Now Loic Moonmattress has returned to see out the year with another EP, Last Nostalgia, and as the title suggests, the collection builds upon the themes of its predecessor to explore ideas of memory and fondness. Again drawing upon a diverse range of influences, the songs combine lush ambient textures with hip hop and bedroom pop sensibilities to weave soundscapes at once expansive and intimate, delving into the small, personal moments to excavate the full warmth within.

The title track of the EP is a great place to jump in. A perfect example of the patient, slow-moving style, with Loic Moonmattress taking the time to examine a specific moment in all of its varied, wistful texture. “[It’s] a song about the clarity, overwhelm, and sense of finality that comes with looking backward on era of ones life that has just come to pass,” the artist describes. The result is something touching, melancholic and more than a match for its title. An attempt to preserve a fleeting moment in sound.

The post Loic Moonmattress – Last Nostalgia appeared first on Various Small Flames.

What she calls “[a song] about the experience of being both loved and misunderstood by someone,” ‘Poser’ is the title track of the forthcoming EP from Edmonton‘s Antonia Estelle. Built on a skeleton of stark acoustic guitar, the song is fleshed out with syrup-heavy drums and gusts of distorted guitar, the vocals swaying with quiet intensity like a flickering flame. The emotions underpinning it are gloomy and turbulent, focusing on the strange balance of a dysfunctional relationship and the ultimate unknowability of selfhood. “I had a dream that bears had butterfly wings,” Antonia Estelle sings, “it’s a picture I can’t paint—a feeling that stays inside.”

I don’t know why I even try to explain
Things that I know you won’t understand

Big Cry Country – Pest Control

Based in Washington D.C., Big Cry Country pour a whole host of moods and emotions into their sound, as latest single ‘Pest Control’ attests. Taken from their EP Living Conditions, the song finds inspiration in the likes of Cayetana and Remember Sports to offer something at once deliciously angsty and infectiously energetic. “I’m older but not better,” as the cathartic refrain states. “I’ve seen the afterlife and you are wearing my old sweater.” Big Cry Country might be a fitting name, but releasing emotion has never been so much fun.

Closebye – Hell’s Kitchen

Formed by Dallas-born, NYC based duo Jonah Paul Smith and Julian Paint Smith (unrelated), Closebye make folk-inflected indie pop inspired by the likes of Elliott Smith, Aimee Mann and Hovvdy. Following their debut album Lucid News, released in 2022, the band have returned with a perfectly autumnal single, ‘Hell’s Kitchen’, what they call “an ode to their libra birth season and to their home base of New York City.” The Smiths are joined by Ian Salazar, Margaux Bouchegnies and Simon Clinton, who together use a plethora of instruments to craft a “breezy pop banger” that’s tinged with just a hint of something more wistful, creeping in at the edges like the cool touch of the oncoming winter on an autumn afternoon.

Who are you gonna be?
When every day is Halloween

Check out the video, directed and edited by Elizabeth Kroner, below:

‘Hell’s Kitchen’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Dumb Things – Self Help

‘Self Help’ is the lead single and title track from the new record by Meanjin/Brisbane indie poppers Dumb Things, coming soon via Coolin’ By Sound. Influenced by the droll poetic style of David Berman, it’s a slice of breezy, dusty pop with a streak of yearning melancholy, the narrator looking to self-improvement as a remedy to past mistakes. “The original idea for the song is that it’s a letter from a guy who’s a bit down on his luck but still in the fight, to his ex, some time after they split up,” says vocalist Adam Vincent.

Lately I’ve been working hard on my personality
Cos you got to keep it up, to keep it together ah ha
Been trying to find the time to put the work in
Yeah, I’ve been working out how to work it out

Elephant in Red – Honey

The creative outlet of Glasgow‘s Loup Havenith, Elephant in Red make what they call “sappy sounds for earthly beings.” Latest single ‘Honey’ sees the band combine gently grooving, stripped back folk with a shimmer of shoegaze, full of rich textures and gently wavering vocals. Havenith is joined by Chris McRory (drums), Fin Logie (bass) and Alex Gyllos (piano), who together built the song from the ground up. “[The song is] a sort of longing for calmness and simplicity,” the band describe. “Wanting to move past the weird overwhelming coming-of-age feelings that come hand in hand with being young in a city full of people.”

