“At some very basic and intuitive level, [Will] Kennedy taps into the stuff that’s really important. Getting lost in the present, side by side with those you love.” That’s how we described ‘Bird Sanctuary’, the first single from 22° Halo‘s new album Lily of the Valley, coming this November on Tiny Library Records. The single introduced the style with experience of the natural world, but new track ‘Virtual You’ shows such feelings are not unique to the great outdoors. As the title suggests, the song delves into cyberspace and the abundant nostalgia it offers. But rather than finding melancholy in those old photographs of cherished moments now past, the song is delivered with something brighter. Wistful, yes, and not immune from a certain sense of longing, but always with an overarching gratitude that such times happened at all.

Chris Acker – Shit Surprise

“The most beautiful and poetic song about stepping in dog shit that has ever been written.” That’s how label Gar Hole Records describe Chris Acker’s ‘Shit Surprise’. The first track from upcoming album Famous Lunch, the song is an ode to the cosmic justice which so often comes attached to vanity. How those walking a little too tall will inevitably get slapped down again. Behind Acker’s trademark absurdity is the essential troubadour tale, where the confused dreamer collides with the banalities of life and comes to feel cursed for his failings. And, most importantly, the tongue-in-cheek style sacrifices none of the track’s emotional weight, positioning Acker alongside the likes of Dean Johnson as one of the most authentic and interesting practitioners of contemporary folk.

Watch the video directed and edited by Cooper Kenward with animation by Anubha Gupta below:

Famous Lunch is out on the 11th October via Gar Hole Records and you can pre-order it now.

Liv Greene – Katie

Described as “a reckoning with reality, a vulnerable snapshot of hard-won self-acceptance,” Deep Feeler is the forthcoming full-length from Nashville songwriter Liv Greene on Free Dirt Records. The product of a decision to finally embrace a truer self within her work, the album sees Greene cease attempts to bury personal truths, reframing songwriting from an escape mechanism to a kind of spotlight. Belonging to a rich lineage of songwriters going back through Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch and others, the album emerges defiant in its unguardedness, finding healing within the act of revealing one’s core. New single ‘Katie’ is a great example of the style. A lesson in how learning to be oneself can lead to objective good. “This came out of a relationship that wasn’t my first queer love experience,” as Greene explains, “but it was my first time allowing it to not be a bad thing. It comes from a place of tenderness—of allowing yourself to feel those romantic feelings and really revel in them.”

Deep Feeler is out on the 18th October via Free Dirt Records and you can pre-order it now.

Lutalo – Oh Well

Last month we featured two new singles from Lutalo‘s upcoming album The Academy, coming soon via Winspear. A hint at the spectrum of moods present on the record, with ‘The Bed’ offering a bright folk sound and ‘Broken Twin’ something altogether darker. Latest track ‘Oh Well’ splits the difference between the two, marbling heavy reverb with an almost transcendent falsetto to evoke Lutalo’s teenage years in Minnesota, a time set against the backdrop of his mother’s mental health challenges. What results is a spectrum of emotions packed tightly together, where confusion and desperation sit alongside fondness, and a crushing weight is always threatening to overtake everything.

Molina – Organs

This October Danish–Chilean composer Molina will release debut full-length When you wake up via Escho, an album which looks to in some way transcend the rush of contemporary living via a committed awareness of life’s small details. Thus emerges a layered brand of dream pop which eschews the nostalgia so common for the genre in favour of a close attention to the present. Latest single ‘Organs’ sees ML Buch lend their talents to push this sound further. A song “very much a fusion of our individual approaches to perceiving melodies, recordings and sound in general,” as Molina explains. “We are both fascinated by the ‘pulse’ in music and how a song can be perceived to move at different paces. We also share a mutual attraction to catchy melodies. ML tends to unfold words with the melody in an elastic manner, while I prefer more on-the-note vocals that introduce unexpected harmonic shifts. ‘Organs’ kind of holds all those elements of fascination and exploration together.”

Sam Weber – Tamarindo Sunsets

In recent months we’ve previewed the Clear + Plain, the new album from Vancouver Island-based singer-songwriter and guitarist Sam Weber, first with the evocative ‘Oregon‘ and later the warm and relaxed ‘Void‘. “But while the languid tone might suggest a track of romance and intimacy,” we wrote of the latter, “the lyrics paint a more ambiguous picture, where mortality flashes into view with an unnerving abruptness.” With the album out now via Sonic Unyon Records, Weber is back with new single, ‘Tamarindo Sunsets’. A song about “staring into the digital abyss and being confronted with greener and greener grass,” as he explains. “Reckoning with what it means to find that beauty, peace, satisfaction in your heart.”

Clear + Plain is out now via Sonic Unyon.

