Lead single and album opener ‘Ida Red’ is the perfect introduction to the style. Taking inspiration from the likes of Linefork, KY banjo player and singer Morgan Sexton, who took classic Appalachian folk music and made it his own with layers of improvisation and quirk, the song finds Joseph Decosimo and co. carrying this torch forward. A blurring of the line between careful craft and inquisitive malleablity, entirely true to the musical history from which is descends yet never restrained by its conventions.

Photo by Robert Birnbach

The post Joseph Decosimo – Ida Red appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The project of Baltimore’s Bob Keal, Small Sur has released four albums (as well as a couple of singles and an EP) over the last decade and a half. Attic Room is the first Small Sur album since 2013’s Labor, and more significantly, it is also the first since the birth of Keal’s daughter in 2014. During these intervening years, he created “hundreds of song fragments scratched into the margins of life,” and spurred on by sound engineer Matthew O’Connell (Chorusing) and his brother Joseph (aka Elephant Micah), Keal began the laborious process of sifting through this collection of voice memos and half-formed ideas, eventually hammering them into ten completed songs.

But the next steps were far from simple. Forced by the pandemic to cancel a five-day recording session at a cabin in North Carolina in March 2020, Keal took a few months to deal with more pressing concerns before turning to alternative plans for the album. He began to work with O’Connell remotely, laying down his vocal and guitar work in the basement of a local chapel while O’Connell handled the engineering and played piano and Telecaster. Eventually they reached out to other collaborators too, the limitations on a conventional full-band setup paradoxically ploughing the earth for a different kind of community to grow.

Keal describes Attic Room as a “bedroom country” record, a tag anyone familiar with the Small Sur oeuvre will intuitively understand. Keal makes music that is quiet and minimal, intimate in the truest sense. The sound of one person’s experience of life here on Earth, focusing not on grand narratives but the gentle wax and wane of everyday existence. The new album evokes images of weather patterns (such as the thundercloud of opener ‘A Clean Patch of Ground’), the changing seasons and countless small moments that are infused with a poetic gravity. Moments like the day’s last cigarette (‘Rays of Light’), watching harbour lights reflecting on dark nighttime water (‘Monhegan Island, 2012’), or even the warm-hued tones of a cherished memory (‘Aperture’).

It’s high tide in Tucson
and I’m bathing in the sun
in those western waters gleaming
with my lover in my arms

Small Sur has always excelled in these fine details, and Attic Room therefore fits neatly into the discography. But there are changes too, as is to be expected for work so inherently personal. Just like the landscapes and relationships he explores, Keal is slowly changing. Because of fatherhood and his relationship with his partner, not to mention the challenges of the last few years.

Nowhere is this new perspective more apparent than on ‘Sun’, a song which harks back to another called ‘I Love the Sun’ from 2008’s We Live in Houses Made of Wood. As its title suggests, the original was a simple ode to the most important star (“I love the sun /And its rays / Which fall by day from the heavens”). ‘Sun’ is the same song but sung from a different position, Keal now sharing his appreciation with his daughter. “I will show you the sunrise,” he sings, “in the meadow at dawn.” It’s a moment that, perhaps inadvertently, captures the essence of the record—the idea of finding fortitude and beauty in time passing, in cycles repeating, in the fact the sun continues to rise and set despite whatever else is going on in the world. What is love, after all, if not a study in time?

Congratulations on the release of Attic Room. How does it feel to have a new record out in the world?

Thank you! I haven’t recorded much since our last full-length, Labor, from 2013, so I feel happy to have some new music in people’s ears. It’s a bit surreal, too, mostly because of how people consume music these days, even compared with 2013. It feels like there is so much music being released—not sure if that’s reality or just my perception—so I’m just really thankful a few folks have given the album some time to sink in.

As with most artists over the last few years, the recording process was far from a simple one. How did you manage to work around the restraints of the pandemic, and do you think the album sounds different because of the circumstances it was born in?