Lando Manning – Driftwood

Written during what he calls “the final dregs of lockdown,” ‘Driftwood’, the new single from London‘s Lando Manning, is an exploration of the many shades of isolation and loneliness. A quiet folky song, it’s built on percussive acoustic guitar and soft peals of piano, full of loaded negative space and a film-grained cinematic quality. “I had moved to Brighton and felt that I had been isolating myself from my friends back home,” Manning describes of his time writing the song, “and the track was written as a letter to my friends to try to explain why I had been absent.”

‘Driftwood’ is out now and available on streaming services. Manning will release his sophomore EP on his label Mango Wax Records next February.

Laurel Bluffs – Richmond

“Losing myself in the mirror / drenched in alcohol and smoke / I called, you came and picked me up / laid me down, turned out the lights.” So opens ‘Richmond’, the latest single from Phoenix, Arizona-based project Laurel Bluffs. A drive to Richmond follows, a hungover nausea, the bumpy road, and with it the kind of wistful reflection which blooms in the sorry aftermath of things. The folk rock sound and unadorned delivery lend an intimacy to the track, where fondness and longing are present without spilling into sugary sentiment. Instead, there’s just the highway, a building pressure, and the accumulated weight of actions as gathered over the course of regretful years.

‘Richmond’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Neighbours Burning Neighbours – Neil Young

Specialising in a brand of meaningful chaos, Rotterdam noise pop act Neighbours Burning Neighbours have been crafting songs from disorderly melodies and left-field harmonies since 2018. Following a couple of single releases, the band set to work on their debut full-length, which they plan to release in 2024. To whet appetites, they have released the record’s first single ‘Neil Young’, a typically discordant but infectious track which challenges gender norms and the harmful status quo. Watch the video, directed by Charlotte Brand and produced by A Small Production Company, below:

‘Neil Young’ is out now via streaming services.

Twin Bridges – A Dream of You

Led by cellist Zach Gerzon, Twin Bridges are a band from Portland, Oregon who combine folk and indie rock songwriting with neoclassical arrangements and elements of chamber music. They recently released Fertile Ashes, a new record which Gerzon wrote in the aftermath of some very difficult personal circumstances. “These songs explore what can feel like an impossible task, overcoming grief from loss, trauma, and failed relationships,” he says of the album. “Making this album helped me let go of things I held onto for so long.” Perhaps the record’s most personal cut, ‘A Dream of You’ is an ode to Gerzon’s late mother, suffused with an elegant simplicity and sorrow.

The post Weekly Listening: November 2023 #1 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Now, Michael James has returned with Our Sun Will Clean its Holy Wounds, a new album from The Exit Bags, again released by Drongo Tapes and Joyless Youth. A release which again uses a blend of post-punk, slowcore, ambient and drone to weave a sound at once dense and drifting. Take the plaintive opener ‘Vanishing Cloud Burial’, which builds with an intangible quality as the vocals barely break a murmur, though eventually precipitates into its own storm. The result is something fearful and sublime, a mood typified by ‘At Least I Know Now’ and its direct reference to mortality. “I said I wasn’t scared,” as James sings. “I lied.”

i don’t like letting you down
i will try to find my own way
across the end line
i will try to find the infected wound
that makes the choice mine
will you pull, and will you feel inclined
i wouldn’t judge you if you tried

album artwork by airick delgado / design a.d.

The post The Exit Bags – Our Sun Will Clean its Holy Wounds appeared first on Various Small Flames.

A joint release by Drongo Tapes and Joyless Youth, Tower of Quiet was mixed by Kyle Bates of Drowse and mastered by Mount Eerie collaborator Nicholas Wilbur. Both Bates and Wilbur have worked with stalwart label The Flenser, the latter working with acts such as Midwife, Have a Nice Life, Planning for Burial and others, and The Exit Bags aesthetic is very much positioned within this cohort. Take single ‘Shingles’, which occupies the gloomy space between drone and heavy rock, its depths filled with an insulating fuzz which even the screamed vocals struggle to puncture.

The sound is fitting for a record concerned with depression, evoking an unreal, disturbing mood that’s somehow both the sharpest and dullest edge. Unlike many attempts to chart such a headspace, The Exit Bags refuses to romanticise the experience, or to pretend that some level of catharsis can clear the air. What’s left is a collage of a life within such conditions, a composite of images, feelings and references swirling beneath a density of noise both digital and organic. A life swaddled against the flames, numb but still burning.

