And, of course, being comprehensive is impossible these days, so let us know if we missed your favourite and maybe we’ll add it to the collection.

Emily Yacina – Nice Try
(RIYL: bedroom pop)

Evening River Band – EP5
(RIYL: country, folk, psych rock)

Ever – But I Am
(RIYL: bedroom pop, dark rooms)

Exam Season – Mostly Homely
(RIYL: indie rock, emo, Trust Fund)

Family Video – Places To Sleep
(RIYL: indie rock, lo-fi, longing)

Field Medic – that beer called becks reminds me of a haiku i wrote
(RIYL: lo-fi, indie pop, modern folk)

Fish Food – For Shadow Hurts
(RIYL: indie pop, lo-fi, weird lyrics)

Folktale Records – Folktale Sampler (COMPILATION)
(RIYL: experimental, folk, indie pop)

Fossil Jane – will you?/you will.
(RIYL: bedroom pop, singer songwriter, )

Free Space – Ahead of Myself
(RIYL: bedroom pop, lo-fi, Trace Mountains)

Generifus – Peace Sign Rising
(RIYL: indie pop, indie rock)

Georgia Maq – Brain Studio Session
(RIYL: acoustic, bedroom pop, Camp Cope)

Ghost Camp – Great Lakes
(RIYL: indie rock, psych pop)

Glider – Demos
(RIYL: lo-fi, psych pop)

GoldFlakePaint – Too Far From Town To Learn
(RIYL: indie pop, lo-fi, Gold Flake Paint)

Good Good Blood – O Belong / Motion Sickness
(RIYL: ambient, dream pop, folk)

Gorgeous Bully – Better Demons
(RIYL: lo-fi, indie rock, fuzz)

Govier – Predator
(RIYL: indie rock, lo-fi, “alien folk”)

High Sunn – i will never learn
(RIYL: chillwave, lo-fi, dream pop)

The post Favourite Free Music of 2016: E – H appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The album opens with ‘1 Corinthians 13:13’ which immediately pounds along in a fuzzed out country rock squall. The lyrics follow in the Americana tradition, all lonesome blues and howling at moons, but there’s none of the warm nostalgic hope most country songs hold on to. ‘Ashes & Lead’ is equally heavy, with rumbling guitars and furious percussion and fiercely Gothic Biblical imagery.

“Moses fell to his knees
threw the tablets down
Yahweh parted the sea
to watch his children drown”

Those who have listened to Morning River Band will be familiar with ‘To Give Up (The Ghost)’, although the track’s country twang has been stripped and replaced with grungey rock. ‘The Noose’ sounds misleadingly upbeat with its higher tempo, while ‘Lent’ shreds and tears its way through a two and half minute run-time. ‘Punish the Soul’ has a hard rock swagger over big licks of reverberating, rib-rattling guitar, a three-minute distillation of what Evening River Band do so well.

“Punish the body
punish the mind
punish the mind
punish the soul”

In comparison, ‘Bluebonnet Blues’ sounds like a ballad, but, staying true to the Southern Gothic tradition, ends on a grotesque and morbid note (“Ophelia, Ophelia, whom did you betray? /
Crowned queen of east Texas, found dead the next day”). ‘Exit 1/ Resurrection Blues’ has a sort of weird backwoods ritualistic vibe, drunk on moonshine and apocalyptic visions, images of the moon and the sun and a sky-full of dying stars. ‘In Ruins’ is a shadowy tale of dead brothers and liars and thieves, before the finale kicks the pace up a notch, the perfect Americana-tinged rock song to close the album.

If you like your country with more grunge than twang, the Evening River Band are the band for you. Unfortunately EP5 sees the band sign off on an indefinite hiatus, so be sure to dig in know so you know what you’ll be missing in the coming months.

You can get EP5 now as a name-your-price download via the Evening River Band Bandcamp page.

The post Evening River Band – EP5 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“songs about those men down on their luck but too stubborn to change, men doomed to making the same old mistakes and who continue chasing the same misguided remedies.”

