This summer sees Nick Ferrio return with brand new record, Television of Roses, and the style is more apparent than ever. Intended as a document of fatherhood for his son, the record draws upon a whole host of experiences and relationships unique to Ferrio in order to get closer to what it means to love and be loved. “Being a parent has made my focus more intense,” he explains. “Thinking of life through the metaphor of a camera, the aperture has been adjusted and what is important is now much more clear. Music and family are the subject and everything else is just noise in the background.”

The album is also something of a who’s who of Candian indie music. Recorded at the rural Port William Sound studio of Jonas Bonnetta (Evening Hymns), Television of Roses sees Caylie Runciman (Boyhood), Evangeline Gentle, Lewis Parker (For Esmé), Nathan Truax (Said the Whale) and Tanner Paré (Heaps/The Kents) all help Ferrio craft the rich sound, with mixing from Gavin Gardiner (The Wooden Sky) and mastering by Philip Shaw Bova (Bahamas). Anyone familiar with the work of Bonnetta and Gardiner will recognise the depth underpinning the sound, and how it serves to ground the immediacy of the emotions with a semblance of distance and reflection.

Nowhere is this clearer than on lead single, ‘The Dam’. Pitched in the tension between fond nostalgia and life’s harsh truths, the track inverts the theme of parenthood to explore Ferrio’s relationship with his mother. There’s affection in the rhythm and energy, but recollections break the rose-tinted glow. “My mother wrote a letter to me a few years ago, asking me if I remember her before her struggles with addiction began,” Ferrio explains. “This song is a response to that letter. It explores those early years of my life, the poverty we experienced, but also my mother’s resilience and strength.”

The track pulls no punches, in the small memories of hurt and suffering, the brittle promises repeated unto truth. But the Nick Ferrio sound is capable of exploring such complexity without getting lost within it. Instead, it soars above with empathy and solidarity, capable of holding the most difficult relationships at arms length and recognising the human struggle within. “We were estranged from each other at times in our lives,” Ferrio continues, “and she passed away a year ago after being diagnosed with leukaemia. But, I played it for her before she passed and we made amends.”

Check out the video directed by Tanner Paré below:

Television of Roses is out on the 18th June and you can pre-order it now via the Nick Ferrio Bandcamp page.

The post Nick Ferrio – The Dam appeared first on Various Small Flames.

With support from musicians such as Joseph Shabason (Destroyer), José Contreras (By Divine Right) Caylie Runciman (Boyhood) and Gavin Gardiner (The Wooden Sky), Bonnetta has crafted his most pop-inflected album to date. There is a distinct seventies feel, a certain atmosphere and depth of sound present across the record, despite its varied tones. The lush late-night heartache of ‘I Can Only Be Good’ blurs intimacy and isolation, memories sitting close to loneliness as Shabason’s saxophone snakes in languid turns, while ‘The Days Disintegrating’ sits in a slow slipstream of solitude and patters towards its langorous climax.

Others have a broader sound, vintage synthesizers and drum machines lending tracks such as ‘My Drugs, My Dreams’ a widescreen, technicolor heft. But for all of its richness, the themes of the track work in the opposite direction. “I wrote [‘My Drugs, My Dreams’] in my living room right after my breakup, totally terrified and alone,” Bonnetta explains. “Again, all these huge questions came back to me and I was so confused and drained. I’d just hurt this person that I loved and had loved for so long and who I had had all of these formative experiences with […] I wanted to remember it forever, to be present, to learn from it, and so drew the picture.”

Such a sentiment could describe much of the Evening Hymns oeuvre. Not wallowing in sorrow and confusion but engaging with them in curiosity. Like holding loss in your palm and seeing how it catches the light. “I’d always had this feeling that love should feel good wherever you are, in some idyllic place or in some run-down miserable apartment. I wanted to be happy with nothing. To take away my vices and my dreams and still feel free and hopeful and capable of love.”

Like previous Evening Hymns records, Heavy Nights feels like a space carved out from the normal passage of things. Remoteness repurposed as a form of contemplation, an opportunity to learn. Loneliness not as an end but the means, the stark shadow of the relationships that have been becoming things to be studied and remembered in order to love once again. The result is a record fitting of its name. A descent into the end of something meaningful, and a conscious decision to shoulder whatever heavy truths are found there, all woven from the rich and romantic hues of the early hours, where feelings achieve a new saturation as the lights burn lazy and low.

We took the opportunity to ask Bonnetta a few questions to learn a little more about the record and his creative processes more generally.

Hi Jonas, I hope all is well and things are shaping up for the record. Could you give us a little background on Heavy Nights? What does it mean to you? How did it come into being?