Latest single ‘Gargoyles’ encapsulates such a style. What appears to be a slow and spacious song which creeps forward with unnerving purpose, the vocals like the pleas of something small and insignificant, the deep percussion like the footsteps of something too large to fully comprehend.

pull me up over the guard rail, and
pull me up onto the other side
lay me out in the pavilion
you told me that I would make it through the night

Check out the suitably ominous video by Rikkets below:

Tower of Quiet is out on the 22nd October via Drongo Tapes and Joyless Youth and you can pre-order it now from The Exit Bags Bandcamp page.

The post The Exit Bags – Gargoyles appeared first on Various Small Flames.

‘Wandering Man’ is a lonely travelling song in the tradition of the greats, Butler’s signature delicate vocals delivering lines that tell of a world-weary nomad. The verses switch perspective between the wanderer, who traverses the Rockies and the great northern pines, and his darling left behind.

“How many roads have you gone down?
How many times have you come through this town?
I will not grow lonely and old by myself
I will not be the woman of a wandering man”

‘The Stranger’ is another sparse folk song, the guitar so gentle it sounds almost a capella in parts. The narrator tells the story of his beloved Nancy, and his dreams of a stranger “with the devil in his eyes”. Its safe to say the story isn’t a happy one, thick with the same cruel morality of Southern Gothic literature.

‘North Country Girl’ is another song about a traveller and a lover up North, before closer ‘Hunting Dog Night’ sounds like the soundtrack to a hard and lonely existence in the vein of McCarthy’s Suttree.

“Well you don’t meet kindly women
when you’re living in the bars
sleeping through the morning
in the front seat of your car
woke up from my slumber,
found her knocking on my door
I was half asleep again”

You can get Four Dreams Demos for a single Canadian dollar (or more) from the Tyler Butler Bandcamp page.

The post Tyler Butler – Four Dreams Demos appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The Montreal-based (Foote is a student at National Theatre School), Edmonton-native is back with a brand new album of tunes written during a sometimes-lonely first year of college. The album follows a similar pattern to her debut, folk- and country-influenced songs that were created in response to being a long way from home. As she explained to the Edmonton Journal, “If I’m sad in Edmonton there’s at least an emotional confine imposed on it, because it’s familiar. In Montreal there’s nothing familiar, nothing to ground me or remind me of who I am. It was disorienting being sad far away rather than feeling sad in Edmonton”.

This feeling is immediately apparent on opening track ‘Funeral Walking’, a slice of country-tinged folk infused with something slightly wistful, as Foote’s vocals tell of mistakes in love. The music on second track ‘Top Floor’ is deceptively perky, the lyrics painting an altogether more reflective picture. “You believe in magic, you believe in ghosts”, Foote sings, “do you believe that you’re still living if no-one knows?” There’s a sassy country lilt on ‘Throwing Roses’, a track that’s reminiscent of the more upbeat Samantha Crain songs. Foote takes the opportunity to let loose on her vocals, singing of somone left behind in he told hometown.

“We’re strangers now
walking down different streets in different towns
and the distance between
love and loss seem so similar
to that between you and me”

‘Harder to Feel You’ is slightly darker than previous tracks, spacious percussion and wisps of guitar giving the track a twilit feel, while there’s a Hip Hatchet vibe on ‘Sorry/Thank You’, with its warm country-flecked instrumentation. The lyrics deal in confusion and self-doubt, and in the healing power of having someone close by to offer support. Finally we have ‘Trying To’, a song about trying to get over that special someone, like a distillation of decades of heartbroken but defiant country songs.

“Lover
I wrote this to tell you
I haven’t given up on you
but I’m trying to”

Funeral Walking is out now and you can grab it from the Eva Foote Bandcamp page.

The post Eva Foote – Funeral Walking appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“I certainly value simplicity in my stories, the straight-forward expression of desire and love, a direct relationship between work and fulfillment… My stories often reverse the ‘classic’ love story – my male characters are very vulnerable, their emotions and desires are on display, as prominent as their strength. And my female characters can be strong and demanding.

[The album Violence] is a critique of western masculinity. I live in a place where masculinity often means taking up the most space, being the loudest, having the biggest truck. I think the working characters on this album, and the shift in the sound toward country music provide a critique of this masculinity, showcase a lifestyle in which work is constructive, not violent.”

