think about my relationship myself and others and how I ultimately write. I think my anxiety about being overdetermined by history was a pretty direct result of the spiritual and intellectual fatigue I felt studying Anthropology for four years. Most recently, the novel I Capture the Castle [by Dodie Smith] helped me finally write the words to a very difficult song.

Alex: For me, my playing style is truly influenced by my personality…and my personality is truly influenced by Kate Bush (my perception of her based on videos, interviews, and her music in general, at least). I feel very animated and emotional when playing music; sometimes I think about what I would look like if the drums were totally transparent, with just my wobbly, swishy, bouncy, flailing and/or unnaturally still body visible (i have no formal training on how to play drums in a way that won’t eventually cause self-harm) and every time: I see myself surrounded by characters in one of her amazing choreographies.

Brian: Musically, influence #1 will always be The Beatles for me I think. As far as influencing me as a writer and rocker, Bruce Springsteen. I’ve teared up to “Backstreets” so many times. Richard Thompson is a guitar god I dream of playing like one day. The Smiths, Weezer, The Band and Teenage Cool Kids are some of my other favorites. The Wrens were my soundtrack for the past year, they’re an amazing band. If I did a ‘Mount Rushmore’ of my singing influences, it would be: Jonathan Richman, Charles Bissell, Kevin Whelan, Rick Danko (so f*cking plaintive!) and Andrew Savage.

Most of your releases were accompanied by creative and rather in-depth supporting pieces of writing, which I find really interesting and illuminating. I was wondering how central these are for you to the albums as a whole? Are they footnotes or another facet of the main body?

Miguel: I think the way I’m about to answer this is a way of thinking about it that definitely came after putting out Super Paradise, so I’m almost interpreting myself here. I think of the essay and annotated map that you get when you download the album are all parts of the artwork-as-a-whole. A friend of mine mentioned using Google Maps—I do this all the time—to cruise the locations on the annotated map and in the essay while listening to the record as an illuminating experience, and I think that’s almost how I would recommend experiencing it. I think the internet and digital medium offer great opportunities to rethink what an ‘album’ is. Lemonade and visual albums are a big budget way of approaching this, but I think there are plenty of more DIY ways to realize the possibilities of the medium. H*CKHOUND dabbled in this too—the liner notes featured “stage directions” for each track.

I can be very obsessive. I love the idea of exhausting something, like what Georges Perec does in An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, where sits in one intersection for days and describes every detail he sees. Or a gothic cathedral—a space so dense with signification, through all its decorative statues and stained glass, that it’s never available in its entirety to any given viewer.

You said in a recent Facebook post that Dicktations are no more, and posted a song from a new project. What can we expect from you in the future? Do you see your new work as a marked change from Dicktations?

Miguel: I’ve been doing stuff as Miserable chillers for a few years alongside Dicktations and other projects, like Drug Pizza and Magic the Happening!. Miserable chillers is my outlet for music that engages with referents that have more in common with what I’m into now. It’s synthier and a little more abstract. I’m letting my love of all those British sophisti-pop bands from the ‘80s, like Prefab Sprout, or Blue Nile, consume me.

Brian: I’ve been releasing music as Living Large since high school and recently my brother Dan (aka Rick Rubin of Dicktations) and I have recorded two albums at his spot, Boca Studios in Somerville, Mass. (Boston bands, hit him up!)

Finally, could you name four or five acts you think we should be listening to (be they old or new, popular or obscure, etc.)?

Miguel: Jay Som, Tredeci Bacci, Wintertime, and Mal Devisa are new artists that I really like. Willis Alan Ramsey is a Texas troubadour from the ‘70s who is somewhere between Townes Van Zandt and Harry Nilsson and his one album has been on heavy rotation for me for the past year. Also, Will Toledo of Car Seat Headrest has been a pretty indispensable champion of our music, and I owe him a big thanks and shout out. Teens of Denial was one of my favorite indie rock records this year.