Thank you! Heavy Nights. Written over the last 5 years. Some ideas a little older I suppose. Lyrically these are all more recent. Some of the music had kicked around in my head for awhile though. A lot has changed for me in the last half decade. A new relationship. The birth of my son. Reconnecting with nature and country living. I feel like I’m always working on the next Evening Hymns record and eventually a collection of songs come together.

One of the things that strikes me about the record is the interplay between isolation and connection. There’s a loneliness to the songs, a sense of remove from certain people or places that’s baked into the nocturnal vibes, the heavy snow. But then there’s this tenderness too. A warmth. The sense that each track is a direct communication to the absent thing, no matter how remote or deferred. It’s something that seems to represent the spirit of Evening Hymns in many ways, and I find myself wondering where it comes from exactly. I know you record in a pretty remote location, but there’s a chicken and egg thing with that too. Do records take on the spirit of the places in which they were recorded, or do you seek out those places to realise the spirit of the record?

This is a heavy question because it’s something I think about often enough and is deep rooted in me. I grew up in the country and grew up entertaining myself in a way. The whole wanting to be in isolation in the country makes sense to me. It’s slow and introspective. Thoughtful. I like to be alone. It allows me to make up my world around me however I want to imagine it and that’s helpful for my creativity. I think it would be hard for me to make something aggressive out here. It’s a pastoral place. Quiet and peaceful. Often with my ambient work I’m going right to a specific location to have in infuse all the music. With Evening Hymns the two things are constantly working in sympatico. I’m always out and about with the antennae up trying to make sense of how I feel and what’s happening around me. It’s exhausting. Haha.

Despite this binding spirit, there’s been a significant evolution of the Evening Hymns sound. With the synths and drum machines, Heavy Nights is the richest, most pop-orientated record yet. Does this represent an evolution of your artistic sensibilities too, is it just that this sound was the most fitting for these particular songs?

I think I wanted to make something that sounded romantic. I wanted it to be rich and hazy. During the writing process I was falling out of and then into love. Many changes going on. A lot of late nights wondering what the hell I was doing with my life. Drinking wine and feeling poetic. I think all of my music is pop music. I’m trying to make even sad songs feel catchy. This one I tried to frame in more of a classic song world as I was listening to a lot of older music. I wanted to make a 70s pop record. It’s what I was connecting with at the time.

You’ve spoken about how you worked on some of the songs for years, putting them aside when you felt they weren’t quite where you wanted them. I’m interested in how you decide when something is ready, the moment when the final song emerges from the idea. Is the whole process down to intuition and feeling? Do you have the equivalent of editors, first listeners to help you through?

It’s intuition for sure but it’s funny because I do a lot of producing now and I’ll listen to demos from artists and then new versions and then they get to the studio and it’s constantly changing and I often get to witness the artist just circle around in the weeds. We all do it I think. I’m aware of that with some of my songwriting process. A song like ‘My Drugs, My Dreams’ I kicked around for a really long time. I had a pretty thorough sketch of it during the recording of Quiet Energies but it just wasn’t ready. I really liked the chorus and I felt like I owed it to that chorus to bring words and verses that were as strong. I’d pick up a guitar and work away on it when I felt like it. There isn’t really any editors. Just different versions of me at different stages I guess. Haha. I’m not really sure if this album version is even superior to the first version but it made me happiest and that is the end goal.

I wanted to ask about intimate songs. An intensely personal and difficult thread started on Spirit Guides and ran right through Spectral Dusk, and while subsequent records have taken on different issues there still a sense of that rawness, of private emotion. Heavy Nights is no different in that regard, and it got me thinking about the process of delving into the places that we might otherwise try to bury. Is it cathartic? Exhausting? Do you think the compulsion to capture such moments is an act of escaping them, or remembering?

I wouldn’t say it’s cathartic. It’s certainly exhausting. For me it’s a version of therapy. It doesn’t really feel great but it seems to help me. It forced me to really try and understand what my Dad’s death was to me and what our relationship was like. I think the aspect of playing the songs over and over again is the exhausting part. Touring them and having to conjure up those spirits each night was a challenge. I think if I didn’t have any problems I wouldn’t be writing. The song has always been a vehicle for me to understand myself more clearly. It’s never an escape. It’s maybe remembering. But it’s really just searching for meaning and understanding in the challenging moments.

How about in terms of giving the songs away to the listener? As an example, I saw you play in Cardiff with The Wooden Sky in late summer 2012, and there was something right around the corner that meant I lent heavily on Spectral Dusk in the months/years after. For me, that record is still about grief and loss, but one that is entirely my own. It struck me that the artist has to give up something. To let the songs be adapted to a series of adjacent tragedies and traumas, and I wondered how that exchange feels in practice?

