San Francisco band Cindy specialise in a dreamy, slo-mo brand of pop music, centred on lead Karina Gill’s distinctive vocals and poetic vision. At the beginning of April, Cindy will release a brand new record Why Not Now? via Tough Love and have unveiled lead single ‘A Trumpet on the Hillside’ by way of introduction. Landing somewhere between Galaxie 500 style slowcore and a half-speed Au Revoir Simone track, the song is a quietly transcendent hymn to the wonder that’s threaded into even the most mundane experiences. “It’s about being in a room with people, the closeness and distance involved in that,” Gill describes. “And it’s about the vividness and grandness (sometimes) of the most ordinary experience.”

En Attendant Ana – Wonder

Back in January we wrote a little about ‘Same Old Story’ by Paris indie pop band En Attendant Ana, taken from their new LP Principia. We described it as “a blend of playful indie pop rhythms and post-punk angles… [that] pitch[es] the listener into a funhouse room of mirrors with only the smooth clarity of Margaux Bouchaudon’s vocals as a guide.” The album is out now on Trouble In Mind and the band have released an animated music video for single ‘Wonder’ to celebrate. A song that explores conflicting emotions of legitimacy, opening gentle and pensive before a motorik beat drops with a clockwork energy, building towards a cathartic close, embodying that weird blend of strength and doubt of trying to do your best but always second guessing yourself. Watch the video by Jérôme Papaphotiou below:

Principia is out now via Trouble in Mind and available from the En Attendant Ana Bandcamp page.

Eric Angelo Bessel – Secret Lake

We’ve written about Laura Mariposa Williams and Eric Angelo Bessel’s Lore City several times in the recent years, with 2021 LP Participation Mystique and last year’s Under Way highlighting the band’s evocative, esoteric style and the manner in which it blurs the physical and metaphysical so seamlessly. The pair set up Lore City Music to facilitate the release of their work, and April sees the imprint release Bessel’s debut solo album, Visitations. Single ‘Secret Lake’ invites us into the world of the record, its slack drift like some sitting bogland but soon deepening into something more. A depth alluring in its own way, beautiful and strange in the manner unique to hidden spaces, allowing the listener to descend through its column while refusing to give anything away freely.

Visitation comes out on 21st April and you can pre-order it from the Lore City Music Bandcamp page.

Foyer Red – Plumbers Unite!

Yarn The Hours Away, the debut full-length from Brooklyn‘s Foyer Red coming this spring on Carpark Records, is described as a collection of short stories—where each track aims to build a fully rendered sense of character and place. Previous single ‘Etc‘ hinted at the depth of such an intention (“exploring,” as we put it, “a mismatched relationship of indistinct philosophical musings and robotic computations.”), and new single ‘Plumbers Unite!’ is no less ambitious. A song which not only uses the relentless trials of a side-scrolling videogame as a metaphor for life’s daily grind, but then imagines the sentience of the console once the power has been cut. “When I was little I was obsessed with my Gamecube, but after entering cheat codes on my Harvest Moon game, I felt sooooooo guilty,” explains Elana Riorda. “I impulsively deleted my game data and later had recurring nightmares about my Gamecube’s anger towards me, something I knew was unrealistic but felt so creepy and real.” Watch the video filmed, edited and directed by Leif Morton below:

Yarn The Hours Away is out on the 19th May via Carpark Records.

Nicolas Krgovich – Front Stoop #2

“For years and years I guess I was lonely / but refused to call it so.” So opens ‘Front Stoop #2’, the first single from Nicolas Krgovich’s Ducks, out next month on Orindal Records. The realisation is prompted by a direct question on the titular front stoop, one the narrator answers simply. Yes, he is lonely. “
To answer a plain question with a plain reply / Feels new to me and good.” What follows is so rooted in specific details it almost feels, paradoxically, like a dream. That weird summer, the smoke, the deserted beach. Tossed pebbles and sand and shells and “things that don’t matter and things to forget.” With Ducks, Krgovich promises to explore how moments are catalogued and remembered via minutiae, and the manner in which complexity of any present is not so much reduced to images but coded in them. “I let them whirl, a little cyclone,” as he concludes at the end of the song. “Living in a world of love.”

Seminar Shadow – Luring (Excerpt)

Seminar Shadow, AKA duo Lucie Vítková and Teerapat Parnmongkol, are preparing to unveil their new release HEATWAVE via Dear Life Records. Recorded on a pair of baby grand pianos during the August 2022 heatwave and comprising of two improvised side-length tracks, the release probes the present for the full weight of the past, exploring how any apparently ‘live’ moment rests upon an unseen foundation of everything which preceded it. “Liveness as in a self-organization in action can’t detach or distinguish from skeleton of memory,” as they explain. “A wave of heat is rinsing out inseparably within this heat, where the liveliness is revealing itself as a part of motion and movement that lives through this instinctual response to the environment around it.” You can hear an excerpt of the opening track ‘Luring’ now:

Shit Present – Voice in Your Head

“It really did come as breaking news to me in 2016 that I am not my thoughts and I might learn to have some agency over them,” explains Shit Present’s vocalist and guitarist Iona Cairns of new single ‘Voice in Your Head’. What they describe as a ‘textbook’ I’ve-been-to-therapy song which serves as the perfect introduction for those unfamiliar with the Bristol outfit’s blend of emo and power pop. Committed to offering honest dispatches from the trials of mental health, wide open in their vulnerability but armed with the power of noisy catharsis. ‘Voice in Your Head’ is sincere in its message, wry in its tone, and ultimately empowered by the realisation that you can learn to live with your thoughts. “I could fucking destroy you or be your best friend,” sings the titular being in the chorus. “I’m here ’til you’re dead.”

talker – Don’t Want You To Love Me (Oceanator Remix)

“Indie rock with glitter all over it,” that’s how Celeste Tauchar describes the talker sound. Last year’s In Awe of Insignificance showed off the style in all its vivid glory, working to elevate Tauchar’s moody, emotionally-driven vocals. Following on from the success of the release, talker is putting out a brand new EP of remixes, with offerings from the likes of Overcoats and FRENSHIP. Latest single sees VSF fav Oceanator reimagine ‘Don’t Want You To Love Me’, adding gauzy textures over the clarity of the original without losing any of the sound’s urgent motion.

Zoon – Manitou

‘Manitou’ is the second single from Bekka Ma’iingan, the forthcoming sophomore record by Daniel Monkman’s Zoon on Paper Bag Records. Regular readers will by now be familiar with Monkman’s work, an ever-evolving sound rooted in shoegaze that explores themes of activism and Indigenous experience. The new song continues this trajectory, a lush orchestral piece that strips any notion of shoegaze back to its bare bones, emotional swells rising up amidst the atmosphere of lingering melancholy. “‘Manitou’ is about the group of friends I had growing up in Selkirk Manitoba,” Monkman explains. “We’d run a cross the red bridge and have fires and drink. Our little piece of heaven.” But far from a simple rose-tinted exercise in nostalgia, ‘Manitou’ reflects on the difficulties of that time too, acknowledging struggles and vowing never forget friends lost before their time.

And live out your youth
And all the stars shine fine
And keep this close to me
And live out your youth

Bekka Ma’iingan will be released by Paper Bag Records on 28th April and you can pre-order it now from the Zoon Bandcamp page.

The post Weekly Listening: February 2023 #4 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The title of Adam Spry’s forthcoming album Slightly Off Kilter gives a hint as to what to expect from the San Francisco songwriter. Dispatches from an artist somewhat out of whack with the world, trying to create and communicate in a society which hardly values such things. But with wry humour and a few coats of seventies rock polish, Spry plants his flag regardless, and single ‘Rotten Mausoleum’ captures the bravery of such an act with its tongue-in-cheek humour, however futile it might seem. “Walking through the streets of Rome, I kept picturing an emperor who ‘went into the family business’ so to speak,” Spry explains of his inspiration. “He just wanted to play the lute and study philosophy with his friends. Sick and tired of the class disparity around him, he decided to have the old statues torn down. He was of course killed and replaced with someone who would rule with an iron fist and was subsequently erased from history.”

Emperor made of marble
All you do is stare
Rotten Mausoleum
There’s someone in my chair

Check out the video filmed by Spry himself and edited by Matt Kreizenbeck below:

Slightly Off Kilter will be released on the 24th March and you can pre-order it now.

Bailey Miller – cul-de-sac

“A sound best described as translucent,” was how we described Bailey Miller’s Still Water, released last year on Whited Sepulchre Records. “Not too clear, not too fogged, any ethereality countered by directness, yet nothing allowed to be too grounded for long.” This February sees Miller return with love is a dying, a follow-up record which forgoes some of the nuance and layering in favour of a more forthright tone. Directness as the prime focus. Intention unmasked and offered up. Single ‘cul-de-sac’ gives an indication of what such a change sounds like, its hushed and understated style made almost cavernous by the sense of space Miller conjures around it. An echo which carries the full weight of the dark which surrounds any instance of love.

Crosslegged – Automatic

Ahead of brand new full-length Another Blue, which releases at the end of the month, Keba Robinson’s Crosslegged has unveiled a new track, ‘Automatic’. The album’s second single following the playfully undulating ‘Only in The’, ‘Automatic’ is a tender and assured grower, its spacious sound unfurling into an all-encompassing warmth before folding back up again, Robinson controlling the mood with an expert hand. By the close the listener is cast out into a hazy drift, anchored only by the crooned vocals, a safe hand ever-present allowing you to close your eyes and enjoy the float.

En Attendant Ana – Same Old Story

Ahead of their new LP, Principa, out next month via Trouble in Mind, Paris-based En Attendant Ana have unveiled single ‘Same Old Story’ to give an indication as to what to expect. A blend of playful indie pop rhythms and post-punk angles, the track whips up a detailed and often disorientating sound, pitching the listener into a funhouse room of mirrors with only the smooth clarity of Margaux Bouchaudon’s vocals as a guide. The sound is intended to represent the band as they appear “behind closed doors,” as they put it, “locked in a mortifying loop, repeating over and over the same gestures of a banal and falsely comfortable scene… until exhaustion,” leading to a sound which captures the idiosyncratic combination of escalation and fatigue typical of a racing mind.