Since then I have delved into the band’s back catalogue and decided to write a little something about what I found. I started with Between the Ocean and the Blues, the band’s album from way back in 2011. The tone is somewhat more introspective than later releases, more ruminating regret than brash hungover shame. The album opens with our first taste of the band’s ‘Drinking Blues’, a series of songs which continue until their latest release from earlier this year and really capture much of the band’s thematic goals. ‘It’s OK (To Be Scared)’ is sadder and slower, with it’s repeated refrain, “It’s okay to be scared, it’s okay to be compromised, broken down and beyond repair”, while ‘If Not the Flood, the Fire’ is a harmonica-heavy country song which deals with questions of swapping drink for the bible, the narrator’s doubts about which are expressed in the title line.

We then get a series of more sorrowful songs. ‘Mandatory Overtime Blues’ and ‘Morning After Blues’ are slow, sliding country songs and ‘Bluebonnet Blues’ continues in the sad and steady vein. The second Drinking Blues track, ‘Drinking Blues, No. 2 (Drinking in Heaven With George Jones)’ sees the narrator ambivalent about death and dreaming about good times with country singers in the afterlife, “If you’re ever looking for me oh lord / you’l find me drinking in heaven with George Jones”. Closer ‘Sunken Ships’ provides a pretty send off with some meandering country.

You can get Between the Ocean and the Blues on CD (see above), or as a free download, both from the Morning River Band bandcamp page.

Next up is To Suzie, an album from 2013 which sees the band continue with their brand of country/Americana and really start to hit the groove that has taken them through until their latest release. The record opens with ‘A Broken-Hearted Man’, which continues with the tales of sad men and their desperate coping mechanisms (e.g. “A wedding vow means nothing to a broken hearted man”), and is followed by ‘Suzies Theme’, a country-fried instrumental. ‘Hangover Blues’ is a female-fronted, almost honky-tonk, ode to the trials of a morning after a night on the booze.

“Now its sunday morning
and i should probably go to church
but the organ would pound on my heavy head
and this would go from bad to worse”

‘Drinking Blues, No. 4 (Pills and Pabst Blue Ribbon)’ is short and perky, barely passing the 60 second mark. It has a good-time feel and not quite good-time lyrics, “Lately I been wondering where this life went wrong / doing lots of drinking singing country songs.” ‘Drinking Blues, No. 5 (Drinking Every Day)’ continues in this way, with the opening line of “Life is hell a prison cell where I spend my days”. ‘So Long Suzie (The Damage is Done)’ sounds like a radio folk-rock from the sixties/seventies, and will appeal greatly to fans of Blitzen Trapper or Dr Dog. Next up is ‘Bury Me’, an acapella reinterpretation of the story of Noah and the flood, in which Noah isn’t quite as happy to do God’s will, “Noah turned away, said I don’t work for you / I toil and sweat and do the things that you refuse to do”, followed by another instrumental track, ‘Requiem for Suzie’, and then the finale, ‘Lefty’s Last Blues’, which tells the story of a bartender and dirty rotten gambler who “beat his wife, his daughter, his mother one and all”, and mixes Gatorade with “good old turpentine” after losing his job.

You can get To Suzie on lovely vinyl (I got the pretty pink one), or as a free download, via the Morning River Band bandcamp page.

Finally  I want to mention the self-titled album by Evening River Band, a kind of shadowy cousin to Morning River Band. The project, comprised of members of MRB, is far more towards the rock end of the spectrum, with lots more electric guitars, raucous drums and reverb. The band describe their music as “sludge-folk”, which sounds about right to me. Morning River Band tend to deal in regret and shame, whereas Evening River Band have that sense of night-time riotous abandon that forgets taxing thoughts like that, quite literally selling its soul for a good time. Instrumental ‘Suzie’s Lament’ precedes the shambling country rock of ‘Red Bank Blues (Ordinary Grace)’, before we get a very different interpretation of ‘Sing!’ than that on Abyssal Channeling, this version possessing a lot less country twang and a lot more crash and reverb. ‘Water Rise’ begins acoustic led and more sedate before the rock and roll kicks in with a vengeance, all squealing guitars and smashing drums, before the album closes with two versions of ‘Sunken Ships’, one electric guitar and harmonica solo take and one rumbling full band take. Both are great. It’s a nice change from the Morning River Band releases and I love the idea that come nightfall the band don leather jackets and patched jeans and raise hell in some backwater dive bar.

You can get Evening River Band on vinyl for $6.66 (!) or as a free download via the Evening River Band bandcamp page.

The post Morning River Band appeared first on Various Small Flames.