First and foremost, my co-conspirator, Matthew O’Connell of Chorusing and Elephant Micah, brought so much to the table in terms of technical know-how and creative input. He engineered most of the record and co-produced it with me. I stand by the songs themselves, but the album would’ve been very different if I’d recorded it live with a band and added a handful of overdubs afterward. That’s what I’ve done in the past because of time and budget constraints, and that approach has its limitations. Because of the pandemic, Matt and I hunkered down and built things up from their basic parts, usually starting with voice and nylon string guitar. I’ve always tried to layer in sounds and parts in a way that feels subtle and intentional, but our overall approach really allowed that to take center stage rather than being an afterthought. In the end, I don’t think this album would be what it is without the limitations, so that’s one of the few positives I’m taking away from the pandemic’s many negatives.

Although Small Sur is very much your project, you enlisted the help of a pretty stellar cast of collaborators. How big an influence did each individual bring to the record?

I’ve always loved inviting folks to put their own stamp on my songs. I offer my opinions and input, but the spontaneity of having others just going for it is really fun. Aside from Matthew’s technical contributions to the album, he also played on piano, Telecaster, tape dubs, bass, and percussion. Erik Hall delivered an incredible mix and played some crucial piano parts. Andy Stack of Wye Oak/Joyero had a huge impact on these recordings, too. He has a super intuitive approach and special relationship with my songs, and I loved what he brought to the table, as always. Andy Abelow has played saxophone on my songs for 15 years, and he has some amazing contributions here, too, as does Will Ryerson, who’s played bass in the band for almost a decade. Cara Satalino of Outer Spaces on backing vocals, Joseph Decosimo on fiddle, Dave Hadley on steel guitar, Joe O’Connell on bass—all incredible contributions, too, and I can’t imagine the record without them.

One unique part of making this record was that most folks did their own engineering. The feedback/revision loop is a bear when working remotely, so I tried to communicate what I was looking for pretty clearly and to also be flexible and run with folks’ ideas even if they weren’t exactly what I had in mind. It was pretty fun, and everyone who played on the album brought so much talent to the table that I didn’t feel the need to clutch too tightly to control. I feel so thankful to have friends and acquaintances who were willing to chip in to flesh these songs out, and I can’t imagine what the album would be without each and every one of their contributions.

This is your first release since the birth of your daughter, and while I’m sure this had a practical impact on the album’s creation, I’m interested in how parenthood and the idea of family seeped into the songs themselves. Are you a different songwriter now? Did you write these songs with your daughter in mind?

Aside from the song ‘For Juniper,’ which I specifically wrote for my daughter, I didn’t write any of the other songs with her in mind. Parenting in general and the partnership I have with my wife Monique played a huge role in the lyrical content of the album and my ability to have the time to make it. We’ve weathered a lot together in the 16 years of our friendship and relationship, especially leading up to and during the pandemic. Continually growing in my ability to be supportive and present through the peaks and troughs of life has been a welcome education, and my reflections on that experience are all over the album.

My approach to writing songs has changed over the last decade because I often only have short windows of time in which to work. Most of the voice memos and quick ideas I record have lots of ambient noise in the background: my daughter singing or screaming, dishes clanking, the dog barking or his nails clicking on the hardwood floor. It makes me think of some of Mick Turner’s recordings, especially Moth, and I’d love to incorporate some of those sounds in finished recordings sometime.

The press release also refers to how the record evokes the “Midwestern landscapes of [your] childhood.” Does parenthood cast your mind back to your own childhood? Did you set out to explore these cycles of growth and development directly?

I’m a pretty nostalgic person, so I spend a lot of time thinking about my childhood and other past experiences. The farm in South Dakota where I grew up had a deep impact on who I am, and “place” in general has always inspired me—hence the name of the band and many songs named after specific places and times. I honestly don’t really set out to explore anything directly. Whatever happens just happens naturally.