The self-titled EP from Butler’s latest project, Tyler Butler and his Handsome Friends, is the Tyler Butler we know and love but with some welcome additions. The Handsome Friends bring electric guitar, bass, percussion, keys and fiddle, fleshing out Butler’s folk sound into something richer but not necessarily more complicated. Take opening track ‘Bury Me in the Garden’ as an example – a chirpy country foot-tapper which follows the same ideals as all of his music, the added instrumentation managing to add depth without put-on complexity. The song could be said to be beautiful, sad or disturbing, depending on your point of view, and as it’s about life and love, the truth is probably somewhere in between (or maybe all three simultaneously). Here the sweet declarations of love traditional to country music (“I knew nothing until you held me in your arms”) are peppered amongst the dark and strangely comforting truth about our place in the environment, charting the same sort of territory as the Young Jesus album we loved, albeit in a very different way:

When I’m gone, my darling, she’s going to bury me in the garden
lay my weary head under the soil.
My body has been borrowed from the earthworm and the sparrow
I am everything that cycles and returns

‘Cradle Robber’ follows a similar path, the meandering romance of previous Tyler Butler releases coloured with crunchy folk rock instrumentation. This proves a perfect accompaniment to the surprisingly stark narrative, the gentle love story brought into relief by some rather high stakes, giving the whole thing a serious, severe edge. The natural world has often featured in Butler’s work (check out the track-listing for Winter King), and here it rises to prominence again, every inch of grace matched by a helpless and inadvertent cruelty, where everyone is hurting and each of their actions has a consequence beyond their control:

“I want to steal you from your man
he lays to sleep against your back
my child swells against your stomach
a raven tangle of wind.
So hide the things we do alone
I press my lips on your skin
and sing a song of the forest
I am the egg-thief, the cradle robber”

Like all good murder ballads, ‘The Stranger (A Death Foretold)’ has love and anguish and the swagger of a life well lived. It tells the tale of a travelling/sleeping narrator, the sort of quiet and determined hero William Gay wrote so well, living life with gentle simplicity and moral rules which push toward his darling and spiral toward tragedy (at least in his dream world). Closer ‘Wandering Man’ continues the Western theme, sung from two perspectives: That of the titular character and of his lover left at home. The song also comes with a three-part short film from one of the Handsome Friends Dylan Rhys Howard (whose beautiful work you can find at Truthful Work Films), which does a far better job of expanding upon the mood and themes than I ever could, so have a look at Pts. 1 & 2 below:

You can buy Tyler Butler and his Handsome Friends now via Bandcamp, and also grab a rather lovely t-shirt.

The post Tyler Butler and his Handsome Friends – S/T appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The release opens with the title track, a gentle, atmospheric song with that falls somewhere between Joni Mitchell, Fleet Foxes and Horse Feathers, Foote’s lyrics steeped in the natural world and magnified by the backing harmonies:

“Morning song calls me so sweetly
begs me listen, begs you meet me again
Oh meet me again

Come with sorrow, bring me old news,
wicked weather, broken and blue
I just want you

I’ll find my stride on this path alone,
with songs of a sparrow and heart of a stone”

‘Strong Hands’ feels more direct, the writing moving away from metaphor in favour of candid communication. Variation is seen in Foote’s vocals too, the lush harmonies of the first track stripped back leaving something more conversational, her voice straining in places, pulled taut by emotion. ‘Maria’ sees this stretched further, a moody, bluesy song that teeters on the edge of something, while ‘Two of a Kind’ is soft and slow and finger-picked, Sydney Leard’s harmonies supporting the sense of simultaneous love and loss stitched through the lyrics:

“We’re still in a grey zone, a war-zone,
through telephones, the back of the bar.
Your eyes have been blood shot for weeks my dear
but still full of stars”

‘Passing Through’ is strong and certain, as if written from the other side of some nameless trouble, a place where new found perspective allows a sense of conviction in healing. Closer ‘Something I Know’ cements this idea, imagining future fear and grief gilded with a belief she will get through. What makes the song, and the release in general, so special is that Foote does not resort to grand, highfalutin ideals in order to get this idea across. Instead she favours a quiet yet firm faith in goodness, as if life, for all of its highs and lows, tends towards an equilibrium of peace.

“Things will get harder,
That’s something I know.
[…]
I know I’ll get better
That’s something I know”

This is one of those releases that breaks over you slowly. The harmonies make for an agreeable first listen but the songs grow in depth with each spin as you realise the prettiness is not in place of sorrow but in spite of it. Sparrow & Stone owes more to nature than even the title suggests, detailing an existence tough and sad yet infused with an insistent beauty, a sense of wonder and joy that sits high in your chest.