Brian: Teens of Denial is an amazing record and the show we played with them was also one of the best concerts I’ve attended. I mentioned them before, but The Wrens are one of New Jersey’s greatest bands. Out here in LA, I’ve been listening to two artists heavily: Steely Dan and more recently R.E.M. Aja and Murmur are both classics. Check out the early records. Early R.E.M. can hang with The Smiths. Our friend Chris has a gallery space (As It Stands LA, if you’re out here!) and a local band called Roses played there one time. I wasn’t at the show but I like them a lot, especially their song ‘Florence Girls.’ I recently found Greatest Palace Music by Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy at the thrift store down my block so that’s my go-to driving CD. ‘New Partner’ is one of my all-time favorite songs.

Torsten: When I listen to Bach I feel as though God is real and that, though am I not perfect, there is a perfection I can sometimes glimpse and aspire to. It is a worthwhile trick to play on yourself. I really like John Eliot Gardiner’s groups performing the cantatas and Glenn Gould’s performances of the piano works.

You can grab Super Paradise and all of the Dicktations release now from Bandcamp.

The post Interview: Dicktations appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Tracklisting:

1. prairie creek redwoods state park, ca – bedbug
2. See the World – Kidsmoke
3. Motion | Sickness – Good Good Blood
4. Downtown – Gabriella Cohen
5. Automatic – Kyle Morton
6. Throwing Roses – Eva Foote
7. vildt+sødt – Eugenia
8. Dicktations Forever – Dicktations
9. Fallen Robin – Wild Leaves
10. Palms – Native Other
11. Not Your Prey – Squirrel Flower
12. Luna – Akira Kosemura
13. Made of Gold – Albert af Ekenstam
14. She Floats – Van-Anh Nguyen
15. Dead Radiance – Ego Death
16. Sponge State – Sløtface
17. Black Mass – Wooden Maria
18. Float – Silver Liz
19. glass machines discovering water – Corvus B.
20. Longshot – The Furious Season
21. The Same Chords – Tiger in My Tank
22. Let’s Go to the Beach – Sophie Longshaw
23. Blue Moon – Many Voices Speak
24. One Footed – MAH KEE OH
25. Country Room – Static Animal
26. The Ground Before Him – Drowning By Numbers
27. Refugee – Cameron James Henderson
28. down (kenny) – ever
29. Strange Tones – Youceff Kabal
30. Don’t Let Love Go By – Golden Suits
31. Sit and Stare – Tiny Dinosaurs
32. Settle Down – Dark Mean
33. telegraph ave. – Betty Becky
34. WEN – glider
35. Nicholas – Holiday Oscar
36. Lyse Striber – True Strength
37. Careless – Stationary Suns
38. Vulnerable – Mark Timmins
39. On & On – Reuben Hollebon
40. Recoiled – William Ryan Fritch
41. Lonely Girl – Praything
42. Drinking the Same Water – Katie Spencer
43. Get It Right – Magana
44. Cheer Up Free Your Mind – Jenny O.

That was October 2016, and if you like what you see/hear, why not check out the other months too?

The post October 2016 Roundup appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Led by Miguel Gallego, the band are back with a new twenty-song album which charts a time of great change in their lives, the process beginning just before they graduated from college and seeing them through a series of moves. The record became what Gallego describes as “an index of a weird time in our lives”. The ‘weird’ is summed up by his spell in a place called Edgewater, just across the Hudson from Upper Manhattan, where wild parrots scream from the electric poles (no, really) and high rise buildings cause what the New York Times has called a “collective psychic depression” (FYI – by blocking out the sun and effectively causing it to set an hour too early). Perhaps unsurprisingly, such a place led to contemplation of the existential variety:

I spent a lot of time ruminating, that summer… I couldn’t shake the feeling that my future was preordained by my past. I worried about whether or not there was more to a person than what happens to them, what has happened to them, what is happening to them, what will happen to them. If every tense collapsed, would what remains just be a passive accumulation of happenings?

This feels critical to both the length of Super Paradise and the variation seen across its run-time, with style, mood and genre switching from song to song. Opener ‘Dicktations Forever’ finds bright instrumentation supporting a spoken word ramble, the narrator talking as if finally free or able to be honest and open, while ‘When My Bro’s Not Home’ is a brash singalong rock song, like the product of some bar band too blue to move on and too drunk to care. ‘Temporary’ is Titus-esque punk rock, ‘I Devour The Party’ a Pavement-style jam and ‘Parrot Town’ a slow, piano-led croon which plays like a rainy birthday bash to which no guests turned up.