Talking of cycles, nature has always been very present in your work. Again, is this intentional, or just something that happens as you write? And what is it about the natural world and its rhythms that can bring us so much strength and solace?

I am very intentional about spending time outside. My yearly goal is to sleep in a tent for three weeks, and on a good year I can push it close to a month. In the midst of these blocks of time, I am often—not always—calm and clear and open. During fall 2020, I wrote ‘For Juniper’ while camping in the Catskills. The lyrics and ideas that became ‘Sun’ were written while camping, too. I take great solace in the fact that I can return to places year after year and see things grow and shift and change. And I let those changes illuminate and reflect the shifts happening in my life, too. The natural world is the filter through which I understand and see my life in its clearest form. Some of the poets and songwriters I love most have similar approaches—Mary Oliver, Phil Elverum, Kyle Field of Little Wings, Joe O’Connell of Elephant Micah—so that surely inspires my work and funnels my approach in some way, too

Attic Room is out now. Order it via Worried Songs or the Small Sur Bandcamp page.

The post Small Sur – Attic Room appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The post Wake The Deaf’s Favourite Songs of 2015 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Joseph O’Connell is a folklorist from Bloomington, Indiana, a man who spends his days documenting the local culture of the Midwest. When not occupied with ethnography, he also makes a distinctive brand of folk music under the moniker Elephant Micah. O’Connell has recently released Where in Our Woods, his twelfth album (for those interested, you can check out his back-catalogue via Bandcamp).

O’Connell takes a decidedly minimal approach to folk rock, building songs from the bare essentials without a single superfluous note or instrument. On Where in Our Woods he uses just a guitar and an antique pump organ to craft the majority of his songs, backed by the sparse drums of his brother Matthew, and the odd flourish of baritone ukulele and toy recorder. He has also recruited a pretty impressive backing singer – none other than Will Oldham (credited as Bonnie Prince Billy). Oldham is a good reference point for the style of the album too, and if you throw in the minimalism of (pre-Father John Misty) J. Tillman and the quiet psych weirdness of Califone you’re close to getting a handle on things. The lyrics are fragmentary and vague but pregnant with meaning, lending heavily from O’Connell’s day-job to paint a bizarre version of American life. The songs are populated with a peculiar cast of characters, from redneck mystics and meth-cooking couples to an ominous colony of vultures and evangelical exotic birds. O’Connell takes these stories and puts them together like a jigsaw puzzle, forming a tessellated narrative that explores the themes of culture, religion, nature and modernity.

‘Albino Animals’ spins a yarn using three real-life stories that O’Connell found in the same edition of a local newspaper – the death of “a rare white deer” at the hands of hunters (“they didn’t know the ancients would disapprove of their actions” O’Connell sings), a married drug cooking couple escaping prosecution due to a legal error and the story of an ill-fated transatlantic rower (“our athlete has capsized on an ocean, wide”). The next track, ‘Slow Time Vultures’ is another standout. Inspired by the sight of hundreds of vultures descending upon his parents’ Indiana farm, O’Connell creates a sad, slow-burn folk song about so-called progress and the loss of a way of life. The vultures appeared around the time the Indiana state government first introduced daylight-savings time, and as O’Connell himself put it, “Maybe it goes without saying that the unexplained appearance of a sky full of vultures might seem like a harbinger of doom.”

‘Demise of the Bible Birds’ ups the tempo somewhat, a perky drumbeat driving the shambling gypsy rock. It sounds like the kind of song the carnies play into the unfamiliar darkness at the edge of camp, long after the local townsfolk are tucked up in their beds. The lyrics tell the story of the “Bible Bird Man” from Noblesville, Indiana, who kept exotic birds (including macaws, a toucan and a peacock) and taught them Christian-themed tricks and stunts (he really did – starting with a pair of Jacob’s Ladder climbing canaries). It’s the sort of story that only songwriters-who-are-also-folklorists (i.e. not many) can write, and I for one am glad to have heard it.