Soot Sprite x Muttering – Burn The Leaves

Hot on the heels of recent single I Went Swimming / Home Among Your Bones, which we described as “a refusal to romanticise difficult relationships, a determination to learn lessons and live more healthily,” Soot Sprite are back with For Joy, a new collaborative EP with London‘s Muttering. Again released via Specialist Subject Records, the three-song release sees Elise Cook and Chaz Bush share songwriting duties, with Bush taking the reins for first single ‘Burn The Leaves’. A weighty and cathartic examination of the past inspired by J. L. Carr’s A Month in the Country, drawing on the novel’s bittersweet retrospection on a time which could not last. “We all have certain anchor points that you look back on,” Bush explains. “Memories that hold significance and in difficult times often hope to rekindle. The thought of what could have been.”

This Lonesome Paradise – These Western Roads

With forthcoming album Luna Nocturna, California psych-folk outfit This Lonesome Paradise conjure a world worthy of their name, drawing the listener into a sonic environment as stark and striking as the American West of Cormac McCarthy’s oeuvre. Lead single ‘These Western Roads’ offers a path into this landscape. A dark and brooding slice of country noir which simmers with equal parts beauty and foreboding. But more than a lesson in cinematic worldbuilding, the album serves as a meditation on the American Dream with all its brutality, broken promises and betrayals. A project doomed from its very inception, destined to always be haunted by the means in which reached for its goals.

Luna Nocturna is out on the 18th October via Bad Vibes Good Friends and you can pre-order it now.

Why Bonnie – Three Big Moons

“Foregoes easy pigeonholing in terms of style, unified instead by the defiant new self-confidence which underpins it.” That’s how we described Wish On The Bone, the new full-length from Why Bonnie coming later this week on Fire Talk Records, in a preview back in June. A style fitting for the new philosophy of lead Blair Howerton, who is looking to escape preconception and expectation to embrace the freedom of constant change. Take latest single ‘Three Big Moons’, where the old Why Bonnie country twang is repurposed to tell an old story in a different way. Themes of loneliness and isolation are keystones of the genre, but here the dusty roads and full moon heartbreak are swapped out for something altogether more extraterrestrial.

I was a heavy weight
Out there in space
Took one for the team
And took a swan dive into nothing
They pinned a note to my collar
It said “we couldn’t save her”
And dropped down the american flag
Like it was a favor
Walked around a few earth hours
Until my feet got sore
Found a nice big crater
24 by 24

Wish On The Bone will be released via Fire Talk Records on 30th August and is available to pre-order via Bandcamp.

The post Weekly Listening: August 2024 #4 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The Fabulous Truth, the new album from Brooklyn‘s Eve Essex forthcoming via Soap Library, uses the full spectrum of styles and genres in attempt to offer the elusive phenomenon of its title. “Trip-hop, outlaw country, kosmische, spiritual jazz, avant-garde classical, and—yes—musical theatre,” are all cited as touchstones in the press release, as Essex moves with an improvisational freedom in search of a sound capable of capturing the full duality of intimacy and expansiveness which exists within the boundaries of our selves. The style is encapsulated by latest single ‘Room with a View’, in which a hauntingly patient sound evokes the strange geography of our interiors, where whispered secrets and vast expanses can feel like one and the same. Watch the animated video by Andy Cahill below:

The Fabulous Truth is out on the 21st June via Soap Library and you can pre-order it now.

Fine – Coasting

Recording under the moniker Fine (that’s feen-uh), Copehagen-based songwriter Fine Glindvad Jensen collides folk sensibilities with those of dream pop and electronic genres, stitching together guitars, drums, samples and synthesisers to form ambiguous, often minimal soundscapes for her vocals to drift across. So while debut album Rocky Top Ballads might be full of the melancholy and longing of classic country music, its intentions are far more evasive, drawing the listener into a shimmering world where ennui and fondness are marbled into one. The result, as highlighted by single ‘Coasting’, are songs whose apparent simplicity belies the true depth of meaning, Fine’s minimalist style allowing the listener to feel they are edging closer to the elusive heart of each track with every repeated listen.

Rocky Top Ballads comes out on 7th June is is available to order from the Fine Bandcamp page.

Hearsing – Montauk

Consisting of multi-instrumentalists Avery Murphy and Jordan Taylor, Hearsing look to offer a new flavour of western music by drawing on the surf punk roots of its founders (who were both founding members of the ensemble SUBPAR). The band have a new EP Pastoral on the way, and single ‘Montauk’ gives a glimpse of the expansive, nostalgic quality of the Hearsing sound. Ellington Peet (drums, percussion, synthesizer, production), Cole Brossus (lap steel guitar) and Kemper Thornberry (additional vocals) complete the line-up, helping to create a vivid soundscape which feels like a world of its own. Because as ‘Montauk’ suggests, Pastoral sees Hearsing push beyond personal experience into a more allegorical and creative style of lyricism, and it is fitting the sound comes to feel like an environment you might step inside.

I live behind a truck stop
North of Jersey
Every day I smell the sea
I work inside a steel mill
Cause veneration is better than defeat

Check out the video by Diego Diaz-Lundquist below:

‘Montauk’ is out now and available from the usual places. Pastoral is coming soon.