However, Dicktations are here to prove that even the most tragic, miserable scenes can and will be followed by something different, that just because the sun sets artificially early one day does not mean it will not rise the next. ‘Comala’ might not be happier but at least packs more energy, while ‘Dogs w/o Angst’ feels like blood returning to a frozen body, the guitars in the latter half a celebration of nothing more than the joy of being able to make noise with your friends. From here, ‘Adult Colouring Book’ emerges with new-found pep, and ‘Witch Hazel’ bounces along as if newly free from some heavy weight.

This isn’t to say there’s some snap change for the better. ‘Teen Bedrooms II’ is a lonely ambient track that mimics the strange sensation of keeping your own company too long, ‘Standing in Line’ a bummed-out love song, and ‘( i’m) hot bloodéd’ manages to sound both down and chipper at the same time, like the thoughts of a person so used to feeling low that the take-off and landing around such bouts arrive with a wry humour. However, for all the woe and doubt, the record never deviates from its primary message – each and every moment is a law unto itself, be sure to live in it and for it because, be it good or bad, it will not last forever. ‘Heather’ closes the release with this quiet reassurance, starting off slow and sad before spiking into life around the halfway mark, as if the narrator, realising what he is trying to say, is demonstrating the wisdom in real time, rising from the gloom with new found vitality.

“Everyone we’ve yet to love will never,
never see this sadness as a mark
or a way to live forever”

Once the album finishes, it’s worth spinning right back through to the opening track again, the conversational spoken word calm and clear and casual, the instrumentation upbeat and joyous, pure optimism swirling into cathartic noise. “I think it’s a record about coming to terms with the past’s inevitable presence in the present,” Gallego explains, “and trying to seek agency in every day life. It’s about trying to answer the question above—feeling the shape of “no” form on the tip of your tongue.”

No indeed. Dicktations Forever.

Super Paradise is out now and you can get it from the Dicktations Bandcamp page.

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Tracklisting:

1. I Don’t Know – Tina Refnes (+ Lit Links)
2. If I Were a Portal – Evening Hymns
3. Cradle Robber – Tyler Butler and His Handsome Friends
4. Calvander – Mount Moriah
5. The Way It Is, The Way It Could Be – The Weather Station
6. Porch – Long Beard
7. Small Wind Power – Fraternal Twin
8. Mourning Dove – Danielle Fricke
9. 3 – Cat Be Damned
10. Cold Apartment Floors – Vagabon
11. I Used To Be A Bird – Fairweather Currents
12. Drive-Thru – Honeyuck
13. Ghosts – The Washboard Abs
14. Litany – Tyler Key
15. Aviator Shades – Quiet Hollers
16. Book of Right On (Joanna Newsom cover) – Foxtails Brigade (Lit Links)
17. Judy Blume – Mal Devisa
18. So Long – Dot & Logic
19. A Swift Thing – EP
20. Stuck w/ Me – Home Lives
21. Close Call (Adderall Anxiety) – Shaky Shrines
22. Boys – Dicktations
23. Nothing – Strange Friends
24. Careful Creators – Summering
25. Blinding White – Vapour Night
26. Pull – Slow Dancing Society (Hidden Shoal compilation)
27. Calmest – Naps
28. As He Walked Into the Field – Robert Stillman
29. Church Bells – Tommy Perman, Simon Kirby & Rob St. John
30. Seven – Oh, Rose
    31. No Hell – Cloud Cult

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“H*ckhound plays like the anxious survivor of some tragedy, troubled but sincere, full of love to give and lose and so desperate to prove it he drags you along by the arm and pleads into your ear in a constant flow”

Now the band are back with a new EP, Words Don’t Love You. After the variation in style across H*ckhound, this release sees the band settle into a groove, peddling a laidback punk rock something like The Strokes playing in your garage. Opener ‘Action Park’ is a perfect example, a jangly summer tune for nostalgic slackers:

“If there was one thing you could never stand about summertime,
it was sitting on your couch with nothing on your mind.
I only wish I could hate those moments half as much as you
but then again, I guess, I got nothing better to do”

‘Boys’ follows a similar vein, making vague statements with a drunken clarity to no-one in particular, while ‘New Jersey Girls’ skirts with a surfy vibe, the gruff, disinterested vocals blurring what is meant and what is not, the sheen of irony a safety net for the emotional gymnastics on show. ‘(When Were You) Dreamin’ is reflective warm evening hit, a streak of defiance and goodwill defeating worry, and ‘Pox’ sees a continuation of this feeling. A mix of bedroom pop and garage rock with a tropical shimmer, the closer is the stand out track, the vocals finding the perfect blend of understatement and intensity, the song building across it’s runtime with notable force.