The sixth track opens with the line, “see the monarchs in our gardens” and had me expecting
a song about butterflies. If it is about butterflies then they’re not like any I’ve ever come across as these monarchs wear crowns and golden robes among the rows of marigolds. The track also builds upon another of the album’s key themes, one intrinsically linked to the “progress” that O’Connell addresses on ‘Slow Time Vultures’ — the impact of the human race on the environment: “Because we’re too embarrassed of the kingdom we’ve built”, he sings, “we don’t will it it’s just how we’ve made this living, in machines that roll and towers that tumble, we’ve
got too used to it”. This is followed, quite aptly, by ‘Light Side’, a description of a man’s attempt to lose himself and reach some higher level, “Michael, what was the channel you tuned into on your roof at night?”

The final track takes us back to our old friend the Bible Bird Man, but this time
the mood has changed to a slow and considered patience. The lyrics do a good job of capturing the themes of the album:

“Bible birds he’s taught them the
words but do they understand the meaning?
And if he sets them free will they
still keep him company?
Will they leave the modern lights, all their profitless
desires, return back to their first freedom?”

You can buy Where in Our Woods via Western Vinyl and your favourite record shop.

The post Elephant Micah – Where In Our Woods appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The band was expanded during the recording of Labor, with Dave Hadley (on pedal steel) and Andy Stack (of Wye Oak – on bass) joining regular members Bob Keal, Austin Stahl and Andy Abelow (who provided a lovely cover of ‘Two Years on Film’ on Slowcoustic’s J. Tillman tribute). These additions are particularly apparent on several tracks, including ‘The Salt’ (which you can hear in the player below) which has a bassline reminiscent of Elephant Micah (an artist the band profess a love for on their blog).

The entire album is filled with beautiful writing, poetic vignettes which compliment the style and pace of the instrumentation perfectly. I don’t have the lyrics to hand but from what I could gather by ear, there are several references to water and the sea, see for example on ‘The Salt’:

“Wandered into the water just in time to watch the salt lines climb up the wall”.

and on ‘Bloomington’

“I can’t follow you into the brackish water, where the oysters make their beds”.

The closing track, ‘Through The Blue’ is also heavily based around this theme and, again, is superbly written. My current favourite is the title track, with it’s opening of:

“Oh I swear I will find even more light in this coming year,
And the darkness will subside or bring focus unto the light.
I will build a shrine and within place my present mind,
Shaped from water, auburn earth, I will favour my lover over others.”

The song starts with a gentle guitar but swells and gains momentum as it progresses. The narrator delivers a pretty hopeful message of inspiration and promises to labour for his lover. I got some Strand of Oaks vibes, particularly from the electric guitar work later in the song. That has to be a good thing.

Every six months or so I tend to fall hard for a hushed and delicate folk album (past examples include Mountain Man’s Made The Harbor and Spirit Guides by Evening Hymns) and I think I have found my next one. The album has been on repeat all week and but I still can’t stop listening. Any fan of this type of music should be checking this out right away.

You can buy the album now on beautiful 140-gram white vinyl (in a sleeve featuring the art you can see above by artist Skye Gilkerson) or as a digital download, from the band’s Bandcamp page. As you may guess, it comes with my seal of approval.

P.S. The band are also going out on a North American tour with Peals, an experimental outfit made up of William Cashion of Future Islands and Bruce Willen of Double Dagger, who have recently released a very good album, Walking Field, on Thrill Jockey. Also check out the ingenious Furniture on their website, an interactive track comprised of 16 sound clips that the listener can play or adjust at their will. Get the tour dates here.

P.P.S. If you’re not familiar with Small Sur’s previous release, Tones, then 1. Take a good long look at yourself and 2. Get it here.

The post Small Sur – Labor appeared first on Various Small Flames.