I don’t feel like I’m responsible for the songs once they’re out there. The songwriting process is a pretty selfish practice for me. I’m writing to free myself from some weight and once my work there is done the songs are free to roam and be whatever they want to be for people. I was a really sad guy making that record, understandably, and there is an energy in everything that I did with that record that is saturated in that sadness. I feel like something magical happened with that album, or that I reached some level of clarity in understanding my Dad and his passing when we were recording, that certain people are able to use the record to also reach that same place. Maybe that’s getting a little mystical or something but that album felt honest to me. A transmission from a son to his father that other people are allowed to intercept. I think that losing someone is a gift in the sense that it creates these profound moments of real immediacy and honest and rawness. It’s a gift to be that present. If you are. If you’re in it, in all of it’s intensity.

Since the writing process was my way of understanding stuff I don’t feel like I’m giving anything away with it once the songs come out. I’ve got what I need from them at that point. The idea that others can use them to explore their own emotions is amazing. And if it gives anybody something to lean on in a hard time while that’s just an amazing byproduct.

I’m so grateful that Spectral Dusk has been that for a lot of people. Writing Heavy Nights felt similar albeit with the heartbreak of an old relationship. Whereas the last record Quiet Energies really felt like I was writing to pick myself back up again. Heavy Nights felt like sliding back into that old world of writing about my sadness to understand it more. What went wrong. What changed. Who am I now? I hope the heartbroken find this record in the wee hours.

Heavy Nights is out now via Shuffling Feet Records and you can get it from the Evening Hymns Bandcamp page.

Photographs by Caylie Runciman

The post Evening Hymns – Heavy Nights appeared first on Various Small Flames.

If any of the above points make you feel a little down, here’s a playlist of every band we featured during September to cheer you up. As always, click the artist name in the tracklisting to be whisked away to the specific post.

Tracklisting:

1. Hidden Driver – LVL UP
2. Death – CHUCK
3. Seskinore – Hiva Oa
4. Shut Out the Light – Tiny Dinosaurs
5. Foothills – Simon Balto
6. Lie 2 Me – Shana Falana
7. annie – moving in
8. A Lonely Road – Jordan O’Jordan
9. Augustine – The Chairman Dances
10. Golden – Mt. Wolf (feat. St. South)
11. I – Slenko & McKeys
12. zszs – rgz
13. Meditations – Tall Ships
14. Tossing & Turning – Saint Clementine
15. Century Woods – Lisa/Liza
16. Clear Section – Spartan Jet-Plex
17. Trancendless Summer – Peter Silberman
18. Where We Began – Tilman Robinson
19. will you?/you will – Fossil Jane
20. Ya w/Me? – Lomelda (from Swell Tone’s Summer of Sad)
21. Soon Soon – Praything
22. Drive – Mere Women
23. See Through – Suzy Callahan
24. Untitled (Slow) – Jana Irmert
25. Beyond the Stars – The Edge Of The Light
26. Northern Arm – Evening Hymns
27. It’s Not Real – Hazel English

You can check out the previous monthly roundups here, and our various other playlists and mixtapes here.

The post September 2016 Roundup appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“This isn’t about forgetting death, or even really ‘moving on’… [but instead] coming to a deeper understanding of one’s life… how a person can be so shaped by another, and how such an impact can and should be a source of immense pride and joy”

During an interview around the release of Quiet Energies, Bonnetta told us that we should expect a lot of new music from him in the coming months, and we now have the first song into which to sink our teeth. ‘Northern Arm’ sees an expansion on some of the themes on Quiet Energies, while also harping back to the remote romanticism that made Spirit Guides so special. As Bonnetta explains:

“The idea of being on the arm of someone still seems romantic to me and the idea of trying to maintain that alone in the woods even more so. Can two people entertain themselves with love forever? In our days of constant distraction can a real, clear love even exist?”

‘Northern Arm’ finds the band pushing further into dream pop territory while still retaining the folk influences and strong songwriting that has marked their career thus far. Electronics are utilised more than one might expect, coupled with sharp riffs and background vocals, though Bonnetta’s recognisable voice glides over the top of the instrumentation in what could be celebration or lament, echoing strongly like a shout in the woods.

