The Estok’Gna have survived hundreds of years of genocide and oppression since the arrival of Europeans, and continue to face severe threats to their culture, history and way of life. Now, three natural gas pipelines are planned on traditional Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe territory, which would destroy scared sites and make it a felony for the Estok’Gna to occupy them. Not to mention the project’s lack of consideration to it’s non-human impacts—current plans will see it destroy over 300 acres of important habitat that is home to 21 endangered species.

As you would expect from Keeled Scales, the album contains recordings from a whole host of great artists. From indie rock heavyweights like Big Thief and Sharon Van Etten, to the countless whose releases we have written about and loved over the last few years, including (takes breath) Black Belt Eagle Scout, Erin Durant, Jess Williamson, Jo Schornikow, Karima Walker, Sun June, Will Johnson, and Tenci.

There is considerable diversity across the 31 tracks, but all are united by a common spirit. Renée Reed brings her distinctive and dreamlike Cajun folk with ‘J’ai Trouve’, while Christelle Bofale shows off her wonderful soulful vocals with a stripped-back demo titled ‘And I’ll Go’ and Aisha Burns sets the tone with the collection’s first track, the beautiful and immersive ‘Chinati’. A personal favourite is Little Mazarn’s take on the classic cowboy folk song ‘Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie,’ which sounds at once bright and mournful.

100% of donations from the album will go directly to the Estok’Gna to support their fight for their land, culture and very existence. As Keeled Scales put it: “As indigenous people continue to lead the fight against the reckless fossil fuel industry, we are honored to offer this compilation and its earnings in solidarity with everyone in the fight for racial justice and a livable future for all beings on planet earth.”

To the People of the Land is out now and available via the Keeled Scales Bandcamp page.

The post Keeled Scales – To the People of the Land appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Ruth Garbus – Strash
Mauno – Vampire
Outer Spaces – Gazing Globe
Benjamin Shaw – Long Ago and Oh So Far Away
Erin Durant – Islands
Daughter of Swords – Dawnbreaker
Melissa Mary Ahern – Maria, Maria
Oscar Lush – Kind Living
Midwife – Angel
Young Elk – False Paradise
Wilder Maker – Love So Well
Big Joanie – Way Out
Secrecies – Life We Live
Beat Radio – Everyone I Know, Just Holding On
American Poetry Club – pro pic?
So Totally – sike
halfsour – Paper Window
Joyer – Here
Marbling – Wisdom Teeth
High Sunn – Grateful
Slow Pulp – New Media
Molly Drag – Out Like a Light
Van Houten – Moon
Birdspotter – Riverbed
Tender Perennial – Delivered
JR Samuels – In Brend 2
Elly Swope – Habits
Derek Piotr – The Sign
Fighting Kites – Kita Senju
Nathalie Joachim – Papa Loko (Interlude: September 24, 1918)
Kali Malone – Sacrificial Code
Kate Tempest – Holy Elixir
Little Musket – Fever Blister
Gold Baby – 500/1
Tennis Club – Stay
Young Mammals – Lost in Lima
Abe Hollow – Paradise
bdrmm – Question Mark
Briston Maroney – Fool’s Gold

Check out our previous Monthly Roundup playlists, and be sure to read or Reviews and Previews throughout the month.

The post July 2019 Roundup Mix appeared first on Various Small Flames.

This has a lot to do with collaboration, particularly with Kyp Malone (of TV on the Radio), who not only produced the album but proved a significant creative influence and played a number of instruments on the record. The result is Durant’s signature folk music elevated to another level without losing the stark and communicative core, what we described previously as “a collision of the vast and the intimate, weaving focused, personal vignettes into something that explores far grander themes, a complex mosaic dedicated to the nuances of trauma and loss.”

Erin Durant has lived in New York for over a decade, though it’s hard to imagine these songs being conceived amongst such a bustling metropolis. Durant’s music is tied to the American landscape, organic images of dusty plains and sticky southern humidity, more the America of collective consciousness than how it exists in twenty-first century cities. Take opener ‘Rising Sun’, a gentle sun-dappled folk song that sees Durant’s mind wander to her original home. “There is a house in New Orleans,” she sings, “a California bungalow that I’ve never seen, it’s painted green, sits on Ma’s street and takes me someplace that I’ve never been.”

In many ways, the song sets the album’s thematic tone. Durant’s words and observations hold an uncanny juxtaposition, on one hand quotidian and undramatic, the thoughts of one little person in a big world, but with a plainspoken earnestness and unfussy clarity that allows us, the listener, a glimpse within. The effect is to turn things inside out, and remind us that even the smallest individual contains uncharted wilderness. Indeed, that seems to be the ultimate purpose for Durant. For her, music is a vehicle for exploring these depths. As she explains in a feature with The Line of Best Fit:

Songwriting is a place to put all my thoughts and experiences; a place to focus my interests, desires, longings. It can hold all my inspirations and interests […] music is the form that I can best express myself through.