Principa is out on the 24th February and you can pre-order it now.

Grocer – Downtown Side

Following on from last year’s Number’s Game, Philadelphia‘s Grocer are set to return with a brand new EP Scatter Plot on Grind Select. Single ‘Downtown Side’ shows the band pushing further into the volatile blend of pop charm and angular dissonance which has come to be their signature, this time utilising the frantic, twitchy energy to capture personal experiences of anxiety and unease. Because the lyrics deal with lead Nicholas Rahn’s experience of living with Vasovagal Syncope, a condition where specific triggers can cause him to faint, and moreover the secondary anxieties which come along with it. Including the very real fear “that at any given point in time,” as he puts it, “I am actually unconscious and simply experiencing a lifelike dream.”

then I realized…
Was I even alive?
I coulda passed out cold on my walk from home
I could be bleeding from my head on the side of the curb
Am I dreaming that I’m even waiting for a dessert?

Jack Keyes – Skyscraper

Across a series of albums and singles in recent years, Kentucky-based songwriter Jack Keyes has developed a warm and intimate sound somewhere between folk and bedroom pop. With a new full-length due later this year, new single ‘Skyscraper’ serves as both an acknowledgement of collaboration and a reminder to trust one’s own tastes. “[The single] is a celebration of the wonderful musical community I’ve found in Kentucky,” Keyes says “with contributions from friends I’ve met throughout my musical journey in town,” but also “about wanting to be more comfortable in my own choices and in my own skin.” A song which feels like an artist taking stock of how far they have come before setting off on a new journey.

Joanna Mattrey & Steven Long – EP

Next month Joanna Mattrey & Steven Long will release their debut full-length Strider on Dear Life Records. An ambient album written and recorded with a clear set of rules: each track must revolve around one idea and one idea alone. But while this seemingly spartan approach might stand distinct in a genre prone to ambiguous meanderings, Mattrey and Long were endlessly inventive within each song, looking everywhere for possible sounds. That includes a variety of synths, a toy keyboard, a seventies electric Kimball organ and the “curious and magical” Stroh Violin, as well as field recordings
of ice clashing in the Hudson river. Not to mention, as per the liner notes, how the pair “banged, blew on, and bowed various dusty pieces of junk, antiques, and old metal franklin stoves that filled [Mattrey’s] family’s house in upstate New York.”

Jonny G and the Music Factory – Life of Jonny

Next month, Jonny G and the Music Factory (AKA Jonny Gundersen) is releasing his debut full-length album Life of Jonny via Bud Tapes. Having been working as a musician for over decade, the record finds Gundersen in a pretty unique position—in possession of all the hard-won experience required to craft a collection of meaningful songs, yet still retaining the freshness and freedom which comes with a debut. Both the lead single and opener, the title track highlights how powerful such a mix can be, living up to its title to cast an eye over Gundersen’s life and paint a nuanced picture of living and creating. Highly personal details to capture something more universal, from the experience of existing within a working class space to the ups and downs of life in general. What changes within a person, what proves enduring.

Moved back home.
Life is change
I have changed
and now I’m changing again

Pile – Nude With A Suitcase

With new LP All Fiction arriving next month on Exploding in Sound, rock stalwarts Pile have been sharing numerous singles over recent weeks, from the frantic motion of ‘Loops’ to the slow tilting heft of ‘Poisons’. Latest track ‘Nude With A Suitcase’ is no less striking, a dense, tenebrous song which invites the listener inside its cryptic world with what might be alluring shimmer or ominous dread. A fitting ambiguity for an record built around subjectivity and its disorientating pressures, forcing the listener to sit down and examine just what is unfolding around them, even if there is no correct answer at all. Watch the video by Sam Circle with animation from Lynn Tomlinson below:

All Fiction is out on the 17th February via Exploding In Sound and you can pre-order it now.

Romanie – Anthony

Belgian born, Naarm/Melbourne based songwriter Romanie has never been afraid to push into personal territory in her music. 2021’s Little Big Steps delved into themes of loneliness and self-doubt, but new single ‘Anthony’ cuts especially close to the bone. Written after seeing Anthony Hopkins in The Father, and in the aftermath of losing a close relative with dementia, the track combines a pressing energy with passionate delivery to confront the cruelty of the illness while declaring an unwavering love. A promise to go on caring and remembering no matter what is taken away.

Sad Girls Aquatics Club – Who’s Your Witness

A self-described “dramatic duo” from Pittsburgh, PA, Sad Girls Aquatics Club specialise in what they describe as “breakup pop”. First announcing themselves with debut EP Vodkawine back in 2018, the pair (Chelsea Rumbaugh and Marie Mashyna) make sharp and slightly melancholy pop songs that combine personal angst and a sense of wider social critique. They now have a full-length record on the way, and have recently released a couple of singles in anticipation of its release. ‘Who’s Your Witness’ might be the standout, a somewhat facetious wave goodbye to someone or thing that has outstayed its welcome, all wrapped in a 90s alt-rock fuzz.

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