‘Northern Arm’ is forthcoming on Tin Angel Records and you can pre-order it now via Bandcamp. Evening Hymns are set to tour Europe this September and you can find the full run of dates below:

Sept 16th – Hamburg – Golem
Sept 17th – Berlin – Privatclub
Sept 18th – Darmstadt – Golden Leaves Festival (with Lanterns on the Lake)
Sept 19th – Munster-Pension Schmidt
Sept 20th – Koln – Die Wohngemeinschaft
Sept 21st – Amsterdam – Paradiso
Sept 22nd – Paris – Pointe Ephemere (with Chris Cohen)
Sept 23rd – Coventry – The Tin at The Coal Vaults
Sept 24th – London – Shacklewell Arms (with Mauno)

The post Evening Hymns return with new single, Northern Arm appeared first on Various Small Flames.

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

Evening Hymns – Quiet Energies
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“The album takes the suffocating, nebulous shadow of grieving and distils it into something small and hard and strangely tactile, a mysterious object that will always be there in your pocket, radiating its secret and peculiar brand of comfort. This isn’t about forgetting death, or even really ‘moving on’, instead its about coming to a deeper understanding of one’s life, about how a person can be so shaped by another, and how such an impact can and should be a source of immense pride and joy, no matter how hard some days can be. In other words, Quiet Energies is about understanding how it is in fact life, not death, which shapes us and our view of the world.”

Kathryn Joseph – Bones You Have Thrown Me and Blood I’ve Spilled
(REVIEW)

“This is a simple album about things so complicated that it’s almost impossible to put them into words. It’s about those thoughts and feelings that we all experience but never admit, the things that we, be it through etiquette and embarrassment and fear, dare not confess to others or even ourselves. Bones You Have Thrown Me and Blood I’ve Spilled is an album about people: lonely and loved, corporeal and divine, mortal and terrified yet enduring with a resilient hope that never quite goes out.”

Young Jesus – Grow / Decompose
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“As the title describes so neatly, Grow / Decompose speaks of the familiar paths that human lives follow. Despite all the strangeness, the characters here are going through the age-old problems – depression, anxiety, identity crises, existential terror – the problems of being You and You alone, Molina’s “curse of a human’s life”. For all of the complexity of our existence, we are still locked in the atavistic pattern of life and death, everyone more or less condemned to the same mistakes and fears and joys that we as human beings have been experiencing for generations.”

Danielle Fricke – Moon
(REVIEW)

“Moon is a lesson in stillness, a moment stretched out, questions asked but not answered, a monologue that might never leave the room. The wonder of the album is that the human emotions of love and longing never evaporate, continuing to push through the frost where they are warmed by earthshine, opening up the possibility that the very feelings which caused the pain could be the things which end it. So while the narrator is trapped, they never submit to the vacuous silence of space. Hopes are still hoped and dreams are still dreamed and wishes are cast from cold, cupped hands, skywards.”

Yowler – The Offer
(REVIEW)

“Burns with quiet intensity, its strange lyrics feeling oddly personal, giving the album the intimacy of hearing about someone else’s dreams. Guitars sidle and prowl like shadows and the whole thing seems on the verge of something vaguely dangerous. All eight tracks are a study in the art of minimalism, of the exchange between poetry and negative space. It’s certainly a lot more than just quiet and pretty folk music”

Advance Base – Nephew in the Wild
(REVIEW)

“I don’t know Owen Ashworth, and maybe I’m completely wrong, but he seems like a kind and empathetic generally nice human being, in the same way the best writers seem like people you could be friends with. Even if none of that is true, I guess it doesn’t matter – what is indisputable is the fact that he’s a damn good writer who tells stories that speak to and help us all. While it’s easy to cast him as the lonely boy in front of a keyboard, the truth, at least in my eyes, is that he’s often hardly there at all, a transparent gateway into the lives of people you’ve never met, feeling things you thought you had to suffer through alone.”

Siskiyou – Nervous
(REVIEW)

“Nervous is an album of dizzying scope and ambition, quite literally the tumult of sound and emotion inside one man’s head. It is by turns dark and creepy, shimmering and vibrant. Siskiyou have never sounded so eerie, so threatening, or so expansive. And I have to admit, I don’t think they have ever sounded so good.”

Samantha Crain – Under Branch & Thorn & Tree
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“These are songs played like inner thoughts or secret diary entries of persons not usually able to or justified in expressing their true sentiments, people who are not as tough as they let on, but tougher than they think in the middle of the night. A selection of underdogs living the lives they have been given, not pining for more or complaining at a cosmic injustice. Quiet, noble people in the trenches of everyday life, those with the broadest shoulders and smallest voices and a hard, buried sense of pride who treat hardship like a member of the family.”