But Islands is not a simple work of autobiography. Durant’s approach is far more indirect and interesting. Loosely painted imagery does as much of the narrative lifting as any of the bona fide storytelling, a reminder that there is more than one way to tell a story, including not telling any kind of story at all. The timeless quality of ‘Highway Blue’ is too familiar to be wholly personal, Durant not pouring out her soul but linking its energy to some wider flow that’s long blown across the country. It sounds inherently personal yet connected intrinsically to older traditions, set neither Now or Then but within the spirit that unites the two.

The effect is clear on ‘Good Ol Night’, a track that walks the line which traces from cowboy card bars right through to the ostentatious neon whirr of modern casinos, an age-old American game of luck and dreams and second-guessing. There’s a bravado that’s at once heartfelt and brittle—something like a whirlwind, something like Marilyn Monroe—as though to stop would be to unravel altogether.

Likewise, “[‘Take a Load Off’] is a meditation on the curse of the traveler,” we described in a preview of the softly gleaming single that takes on the Western mystique of moving on, “the dizzying rootless roll just some form of escape, but attempts to settle feel equally transient, as though each experience is merely a temporary alleviation of a deeper, nameless driver that can be forgotten but never extracted.” The piano and Durant’s voice don’t sound nearly as weary as that may sound though, remaining bright and perky throughout, as though rolling with the punches the road serves up.

After the haunted instrumental ‘Winterlude’, where poltergeistic discordance tinkers with the wistful warmth of old memories, the title track takes loss head on. Death looms large, ideas of letting go permeating a song concerned with returning home, as though only in leaving does the significance of something become apparent. There’s an inexorable glide to tragedy within the track’s very fabric, though one tempered with the elation of having lived at all. “This life feels long if I live another day,” Durant sings on ‘Another Town’, closing the record on a typically patient note, swaying over the slow thump of percussion like a breeze-borne flag.

Both songs capture the conflicted blend of joy and sadness at the heart of Islands and the American folk tradition too. It’s some relative of nostalgia that stems from things older and more permanent than ourselves, as though even in the wonder of the present moment does a sliding loss emerge, some mortal thing colouring the scene as the landscape goes through its ancient motions, unperturbed by our passing transience.

Islands is out now via Keeled Scales and you can get it from the Erin Durant Bandcamp page.

The post Erin Durant – Islands appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Adrianne Lenker – cradle
German Error Message – Hopelessness
Jo Schornikow – Incomplete
Grizzly Coast – Half-Light Boy
Taylor Hamilton – Might Say
Porridge Radio – Give / Take
Patio – Scum
Ruthie – Spirit Now Moves
Esther Rose – Don’t Blame It On the Moon
Blood Cultures – Flowers For All Occasions
Puddle-Cuddle – Compost
Mess – Dead Space
Cry Babe – Soft Honk
The Painters – Pieces of Life
Two Meters – Ground
Erin Durant – Take a Load Off
Michelle Blades – Ring
Eric & Magill – Thanks to Sciences
Foundlings – Caught Up on You
Craig Finn – Something To Hope For
JW Ridley – Homesick (Out The Blue)
Pieket – Eternal Recurrence
The Curfews – Rose
Emily Fairlight – Body Below
Raggedy – Brainwash
Barrie – Saturated
Blush – Forever Is a Long Time
Shane Leonard – Empire Builder
Con Davison – Sofa Bed
Gold Light + Snakemusk – The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter
The Chats – Pub Feed
Shutups – Yellowjacket
Izzy Heltai – Stuck In Stone
Adam Ostrar – Take It Back
The Death Of Pop – Last
Toledo – Some Samurai
Yot Club – Japan
Evan Thomas Way & The Phasers – Long Distance
K. Campbell – Heads Up
The Duke of Norfolk – As the Heralds Revere You
Leaky Engine-John Birch Society Blues
naps – treading
Vieo Abiungo – What the Rain Restores
Old Earth – The Friends ∴ The Gods
Good Good Blood & Astral Social Club – Heathen Astronaut

Like what you hear? Catch up with the rest of our Monthly Mixes!

The post April 2019 Roundup Mix appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Following her debut album Blueberry Mountain, released in 2016 on Flying Moonlight, Durant has enlisted the help of producer Kyp Malone (TV On The Radio) to create the richly ambitious Islands. Coming this June on Keeled Scales, the record is a collision of the vast and the intimate, weaving focused, personal vignettes into something that explores far grander themes, a complex mosaic dedicated to the nuances of trauma and loss. “The songs, each their own world, touch on the ability to find meaning in minutiae,” explains the press release, “the importance of awareness and mindfulness in finding your footing in a world that, at times, seems irreparably imbalanced.”

Imbued with a characteristic warmth, lead single ‘Take A Load Off’ finds a wanderer tired of the constant movement but afraid to stop. The track forms a meditation on the curse of the traveler, the dizzying rootless roll just some form of escape, but attempts to settle feeling equally transient, as though each experience is merely a temporary alleviation of a deeper, nameless driver that can be forgotten but never extracted.

Islands will be released by Keeled Scales in June so keep an eye on their website for more information.

The post Erin Durant – Take A Load Off appeared first on Various Small Flames.