La Bonte – Marching In A Field Of Wheat

Following on from 2022’s Grist For The Mill, La Bonte is returning this summer with Economy Play, a new EP again released via Anxiety Blanket Records. Garrett La Bonte has made a name with a considered, reflective sound able to examine grief and love with the kind of thoughtful tone such subjects demand. Living up to its title, the new EP continues this sensibility with a measured hand, choosing to not overextend itself within an environment of financial constraints to instead deliver a shorter release that does justice to the ideas underpinning it. Single ‘Marching In A Field Of Wheat’ confronts this society of precarity directly, sparking with the tension between capitalism and creativity as it comes to understand the empty promise of the American dream. But while the less-is-more descriptor might apply to the release’s quantity, the sound refutes such ideals, rising with tumultuous weight as though directly wrestling with the malevolent forces within.

Mal Not Bad – Come On/Hard Times / Mustang

Following the track ‘No Worries’ back in March, Mal Hauser’s Mal Not Bad has released a new double single ahead of their debut full-length This Is Your New Life which will be released in August by Same Same. Described as “a succinct glimpse” into the record’s sonic palette, the songs inhabit slightly different sides of the LA artist’s style. ‘Come On/Hard Times’ is a sober slice of ambient indie folk adorned with subtle glitchy electronics, while ‘Mustang’ invites LA band Junaco along to create an emotive and haunting downtempo electro pop song. “‘Mustang’ feels like the emotional release of ‘Come On/Hard Times’, Hauser describes, “though both songs remain in moments of reflection and stillness.”

Find yourself inside a new life
Find yourself inside a different mind

Come On​/​Hard Times / Mustang is out now via the Mal Not Bad Bandcamp page.

Steak Blake – Under Knives

Next month, Blake Joshua (of Beige Banquet) will release an EP with his solo project Steak Blake. Titled This One, the record promises to continue the Steak Blake MO we first glimpsed on last year’s ‘Wonderbread’, all sharp post punk guitars, deadpan vocals and introspective, politically conscious lyrics. To announce the EP, Steak Blake has unveiled lead single and opening track ‘Under Knives’, a lo-fi but hook-laden punk song that is certain to appeal to fans of the likes of Gorgeous Bully. “The song speaks to the relentless challenges of modern life,” Joshua describes of the single, “depicting a state where people constantly feel behind and unable to escape from reality. It explores the psychological burden of believing that these struggles are self-inflicted, turning to vices as a form of escapism, a way to momentarily relieve stress and despair.”

STEFA* – differ3nt today

Born With An Extra Rib, the debut album by Queens vocalist, composer, educator and performance artist Stefa Marin Alarcón (aka STEFA*) is something of an amalgamation between autobiography and origin story. Exploring personal stories on a grand scale, the record sees STEFA* blend classical, electronic, punk and Latin styles to capture the different selves they embodied throughout its nine year gestation. Genre convention goes out the window, replaced with a sense of freedom and desire to embrace change. Latest single ‘differ3nt today’ is a great example, a downtempo electronic song that draws on contemporary pop and a decidedly 90s nostalgic sensibility. “I wanted this to feel like an anthem for people,” Alarcón describes of the song. “For everyone – not just for trans people, not just for non-binary people, not just for queer people. We all change so often and we have a right to change, so I wanted it to be an invitation for people to ask these same questions.”

Born With An Extra Rib is out now via Bandcamp.

Tasha – Michigan

Over two years since her last release, Tasha has signed to Bayonet Records and released a new single, ‘Michigan’. Produced by Gregory Uhlmann and written during a “both lonely and extremely creatively fulfilling” writing trip to a friend’s house in the titular state, the track is suffused with the sadness and gladness found in the warm glow of a late summer afternoon. Steady percussion propels things forward, but Tasha’s vocals glide at their own pace, attuned more with the slow rhythms of the natural world than our usual human calendar. “This song is about the missing and the return, Tasha describes,” the reliable comfort of a sunset on a nice day, a friend to sit with, and the shining hope of more comfort to come.”

Drive to Michigan, spend some time alone
Make good friends with the horses down the road
Oh I wish our dog was here with me
But I know he’s barking loudly somewhere warm and free

Wishy – Love On The Outside

Fresh from the success of 2023 EP Paradise, Indianapolis outfit Wishy have wasted no time in announcing their debut full-length album, Triple Seven. Again released via Winspear, the record looks to build on the combination of dream pop, shoegaze and indie rock which we so admired on the EP last year. Lead single ‘Love On The Outside’ plays these various stylistic influences off against one another, granting the track equal doses of heaviness and anthemic release. Such a duality is fitting for a track charting those early days of a relationship, where the tantalising promise of all the possible futures is troubled by an impatience to get to those halcyon days. A song sweet, frustrated and full of the hooks which make Wishy so engaging.

Check out the accompanying video by Rich Smith below:

Triple Seven is out on the 16th August via Winspear and you can pre-order it now.

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