Lejsovka & Freund – Fatal Strategies
(REVIEW)

“Fatal Strategies inspires a multitude of strange, lateral thoughts – a soundtrack that doesn’t need a film. The musical translation of the postmodern ruminations of an over-active, twenty-first century brain. Music unearthed by a post-society people, who’ll turn it up loud and sit in their ruined cities, reclaimed by branches and vines, and wonder and wonder about us.”

Frog – Kind of Blah
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“Kind of Blah is a product of this place, an album imbued with the spirits of a sparkling past… Judy Garland is America. Lusty teenagers are America. Jesus Christ is America. So is Dr Pibb and dusty valleys and shut-down bowling alleys and all the communal memories shared by millions just like you. Kind of Blah is America, the U S of A in eleven songs – quirky, joyous, breathless, exhausting, addictive, heartbreaking and downright weird, accelerating towards a distant horizon while keeping its eyes firmly on a halcyon past that sure seems like it should have been more fun.”

Oh, Rose – SEVEN
(REVIEW | REVIEW OF ‘SEVEN’, THE VIDEO)

“Olivia Rose’s voice carries the tracks beyond the genre norms into peculiar territories. Raw and versatile, her vocals range from whelps and wails to quiet, haunted whispers. On their début full length SEVEN, a record on which, if anything, Rose pushes things even further. Lean and wiry guitars lead proceedings while a lo-fi buzz envelopes everything, Rose’s words cutting through like shards of glass. The vocals have the quality of an exorcism, like the unnatural utterings of a twelve year old as some jaded man of faith flicks holy water at her forehead.”

Valley Maker – When I Was a Child
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“When I Was a Child is an album about belief and love in a variety of guises, about the big and unknowable questions, from love and growth and family to God and everlasting life. It’s an album about all of us, basically.”

Eskimeaux – O.K.
(REVIEW)

“O.K. is about reality, the moment we live in and the people we share it with. It’s about the things we want and the things we wish for and the things we can’t control. It’s about doing the best you can and hoping it’s enough, about accepting and learning and growing so that whatever hand you’re dealt, you carve out some semblance of meaning and happiness to make everything worthwhile”

Aero Flynn – S/T
(REVIEW)

“This is not an album in which the emotional arc is self-contained and easily mappable… The redemption is the very fact that Scott is creating words and sounds, that he is letting others know where he is and how he is and why he is. The album is the flare of hope hanging in the night sky, burning bright and incandescent.”

Hip Hatchet – Hold You Like a Harness
(REVIEW)

“[Speaks] of that vulnerable core at the heart of every man, and the desperate, ridiculous attempts to suffocate it with cigarette smoke or drown it in whiskey or cover it over with scars. Hold You Like a Harness is an album about tough guys who know deep down that they aren’t so tough. Yeah they fight and drink and make merry, but they’re also sentimental and lovesick and terrified of everything.”

Mike Pace & the Child Actors – Best Boy
(REVIEW)

“Best Boy is for the children of the 80s and 90s, reminiscing about the age where entertainment exploded, where VHS tapes and cable TV transformed us into constant consumers. Of course, as consumers we were sold promises, told we merely needed x, y and z to be happy and successful and pretty and popular. It’s kind of ironic that a time built on visions of the future is now seen as a utopia locked in the past. Pace gets at this feeling by writing feel-good songs tinged with longing, nothing too sad or serious, nor a Father John Misty-style ironic assault. Instead, Best Boy is a wistful celebration of what we had and presents some convincing reasons for why we feel the way we do.”

Fanpage – LYA
(REVIEW)

“Fanpage’s music occupies a space between life and imitation, too mechanical to be described as organic yet too intuitive and mysterious for machines. It wanders a strange distance ahead of the human race, amongst a chaos born of our need for order. Love and delirium and bright white fear roil beneath the feedback, humanity kicking and twisting within a noise filled with myth and magic and dread. Terrifying and beautiful and glorious, LYA is an album for the information age, where data has exploded to incomprehensible volumes and become its own wilderness.”

Titus Andronicus – The Most Lamentable Tragedy
(REVIEW)

“Life (and especially mental illness) isn’t a neat Freytagian pyramid, so why should a representation of it conform to expectations? […] You are left with the impression that the band have said “fuck it, we’re doing it our way”, rejecting a clear genre in favour of whatever felt right at any given time. This kind of zealous self-belief in their own work is interesting, as it’s at odds with Our Hero’s struggles to accept himself as Himself, and sees Titus Andronicus cutting swathes through the field of wannabes, imposters and pretenders and stepping up to the plate as the twenty-first century’s bona fide punk rock band.”

