Erin Tobey Archives - Various Small Flames

Brenda’s Friend – House Down

Jon Doyle — Mon, 13 Jun 2016 18:35:46 +0000

You might recognise Erin Tobey from her album Middlemaze, a release we described as “all echoey drums and cool-as-heck snaky guitars”. Well, thanks to a fair dose of mutual appreciation and respect, Tobey last year teamed with fellow Bloomington songwriter Amy Oelsner (AKA Amy O) to form Brenda’s Friend. The project, which the duo hope to use as an outlet for their more abstract writing, cannot quite be pinned within any one genre, traversing a gamut of musical variations to include (as the press release describes) “sonorous folk rock, distorted doo-wop, the melodic richness of Talulah Gosh’s early indie-pop and a Wire-like post-punk stomp”.

Following up 2015’s Under the Shrub, Brenda’s Friend are back with a new six-song release, House Down. The album opens with the title track, a song which begins with a clear kick-drum thump but soon descends (or ascends) into an intricate stack of sound and lyrics. The spine of percussion remains throughout, a lifeline tied around the listeners ear as they delve into the kaleidoscopic shifting of vocals and instrumentation. ‘Sponge’ strips things back, the vocals now superimposed for emphasis, the lyrics ranging from pre-teen demands (“I want it! / I need it!”) to weird allegorical verses:

“I don’t want to stay at the bottom of that pond
I don’t want to lick up all that scum
don’t want to float with the salient sponge
take a breath, say hello to the sun”

‘Who Who’ is a track heavy in reverb, sitting between a bluesy rock and the riot grrrl sound of the 90s. Oelsner and Tobey join together to give the vocals a mantra-like quality, the collaborative casting of some swaggering, self-assured spell. ‘Pas De Deux’ is far gentler, the vocals soft and fine though cut with slight suggestions of something stranger, the lyrics abstract and instrumentation pulsing and buzzing in odd repetitions, as though accelerating toward some unclear conclusion.

“Oh I made a mess and cleaned it up
then the sky opened wide, it was terrible.
Oh I, melting candles underfoot
But your guard was so hard you laughed at the air
burned your own hair”

‘Horoscope’ is short and off-kilter, packed with a high-school blend of confidence and confusion (“stuck in the middle of my horoscope / its set to wait all month”), like the soundtrack of the best 90s kids TV show you’ve never seen, while closer ‘Navy Beach’ is a reckless garage rock hit to be played in dive bars packed out by rough heads on shore leave.

House Down is out now and you can buy it from the Brenda’s Friend Bandcamp page, including on limited-edition cassette via Winspear Records. Also, be sure to check out the Amy O and Erin Tobey Bandcamp pages.

Album art by Janelle Beasley

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April 2016 Roundup – A Mixtape

Jon Doyle — Mon, 02 May 2016 09:30:43 +0000

Spring seems a bit non-committal around these parts, with every day seeming like an advert for weather and all of its variety. If your days are similarly sunny/snowy/confused, fear not, we have just the tonic. Good music! Here’s a round-up of everything we covered during April 2016. As per usual, click on the artist’s name in the tracklist to be whisked away to the specific post.

Tracklisting:

1. Your Best American Girl – Mitski
2. Shine – Solids
3. Vertebrae – Sam Moss
4. Joy Lies Down – Cloud (Bern Yr Idols comp from Audio Antihero)
5. Near You – Adeline Hotel
6. I Saw You – Outer Spaces
7. Madeline – Yoni & Geti
8. Keep it Light – ARMS
9. Figure It Out – Jake Rollins
10. We Learned to Cry – Adeem The Artist
11. ant hill paradise – Bedbug
12. I’m Young – Erin Tobey
13. coca cola purgatory – Ryder Eaton
14. Muppet Babies – Nice Legs (FRY YR BRN comp from Cereal + Sounds & Z Tapes)
15. Dawn Raid – The Second Hand Marching Band & Benni Hemm Hemm
16. President – Nice Try
17. SHIP – Fake Boyfriend
18. If You Let It – Sioux Falls
19. sorry for not answering the phone, i’m too busy trying to fly away – In Love with a Ghost
20. Clueless – Holiday Home
21. Realistic Birthday Music – Hallelujah the Hills
22. Age of Consent – Cayetana
23. Seattle – Tincho
24. Lance bangs #1 single released on 4/20 – Lance Bangs
25. Cigarettes – Daytime TV
26. Everything Costs – Radical Face
27. Tired of IPAs – talons’
28. Soak – Good Good Blood
29. Heavy as a mountain – Moin Moin

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Erin Tobey releases new single, I’m Young

Liam Doyle — Mon, 25 Apr 2016 18:42:02 +0000

Erin Tobey is a musician and visual artist from Bloomington, IN. It’s been a decade since she last released a solo record (you can hear her previous work on her Bandcamp page), but in June that is set to change. Middlemaze is an album purportedly about “life after being young”, or as Tobey puts it, “[an album] written over years while walking and driving, moving slowly outward from deep within an interior world”.

The first single, ‘I’m Young’ is a folk song but not as you know it, all echoey drums and cool-as-heck snaky guitars. It sounds confident and assured, not a superfluous note throughout. I guess that’s what happens when you have ten years to write an album.

“On reflection I can see that I’m a product of my time”

Middlemaze is due for release on the 3rd of May on Let’s Pretend Records and you can pre-order it on LP or cassette now.

Photo credit Chaz Mottinger

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