Sparrow & Stone will be released on the 13th August and you can buy it now from Eva Foote’s Bandcamp page. For those of you in/near Edmonton, Foote will play a release show that evening at the Yellowhead Brewey with Braden Gates. You can get tickets here.

The post Eva Foote – Sparrow & Stone appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“In the Dark on 99 is in many ways the realist representation of winter, the real-life counterpart to the romantic crunch of snow and hot cocoa. That said, it deals with this in a much more interesting way than merely saying ‘actually, winter is cold and dark and the snow turns to muddy slush…’ The album probes what winter means, what it does to us, how it becomes less a season than some existential force.”

The Black Pits, Cuming’s latest EP, looks to build on the album and explore themes of travel and isolation in a land where the elements hold a significant curiosity. Again, his lyrics are cryptic and poetic and delivered in that Bill Callahan sort of style which made In The Dark… so evocative, drawing the listener through the tracks like the faceless narrator of a dream. Opener ‘Keep Trying’ is the perfect example, the strange vocals backed by an incisive and vaguely menacing instrumentation reminiscent of Old Earth:

The wind will turn/ Against your back/ Your back will talk/ To/ the window’s crack/ As time cloves two/ On a strong boat on the moor/ You’ve heard this before/ It’s sparser than ever/ So keep on trying/ Keep trying

Each track enlists a different producer, with fellow musicians like Garrett Johnson, Layne L’Heureux and Tyler Butler taking over the duties, so it is Cuming’s distinctive vocals which provide the cohesion across the six songs. ‘Long Life’ slows slightly, the track brooding and rhetorical (“What do you know?/ Are you strong?/ Do you travel?/ Does the wind even make you cold?”), while ‘Lost in Time’ relaxes further, the vocals becoming smooth and fluid, like some quasi-doo-wop act in a smoke-filled club too late at night. The lyrics become odder on the restrained ‘Quiet Dream’, fragmented but compelling, grasping at a logic just out of sight.

“I’ve heard a hundred sorry midnight’s score/ That electric hum, the loner’s lullaby/ To kiss another gunshy infant morn/ To drink another bloodshot evening dry”

In comparison, ‘Stay Inside’ is heavy, a track smothered by mean reverb that is ominous both in terms of sound and lyrics. “When you wake up in the morning,” Cuming sings, “don’t open up your eyes. As you’re walking out the door, stay inside”. However, the title track closes the release on a more upbeat note, with the hostile drone replaced by brighter, shimmering guitars.

Heaven/ I would remember/ A fleeting sheet in time/ A symbol of a sign/ At home/ And darkness breeds alone/ It trembles with desire/ But in the blackest pit, there was a shovel for me/ Hold tight

The Black Pits EP is out now on Bart Records, and you can buy it from the Jom Comyn Bandcamp page.

The post Jom Comyn – The Black Pits EP appeared first on Various Small Flames.

He makes heartfelt love songs, with a naive, almost childlike innocence which brings to mind Daniel Johnston. The album opens with ‘Roll On’, a back-to-basics love song which contains lines like, “Hush my sweet darling, darling don’t you cry / The wind is gonna blow, the grass is gonna grow, the sun is sure to shine.” Many of the songs deal with personal struggle and self-doubt, but unlike many other songwriters who take this route, O’Connell always retains the hope of redemption, namely via the phenomenon of love. On ‘You Belong’ he sings, “The strongest weapon they’ve come up with yet / is a way of making a human forget / How to respect and love themselves / and share that love with someone else.”

O’Connell writes songs rooted in a refreshing simplicity, with a classic folk style that brings to mind fellow Canadian Mike Tod. Lots of his songs deal with escape from our modern money-driven culture. For example on ‘Roll On’ he sings, ”Don’t you go chasing those tainted paper greens / Open your heart, don’t fill it up, bust it at the seams.“ In the wrong hands these kinds of messages can come across of happy-clappy hippie-speak, but O’Connell’s disarming naivete means that you really believe what he is saying.

The fact is that in order to solve some of the biggest social and environmental issues that we currently face, we must learn to live within our means. This means that the modern obsession with material wealth and financial growth must be replaced with something else. O’Connell’s suggestion is to obtain the small number of things that we really do need and then enjoy them with people that we love.

You can get Wet Moccasin Moondance on a name-your-price basis via Bandcamp.

The post Lucas O’Connell – Wet Moccasin Moondance appeared first on Various Small Flames.