Elvis Depressedly – New Alhambra
(REVIEW)

“This is not a born-again Love-The-World-Because-Life-Is-Great sort of album. Elvis Depressedly will not mend broken bones or cast out demons or have you walking across hot coals. Instead they say that afflictions are not all there is, that you are not defined solely by your circumstances. They say that peace and hope are never out of reach and offer an achievable version of optimism, one which does not require manic enthusiasm or God-like goodwill but instead a pinch of determination and a firm belief in love.”

Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats – S/T
(REVIEW)

“Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats could be your favourite anti-heroes of the sixties, the forgotten friend of Otis Redding and Sam & Dave, or maybe from even further back, a band of villains rolling into nameless pre-war towns to cause shitstorms in cowboy brawl-bars and put smiles faces for one night only. That there is a serious side is less a surprise than a foregone conclusion, because no man has conjured this kind of bone-level fervour out of a pleasant existence. No, here are people staring down the barrel, people stranded in a sea of beer, locked inside some breakneck motion in which a grin and a grimace are practically indistinguishable. Whether this is a defiant two fingers or last hurrah seems unclear even to Rateliff, himself too caught up in a compulsion to dance and scream and shout. Whatever you take from this record, one thing is clear: They can’t put you in the ground if you’re still moving.”

What were your favourite albums of the year? Let us know through one of the usual channels – we’re on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram.

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

Tracklisting:

1. I Don’t Know – Tina Refnes (+ Lit Links)
2. If I Were a Portal – Evening Hymns
3. Cradle Robber – Tyler Butler and His Handsome Friends
4. Calvander – Mount Moriah
5. The Way It Is, The Way It Could Be – The Weather Station
6. Porch – Long Beard
7. Small Wind Power – Fraternal Twin
8. Mourning Dove – Danielle Fricke
9. 3 – Cat Be Damned
10. Cold Apartment Floors – Vagabon
11. I Used To Be A Bird – Fairweather Currents
12. Drive-Thru – Honeyuck
13. Ghosts – The Washboard Abs
14. Litany – Tyler Key
15. Aviator Shades – Quiet Hollers
16. Book of Right On (Joanna Newsom cover) – Foxtails Brigade (Lit Links)
17. Judy Blume – Mal Devisa
18. So Long – Dot & Logic
19. A Swift Thing – EP
20. Stuck w/ Me – Home Lives
21. Close Call (Adderall Anxiety) – Shaky Shrines
22. Boys – Dicktations
23. Nothing – Strange Friends
24. Careful Creators – Summering
25. Blinding White – Vapour Night
26. Pull – Slow Dancing Society (Hidden Shoal compilation)
27. Calmest – Naps
28. As He Walked Into the Field – Robert Stillman
29. Church Bells – Tommy Perman, Simon Kirby & Rob St. John
30. Seven – Oh, Rose
    31. No Hell – Cloud Cult

The post November Roundup – A Mixtape appeared first on Various Small Flames.

[Quiet Energies] takes the suffocating, nebulous shadow of grieving and distils it into something small and hard and strangely tactile, a mysterious object that will always be there in your pocket, radiating its secret and peculiar brand of comfort.

We were lucky enough to ask Bonnetta a few questions about the record and his musical career, exploring his influences, plans for the future and listening habits. Enjoy.

Jon: Hi Jonas, thanks for chatting with us! How has life been treating you since the release of Quiet Energies?

Jonas: All is well! Been getting ready to tour the new record around Canada a little bit and have been working on a bunch of new projects.

The album saw a shift in tone, with many tracks more cathartic and upbeat (for want of a better term). Do you have a better time when playing these songs live? And do you think the changes set a trajectory for where Evening Hymns are headed in the future?

Well I haven’t toured them long enough to understand them live yet so that’s kind of nice. Our current live setup allows us to explore the songs more than in the past and so that’s been satisfying so far. I’m not a huge fan of touring a record for a long time though so talk to me in a year from now and we will see. I’ve been writing so much new stuff that I’m itching to just keep developing new material live. I don’t think the next record will sound like Quiet Energies though. I’ve been working on some piano music that’s more rooted in soul and R&B so who knows… haha…

In my review of Quiet Energies I mention how you retreated into the countryside at various points, and recorded the album in a rural home studio. Is this escape an important part of your creative process? Are we talking escape-the-city rural or cut-off-wilderness rural?

I just need to be left alone with my thoughts. It’s too easy for me to get distracted and so forcing myself into solitude is my solution to fighting writer’s block. It’s not so much as escape now as a way of life as I moved out here permanently. And it doesn’t feel so much as an escape but more of a homecoming. This is how I grew up and it’s what resonates with me.