“When you walked away,
you slipped through the cracks.
Who’s left to tell you to come back?
I drove to our place.
I looked for the signs:
the arrangement of things
that you left behind.

And we walk and talk for hours.
And we walk and talk for hours.
And we walk and talk for hours.
Then say that’s all we really need.
That’s all we really have to offer”

You can buy Words Don’t Love You now from the Dicktations Bandcamp page.

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January was a bit of a scrappy month in terms of regular posts, but we still managed to cover some excellent artists. Why not catch up with any you missed with this tailor-made mixtape? Click the artist names in the tracklist to be whisked off to the review.

Tracklist:

1. Jesus in the 70s – Siskiyou
2. 2 Broke 2 Old – Gorgeous Bully
3. Another Way To Go – Adeline Hotel
4. Scene Sick – Diet Cig
5. Dog Burial Theme – Dicktations
6. Up the Academy – Mike Pace and the Child Actors
7. Con/ A Sewer/A Cat – Amateur Love
8. The End is a Vicious Thing – Puzzlecuts
9. Manic Pixie Dream Girl – Furnsss
10. Party Girls – Gleemer
11. Soft Reputation – Unlikely Friends
12. Passing Through – Harley Alexander
13. Coward’s Luck – Hip Hatchet
14. Memphis – The Wandering Lake
15. How a Resurrection Really Feels – The Hold Steady
16. Fire in My Eyes – Yours Are The Only Ears
17. Traffic is Okay – Sitcom
18. Gold & Rose – Dear Sister

Also make sure you check out our mammoth collection of our Favourite ‘Free’ Music of 2014. Finally, if you enjoy long, rambling pieces that try and draw connections between my favourite music and my favourite books, check out this piece on The Hold Steady’s Separation Sunday (Craig Finn said he enjoyed it, so it carries his stamp of approval).

January 2015 Roundup from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

The post January 2015 Roundup – A Mixtape appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“When my grandmother died several years ago my dad came into my room in the morning and sat at my bedside. he woke me and told me he had to fly out to mexico for the funeral. he told me i had to take care of the dogs. when he left the room i started crying—not because my grandmother had passed away, but because i was overwhelmed, in that moment, by the prospect of taking care of the dogs. this was probably my first encounter with loss since my first dog, jazzy, died. after i cried i was frustrated because i knew i had cried for the wrong reasons. i didn’t mourn right.”

The piece continues through various tales of grief, expanding on Jazzy the dog and musing about why cemeteries are so grim and unpleasant, before ending with:

“h*ckhound is a skeleton dog that appears in my room every night at the witching hour. it runs in circles on my bed, chasing its tail, and when i try to hold it in my arms it crumbles into dust.”

The piece is obviously linked to the album thematically (songs include ‘Dig My Bones’ and ‘Dog Burial Theme’) but the reason I’m mentioning it now is that is represents the record in another way. The writing is strange and concise, moving quickly from one event to another and not overly bothered if you the listener can keep up. As an album, H*ckhound is the exact same way. We go from the ear-bleeding, throat-shredding ‘Vomiting Multitude’ to the loved-up pop-punk promise of ‘Terminal Knuckleheads’ and then the pensive strum-along of ‘This is the New Home’. ‘Strange November’ is a laid back garage jam and ‘Stylites’ accelerates back up to 100mph before the unexpected but lovely ambience of ‘Dog Burial Theme’.

H*ckhound plays like the anxious survivor of some tragedy, troubled but sincere, full of love to give and lose and so desperate to prove it he drags you along by the arm and pleads into your ear in a constant flow. It’s as if some mad scientist forced The Replacements, Black Lips, Weezer and God knows who else into a blender and set the resulting gloop in bone-shaped jelly moulds. 

You can get the album now on a pay-what-you-can basis via Bandcamp or on cassette from King Pizza Records.

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