What else do you consider as influences on your writing and sound? Are there any musicians/writers/artists you consider important in your development? I’ve seen Jaan Kaplinski’s name bandied about, although it wasn’t clear if it came from you or a reviewer.

Huge Kaplinski fan. I own everything that has been translated to English and even recently acquired some Estonian books of his from a friend. He’s been a large shadow on my work since the beginning almost.
Space and environment are crucial to my work. I always come back to trying to explain this project as less a songwriting project and more of trying to create spaces for people to exist in.
And I’ve really recently been truly inspired by art itself. Just recognizing that I’m very fortunate to make a living by conjuring up things from nothing. I feel very lucky.

Recent months have seen you take a crack at the silver screen, what with an Evening Hymns song in the latest Cameron Crowe film and your score for the documentary Strange and Familiar. How did these projects come about, and how does the experience of making a soundtrack compare to recording as Evening Hymns? Is it something you’d like to do more of?

Well the Crowe film came about cause he got into the last record Spectral Dusk and we became Twitter buddies and chatted a bit. Next thing you know I got an email from Sony requesting the song for an upcoming picture. It was a trip. Very cool and I’m super thankful for that. The doc I scored I’m equally excited about it. It’s about this charming little island off the coast of Newfoundland. The first trailer for that film was cut to my music by an editor friend and the directors really liked it and they reached out. I’m working on mixing that music to release it sometime in 2016. That kind of work really suits my lifestyle right now. I have a home studio that I’ve just added a second room on and so I can work quietly on my own out there. I’m hoping I get to do more score work.

You can buy Quiet Energies now from Outside Music (US/Can), Tin Angel Records (UK/EU) and Kütu Records (France).

The post Interview: Evening Hymns appeared first on Various Small Flames.

On a related note, things are gradually getting busier for us in other areas – Liam works full-time and I’ve gone back to school – so the old two posts a day routine might not be maintained too often any more. That said, in an effort to keep things ticking over, we’re going to introduce a new ‘Flash Review’ feature where we cover albums in less words than we would otherwise use. It’s not ideal but a short piece is better than no piece. There’ll still be a good smattering of the usual style too.

Tracklisting:

1. Birthstone (Reprise) – Pet Cemetery
   2. Vice – Roundheels
   3. Forever – Boosegumps
   4. So Long – Heavy Boots
   5. Long Walk To All Sorts of Place – Fanpage
   6. Feathers & Leaves – Ocean Floor
   7. Down Predator Souvenirs – Lejsovka & Freund
   8. Vacation – Florist
   9. 2. – Old Earth
   10. Never Good Enough – Eerie Summer
   11. EZ River – Wilder Maker
   12. Thumbs – Claire Cottrill
   13. If I Were A Portal – Evening Hymns
   14. Jenny Come Home – Andy Shauf
   15. Only Friend – Valley Maker
   16. The Flood – Mike Pace & the Child Actors
   17. Close Call (Adderall Anxiety) – Shaky Shrines
   18. Nancy Kerrigan – Frog
   19. Kaleidoscope – Arbes
   20. The Book of Love – ARMS

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If you haven’t listened to Evening Hymns’ previous records, then you are seriously missing out. Spectral Dusk in particular is one of my all-time favourite albums, an introspective release centring on Bonnetta’s life and mentality in the aftermath of the death of his father. It was an album that came along at a good (or rather bad) time for me and doubtless many others. As I wrote in my preview post:

“I could go on about how Spectral Dusk is brave and heartbreaking and intensely personal, or how it made me feel okay and less alone, or how Evening Hymns, miles from home in a humble Cardiff venue, dredged everything up again to play a quite stunning and draining live set for our pleasure when it would have been easier not to, but I’m sure Bonnetta gets that all the time”.

Writing in such a visceral manner about something so important and intimate can prove a double-edged sword, especially for musicians who must perform the songs for the two or three intervening years in the recording cycle. While the candid lyrics might have proved therapeutic in the weeks and months devoured by the idea (and then reality) of losing his father, having to repeat the same words night after night to roomfuls of strangers must have been exhausting, not to mention becoming an unnatural complication to an already arduous grieving process (“It was never fun”, Bonnetta says of these tours). Furthmore, these songs saw him trying to deal with the grief of losing his father through the wonderful idea that the deceased live on in memories and thoughts and songs (see ‘Cedars’, ‘Cabin in the Burn’ etc.), yet it’s easy to see how such a concept can prevent any emotional progress, especially if the artist sees it as the primary purpose of their work (ie. stopping or changing focus would cause a loved one to slip away, leaving one person responsible).

With this in mind, Quiet Energies feels like a conscious attempt at forward motion. Opener ‘If I Were A Portal’ sounds immediately warmer and bigger, if not the warm spring to Spectral Dusk‘s cold lonely melancholy then at least a mild, [out of sync/seq?] autumn, where death seems less illogical and necessary for continuing life. The pain is still present, but here Bonnetta is at least considering ways to prevent it from overwhelming him: “Wish I was a portal, that I could open up a hole in to my body let it all pour out”. But rather than using distraction, or losing himself in something else, you get the sense he is instead working carefully to learn from his father, not in death but in life.

“Here comes the whispering woman,
there goes the wandering man
you built a house you could die in,
I only now understand.
It’s hard to see things clearly
I took ten steps in the night
I guess it’s best to keep moving
It’s all revealed in good time”

‘Evil Forces’ is a cathartic rock song about escaping pain through finding solitude, speaking of Bonnetta’s retreat into the wilderness of Canada in search of respite (it’s worth noting he recorded the album at his home studio in the Ontario countryside). “I’ll find those silent places… just me in the valley, keeping the secret”, he sings, as if serene open spaces can offer a kind of destructive interference against chaotic internal noise, damping the signal that has been playing over and over in his head. ‘House of Mirrors’ is probably the most upbeat I’ve ever heard Evening Hymns, with its peppy drumbeat adding to the sense of advancement. The song faces up to the worries related to grieving and moving on (“When I was older I thought the memories would rust, thought all the pictures of you would turn to dust”) but is ultimately about being freed by another, cut from the tangle of self-made fears by the simple wonder of human connection. “I spin around, I spin around, I spin around, trapped in a house of mirrors, you were all I feared and you released me”. This is continued on the atmospheric layers of ‘Rescue Teams’, a simple folk song enhanced with drums and ambient swells, a sonic version of the wild. Here Bonnetta is candid and vulnerable but something is different, his lyrics no longer inviting things in but instead letting them go, as if casting words into a wide open sky and allowing peace to fill the space that remains.

‘Oh Man You’ll Walk Again and Again’ deals with the aftermath of Spectral Dusk, the pitfalls of constant touring and the emotional dredging it required, starting with the idealistic purpose of the record (“I was tired of wandering at night in the fields specifically looking of you / I wanted to feel better put my pain into letters”) and descending into reality (“Drove for a year, sang my songs into beers and to be honest it never felt good”). The song feels almost like a Wooden Sky number, introspective heartfelt rock infused with a positive energy, as if sung from a new position of understanding, ending on an ambient interlude. This feeds into ‘Connect The Lines’, which has a piano opening with all the space of the natural world before being joined by elegiac strings and dramatic clattering percussion to form a stark pop ballad in which uncertainty smoulders beneath the surface: “Oh I want to know / will I connect the lines?” Following is ‘All My Life I Have Been Running’, possibly the most certain you will find Evening Hymns, the all-out driving rock song and advert for the new outlook. “I needed to write a ripper – a song with a Tom Petty bridge – about accepting who I am and how I perceive the world” Bonnetta said of the track.

‘Light As a Feather’ closes the album, with a gentle buzzing drone intro that slides slowly into a morose and spacious ambience, before the stoking of simple acoustic guitar and Bonetta’s vocals flare into vivid life. It follows the trend of the previous albums of having a sad slow song to finish, serving to not only reinforce the theme of retreating into the nature but letting us see the good that simplicity allowed, capturing the essence of the album in neat verse:

“Goodbye lover,
goodbye city,
I am going away.
I have wandered
I have wondered
there’s no reason to stay.

In the canyon
by the river
with my name carved in stone.
Found some solace
found some starlight
found the calm in my soul.

Walked the ridge line
felt the north wind
settled in for the year.
Missed my mother
lasted(?) to springtime
wished my woman was near.

Watched the sunrise,
sad reflecting
felt like I could not stay.
Light as a feather
I cut that tether
and I floated away”

Despite loss being the key theme, Quiet Energies sees a shift in focus. The album takes the suffocating, nebulous shadow of grieving and distils it into something small and hard and strangely tactile, a mysterious object that will always be there in your pocket, radiating its secret and peculiar brand of comfort. This isn’t about forgetting death, or even really ‘moving on’, instead its about coming to a deeper understanding of one’s life, about how a person can be so shaped by another, and how such an impact can and should be a source of immense pride and joy, no matter how hard some days can be. In other words, Quiet Energies is about understanding how it is in fact life, not death, which shapes us and our view of the world.

Quiet Energies is out now on Outside Music (North America) and Tin Angel Records (UK/EU). You can get it on vinyl here (N America) and here (UK), or on CD and download via the Bandcamp.

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